COMMENTARY : What Should Be Days of Delight for McPeek

These ought to be days of unmitigated delight for Kenneth McPeek, the 32-year-old horse trainer who is making his mark at the upper echelon of the sport.

McPeek developed a modestly bred colt, Tejano Run, into one of the top members of his generation. The stretch-runner finished second in the Kentucky Derby, and his performance stamped him as a powerful contender in Saturday’s Preakness.

Yet even if he should triumph at Pimlico, McPeek will still have a black cloud hanging over his head. He is accused of sending an unfit filly into a race, and that his disregard for her well-being led to her death. He faces a one-year suspension from the New Jersey Racing Commission for the offense. It is a charge that McPeek denies but one that stings a man for whom horses have been a life’s passion.

McPeek had grown up around thoroughbreds -- his father was a breeder -- but he had been contemplating a career on Wall Street when he went to the University of Kentucky. At graduation time he was fretting, “I’ve got to do something with my life. What am I going to do?” and his roommate responded, “What do you love? “

McPeek said, “That’s easy. Horse racing.” The roommate advised, “Well, go do it.” The next day McPeek was at Keeneland Race Course, walking horses for trainer Shug McGaughey.

He launched his own training career with some horses owned by his father, but he eventually attracted clients who enabled him to expand his operation to 40 horses -- mostly claimers and low-priced yearling purchases.

Tejano Run sold for only $20,000, but he quickly developed into a star, winning two stakes as a 2 year old and finishing third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. He was hampered earlier this season by a lung infection, but McPeek got him fit enough to run two solid prep races for the Kentucky Derby. But before the Derby the colt had more problems -- another lung infection as well as trouble with his feet. Despite all the setbacks, Tejano Run came from 13th place to finish second behind Thunder Gulch.

Instead of being frustrated by the near-miss, McPeek was elated. “It was a moral victory,” the trainer said. “Between his feet and his lung infection we were happy to get as far as we did.” He has ample reason to feel optimistic about the Preakness now that these woes are behind him.

But there is one woe he can’t put behind him: In 1993, McPeek was training a 4-year-old filly named Mean Doris Jean, who had her share of physical problems, like most run-of-the-mill animals at American tracks. She had a small fracture in a splint bone, but she had been running (and occasionally winning) with it. However, when McPeek put her in a claiming race over a muddy track at the Meadowlands, she broke down so severely that she had to be destroyed.

After the filly’s death, two of McPeek’s employees -- a husband and wife who were his exercise rider and assistant trainer, respectively -- filed a complaint with the New Jersey Racing Commission. They alleged that Mean Doris Jean’s leg had been in such bad shape that she wasn’t fit to run, and that McPeek endangered her by entering her in the Meadowlands race.

Although a state vet had inspected Mean Doris Jean before the race, stewards studied the evidence and concluded that the circumstances merited punishment; they handed McPeek a 30-day suspension. But when the state racing commission reviewed the case, its executive director increased the suspension to a full year. Stunned, McPeek appealed, and the case will be heard in the fall.

The controversy, McPeek insisted, was “a reflection of the times.” Union City had broken down in that year’s Preakness, and trainer Wayne Lukas was widely second-guessed in the media for sending him out. Prairie Bayou broke down in the Belmont Stakes. “My situation is nothing but a backlash from those two breakdowns,” he said.

“We were dealing with a splint,” McPeek said, “and I’ve never known a horse to break down from a splint. There was six scratches from the race in which the filly broke down because other trainers didn’t want to run over that track.”

But McPeek knew that Mean Doris Jean had physical problems, and when a trainer runs such a horse he may be held accountable for the consequences. If he sends a horse into a race knowing he is about to break down, he deserves severe censure. Most often, though, the trainer is making a borderline judgment. If he gambles on a horse’s condition and wins -- as Louie Roussel did with Risen Star in the 1989 Belmont Stakes -- he’s a hero. If he gambles and loses -- as many people believe Lukas did with Union City -- he is a vilified.

To McPeek, it is unfair to place a moral onus on a trainer when he makes a choice and it turns out to be wrong. “Every horse eventually hits a point where you have to make those decisions,” he said. It’s not a black-and-white situation. It’s a gray area.” Though the issue may be ambiguous and unresolvable, it is one that will haunt the young trainer for a long time.