Brueggemann dies of COVID

Trainer Roger Brueggemann passed away Tuesday, a victim of COVID-19, at age 75.

Brueggemann had been hospitalized with a serious case of the virus and had been gravely ill for quite some time. He was an active trainer based in Chicago up to the time of his death.

Brueggemann gained national prominence – and found surprising high-level success – when he began training for Midwest Thoroughbreds in 2010. That association brought to his barn Work All Week, who would win the Breeders’ Cup Sprint in 2014, and The Pizza Man, who won the 2015 Arlington Million.

Brueggemann, born in Louisiana, was working as an auto mechanic and training part time at Fairmount Park in the late 1980s when he shifted his focus entirely to horses and set up shop in Chicago with a focus on Hawthorne and, to a lesser extent, the now-defunct Sportsman’s Park.

Brueggemann bumped his annual win total from just 13 in 2002 and 14 in 2003 to 36 in 2004, began attracting better owners, and his business accelerated. Brueggemann wound up winning multiple Hawthorne training titles and at the height of his success, in 2013, he won 159 races at an exceptional 28 percent strike rate.

Brueggemann, taciturn and with piercing blue eyes, badly injured a hip while working as a mechanic, and as he aged walking became increasingly difficult. Mornings at Hawthorne, for decades, he could be found sitting in his idling car watching his horses train from a midstretch perspective in the parking lot. Brueggemann wound up with 1,248 winners, including two on racing’s brightest stages, a long, long way from his early days training claimers at Fairmount.