PROFILE
Bill Heller
Eclipse Sportswire
H
ow do you reconcile a win-only mentality in a profession where a 25 percent success rate is as good as it gets? “I struggle with it to this very day,” trainer Mike Stidham said. “If I expect a horse to win and he doesn’t, I don’t want anybody to be around me for a little time. I’ve always been a very competitive person. I’m an action junkie who loves competing and I want to win. It’s not the greatest way to live because it’s impossible to do.” Fortunately for the 59-year-old conditioner, his horses have been winning more often than ever in his 38-year-old career as he builds a national presence after winning his first training title at the Fair Grounds in 2016, the same year he finished 36th overall in the country by earnings, with $3,747,766. That remains his most successful year to date thanks to a career-high 105 victories from 608 starts. Those numbers are remarkable considering he was almost forced out of the business when he won just six races in 1989 and three in 1990. Yet now, as he has his whole life, he wants more. He wants better. “I’m the kind of person who’s hard on myself,” Stidham said. “I always want a reason why. ‘Why didn’t he run good? What did I do wrong?’ I’m a very self-conscious person who thinks a lot, worries a lot, and is a perfectionist. In this business, there’s not a lot of perfection.” That didn’t prevent the late Hall of Fame jockey Bill Hartack, a close friend of Stidham’s family who was a mentor and like a kind uncle to Stidham, from feeling the same way. “My mother would cook dinner and he would come over,” Stidham said. “One night, I asked my dad why Bill was so upset. My dad said, ‘He rode seven and only won five.’ When he was riding, he expected to win every race. When he didn’t, he wasn’t easy to be around. He was very serious. That’s why he was so successful.”
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TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 45