Kenny McPeek: Quarter Horseman
Kenny McPeek in the McPeek barn at the New Orleans Fairground in February, visiting with equine pal Taken By The Wind. The filly is owned in part by Terry Bradshaw, Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback. Photo by Ellis Anderson
April 2026The Kentucky Derby-winning racehorse trainer isn’t one to gamble, but he’s all in on French Quarter life.
– by Doug Brantley
This column is underwritten in part by Karen Hinton & Howard Glaser
“This is a typical morning for me,” says Kenny McPeek, steering his Mercedes SUV down Dauphine and onto Esplanade, as his cell phone sounds off with a neighing ringtone.
“I bolt out the door and have a six-minute drive to the Fair Grounds.”
It’s a route and routine the champion-winning horseman has perfected over the past four years of wintering in the French Quarter.
Based in Lexington, KY, where his historic, 115-acre breeding and training facility, Magdalena Farm, predates the Kentucky Derby, McPeek spends November through early April in New Orleans, running Thoroughbreds at the Fair Grounds Race Course.
And they’re out of the gate! In front of the McPeek barn at the New Orleans Fairgrounds in February, 2026, photo by Ellis Anderson
With a well-honed eye for overlooked, undervalued talent, the much sought-after trainer and bloodstock agent advises owners on “who to buy, who to invest in and who to sell,” consistently producing high-yield racehorses.
Consider Curlin, purchased for $57,000, who would go on to be named American Horse of the Year in 2007 and 2008 and garner $10 million in earnings.
“I had grown my business with more of a South Florida client base,” says McPeek, who also counts clients in Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Argentina and Brazil. “But the racing there has gone subpar in the last five years.
“So, I decided to come to New Orleans. And when I did, I told my wife, Sherri, ‘I’m not going to live in Metairie or the suburbs. If we’re going to move there, I want to live in the French Quarter. I want the experience.’”
It’s quite a different experience than his first French Quarter foray back in 1980 while attending the University of Kentucky, where he earned a BA in Business Administration.
Driving down from Lexington in “a little Honda Civic – for a girl, of course,” he arrived late at night and found himself parked on a Jackson Square bench.
“I slept with the Sunday paper on top of me,” he recalls. “Half-broke, a young kid with no money.”
Today, McPeek ranks among the horse racing world’s top talents, with more than 2,000 career wins, including three Triple Crowns and earnings exceeding $145 million. One of the all-time leading trainers at Keeneland and Churchill Downs, in 2024, he swept both the Kentucky Oaks (with Thorpedo Anna) and the Kentucky Derby (with Mystik Dan), an achievement unmatched since 1952.
A photo montage of Thorpedo Anna’s 2024 Kentucky Derby win hangs in the den of the McPeek’s French Quarter home.
A photo montage of Mystik Dan’s 2024 Kentucky Derby win hangs in the den of the McPeek’s French Quarter home.
With barns at Keeneland (Kentucky), Oaklawn (Arkansas), Saratoga and Belmont (New York), Gulfstream Park and Silverleaf Hills (Florida), as well as the Fair Grounds and Magdalena, McPeek manages close to 300 horses and employs a 160-person staff.
“It’s kind of a crazy world we live in,” he says, grabbing a Daily Racing Form before passing through the Fair Grounds’ Owner, Trainer & Jockey Entrance. “Like an organized circus.”
A curious onlooker inside the McPeek barn at the New Orleans Fairgrounds in February, photo by Ellis Anderson
Indeed, shadowing McPeek as he enters the track’s paddock, where shiny-coated, sinewy-muscled horses are circled, saddled and showcased pre-race, is akin to parading around with a celebrity ringmaster.
Everyone, from the colorful-silked jockeys and stable hands to high-roller players and everyday Joes, seems to know and acknowledge him.
Kenny McPeek and Queen Elizabeth at England’s Ascot races, YEAR
The grandstand maître d’ greets him as if they just saw each other yesterday (they likely did); fans from Saratoga swarm in shortly after he sits down; a follower of his popular podcast series and app, Horse Races Now, stops by for a selfie.
Given his success and stature, one might expect McPeek to be somehow superior to or above it all. After all, he did meet the late Queen Elizabeth at England’s Ascot – twice.
But, introducing me as “my friend” to every person we encounter, though we’ve only just met, he radiates a genuine warmth and heartfelt humility that he attributes to his upbringing.
“My mother wouldn’t have allowed me to be any other way,” he says. “There’s no one more influential in someone’s life than their mother or father. I would not be the person I am today without her guidance.”
Among her soundest advice: To invest in the stock market and real estate, to read books (“Son, you’re going to encounter a lot of problems in life, but most of their solutions are already in books; you just have to find them”) and to have breakfast at Brennan’s, which he and Sherri do at least once each season.
McPeek inspects a horse’s bridle at the Louisiana Derby, March 21, 2026, photo by Shawn Fink
McPeek at the Louisiana Derby, 2026, photo by Shawn Fink
Sherri and Kenny McPeek at the Louisiana Derby, March 21, 2026, photo by Shawn Fink
Photo by Shawn Fink
It’s his grandparents who McPeek credits with an early exposure to horses when he was just 5 or 6.
To entice him to attend church, his father’s mother, who lived near Keeneland, noting the youngster’s penchant for ponies, arranged to have four-legged playmates brought to her house on Sundays after church.
“My mother’s father said, ‘Well, if I can’t get you to go to church with me, then come to the track with me on Saturdays,’” McPeek says with a chuckle, recalling holding onto his grandfather’s trademark tweed coat, so as not to get lost amid the hubbub.
His father, himself an avid horseman, likewise imparted important life lessons.
“My dad was a really bad, addictive gambler,” he notes. “He destroyed his life with all of the betting he did.”
Though he had interviewed for a stockbroker position in New York, McPeek took a hot walker job at Kenneland the day after he graduated. By the following year, he had earned his trainer license.
Meanwhile, facing bankruptcy, his father enlisted his business-savvy son’s help in selling his few remaining horses.
“What was supposed to be two or three weeks turned into three months, then turned into a profession,” recalls McPeek. “People actually won with the horses my father had, and other people started calling asking, ‘Can you pick one for me?’ Within another year, I was up to 10, then 20 [horses in training].”
At age 32, he ran his first Kentucky Derby, coming in second.
Heeding his mother’s wisdom, he socked away his earnings in stocks and began buying and selling properties.
“Everywhere we go with the horses, I need a place to live,” he explains. “Instead of renting, I can justify owning. Today I own—it’s embarrassing—10 homes that I utilize.”
Initially skeptical of crime in the Quarter, the McPeeks first rented a house on St. Phillip.
“But two months in, we said, ‘We need to buy something here. This place is too much fun!’”
The McPeek family during Mardi Gras, 2026, photo courtesy Kenny McPeek
So they did, purchasing a three-story condo on Barracks in what was formerly La Maison Hospitaliere, an 1890s senior nursing home that remained in operation until Hurricane Katrina.
“People say, ‘Oh, it’s so dangerous down there,’” scoffs McPeek. “But I don’t see it, I don’t feel it. We’ve just fallen in love with it here.
“I’ll come home from the Fair Grounds and change into shorts and flip-flops, and we’ll go out to lunch at the Napoleon House or the Gumbo Shop, then walk around the neighborhood to work it off, talking to people on their stoops.
“We’ve got great neighbors. I’m completely shocked at how much fun it’s been getting to know everybody.”
Many of his neighbors have joined McPeek for a day at the track, where earlier we toured his stable of 36 Thoroughbreds, including three contenders for this year’s Kentucky Derby.
“This is one of the favorites, Blackout Time,” he says, gently stroking the colt’s muzzle. “I know what you’re looking for – peppermint.
“This horse is an enigma,” he says of Django, who we watch getting his legs wrapped in preparation for today’s race. “He doesn’t like winning. He doesn’t have early speed, he just kind of grinds it out.”
Kenny McPeek makes adjustments to the tack on Django before the February race, photo by Ellis Anderson
Back in the grandstands, the Call to the Post bugle blares—and they’re off, with Django lagging until the final turn, when he pulls away to place third.
“I told you he doesn’t like to win,” says McPeek with a shrug. “And then you get those that refuse to lose.”
He’s hoping that’s the case for Our Two Girls, who is also running today at Oaklawn in Hot Springs. McPeek pulls the race up on his phone, while tucking into a bowl of grillades and grits with a glass of sweet tea – though he was really craving gumbo, which sadly isn’t on the menu today.
“This is a big race, $130,000,” he notes as the horses break from the starting gate.
And it’s a tense one that comes down to the wire, with Our Two Girls drifting out of line at the finish, forfeiting the lead.
McPeek’s phone whinnies. It’s Sherri calling to lament the loss.
“Oh well,” says the ever-optimistic McPeek. “Sometimes it’s good to be second. Because she’ll make $25,000 as second and then come back and run the race again. Same race, and you get the same horses [minus the winner].
“You’ve got to stay positive. Especially in this business.”
