Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Willis enjoying career year, holding own with big boys
Mindy Willis is on pace to have the best year of her training career, which dates to 1982. She finished third in the Sam Houston standings in March behind Steve Asmussen and Karl Broberg and has brought that momentum to Lone Star Park.
Willis through Thursday was tied for fourth in the standings behind Broberg and Asmussen, whose local divisions had won a combined 91 of the 234 races run at the meet through Sunday.
As for Willis, she has won 31 races from 160 starters this year, for stable earnings of $472,623. For all of 2017 – her best year on the track – she won 40 races from 305 starters, for stable earnings of $615,427.
“It’s hard to beat Asmussen and Broberg; they’ve got so many horses,” said Willis, a 62-year-old native of Burbank, Calif. “I’ve been pretty proud of myself holding my own against those guys. I don’t have the influx of horses where I can bring them in from other racetracks. I’m hitting them with the same horses. I think I’ve done well, and my owners have been very supportive.”
Willis had a training double at Lone Star last Sunday. Her winners both came on turf and paid $11.60 and $12.20. Willis had won 11 races from 77 starters at the meet through Thursday, with six wins coming on the grass. She also had a nice run over the turf course this winter at Sam Houston, where she is based after the Remington Park meet ends in December.
“At the end of Remington, when they cut off the grass, I just put my turf horses on fresh mode and get them all ready for Houston,” she said.
Willis grew up in a racing family. Her father, Barney Willis, co-owned and trained the Grade 1 winner Doonesbury after an illustrious rodeo career in which he twice was an all-around national champion cowboy. Barney Willis also ran track for the University of Southern California.
“He was a world-class sprinter, and he was going through all the stuff to go to the Olympics when they canceled it because of the war,” said Mindy Willis.
Willis worked for her father on the track, eventually overseeing a division for him in Southern California. Barney Willis also trained stakes winners Raise Your Skirts and top California-bred Hazel R. Mindy Willis later branched out on her own with the support of owner Sam Roffe and saddled her first starter at the nowshuttered Longacres in Washington.
Willis came to this region in the late 1980s.
“Sam and I had a long partnership together, and I saw where Remington Park was going to open up, and I thought, ‘You know, this is a real horsey area,’ and I asked him, ‘You want to go on a road trip?’ ”
Willis made a splash in her first season at Remington, bringing 16 horses and winning often, and after Longacres closed, she settled in this region, eventually buying a farm in Oklahoma. Her top horses in the early years at Remington included Merlin of York, a multiple stakes winner who one season was the meet’s champion turf horse for Roffe.
Willis keeps about 40 to 50 horses in training and this year finds herself with more 2-yearolds than usual, with a number of those horses to debut later this year at Remington. She has juveniles by such stallions as Midshipman, Bind, Silver City, Cavy, My Golden Song, and Notional.
They form part of a diverse barn.
“We just bought a Munnings horse out of Florida that I like,” said Willis. “He’s a 3-year-old. We’ve also claimed a couple of decent horses, I think. I feel fortunate.”
Willis also is pointing Special Rockstar and Texas Belle to the $50,000 Lane’s End Texas on Saturday, a turf race for fillies and mares bred in Texas.
Oh So Regal’s time to shine
Oh So Regal will shake Bee Jersey when he runs in the $75,000 San Juan County Commissioners Handicap on Sunday at SunRay Park in Farmington, N.M.
Oh So Regal, who won the Sunland Park Handicap in April, was fifth to Bee Jersey last out in the Grade 3, $200,000 Steve Sexton Mile at Lone Star Park. Following the race, Bee Jersey won the Grade 1, $1.2 million Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park.
The Steve Sexton Mile has produced two other next-out winners, with one runner taking an allowance at Lone Star and the other, Shotgun Kowboy, the Grade 3, $200,000 Lone Star Park Handicap.
The San Juan is the richest Thoroughbred offering of the SunRay meet, which also features Quarter Horses. The field also includes Pain and Misery.