www.trmirelandinc.com
I’m a Chatterbox wins the Grade 2 Fair Grounds Oaks for Larry Jones (inset)
Trainer of the Quarter
LARRY JONES
The TRM Trainer of the Quarter award has been won by Larry Jones. Jones and his team will receive a selection of products from the internationally-acclaimed range of TRM supplements, as well as a bottle of fine Irish whiskey. WORDS: FRANCES J KARON PHOTOS: LOU HODGES PHOTOGRAPHY, FRANCES J KARON
8
TRAINERMAGAZINE.COM ISSUE 36
A
six-foot tall Kentucky-bred racetracker, J. Larry Jones is easy to spot in the mornings, his long legs dangling in long stirrups, straddling one of his thoroughbreds in training, or supervising his stable from a Western saddle on the back of one of his Quarter Horse ponies. it was in his capacity as exercise rider of an unraced two-year-old in his care that Jones was seriously injured in a fall at Delaware Park in April of 2014, sending him to the hospital with hematomas on his brain, a bruised lung, and fractured ribs. But it takes a lot more than that to keep a cowboy down. three weeks ahead of this year’s Kentucky oaks – a race that Jones has won with Brereton Jones homebreds Proud spell (2008), the champion three-yearold filly of her year; and Believe You Can (2012) – and just short of a year to the day of his training accident, Larry Jones has a hot hand going into Churchill Downs’s filly classic, with likely favorite i’m a Chatterbox and Lovely Maria. i’m a Chatterbox is undefeated in three sophomore starts, all at fair Grounds: the silverbulletday, the Grade 3 Rachel Alexandra, and the Grade 2 fair Grounds oaks. Lovely Maria, winner of the Grade 1 Central Bank Ashland stakes at Keeneland,