A July Jubilee for WINDYLEA FARMS & HENNIG

by Tony Podlaski for Saratoga TODAY

Within the first nine days of the Saratoga Race Course meet, there have been a several owners who have made at least a couple of visits to the Winner’s Circle with their distinguished silks: Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stables, Mike Repole, the Wycoff family’s Three Diamonds Farm, and Dean and Patti Reeves’s operation of Reeves Thoroughbred Racing.

Although, there is one local stable who has also won two races early in the meet: Windylea Farm. In fact, it may be fair to suggest that the Kip O’Neill-owned farm is having a successful July.

Besides winning allowance races Into Happiness and Ouster as part of Saratoga’s opening weekend, Windylea Farm has been winning races at Finger Lakes and Woodbine. Since the beginning of July, O’Neill, whose racing silks are green with a gold-colored “N” with a circle around it, has won 9-of-21 races between New York and Canada after last weekend’s racing.

“As you can see from our results, we’re racing at a higher level now and there’s more movement with horses when you do that,” O’Neill said to New York Racing Association publicist Ryan Martin earlier this year after Windylea Farm won its first owner’s title at the end of the Aqueduct Winter Meet.

“When they aren’t having success on the NYRA circuit, we can move them to Finger Lakes,” he added. “They learn how to win up there a little easier. If they have the ability, we can transition them back to the NYRA circuit, and we’ve done that in multiple situations.”

Starting 40 years ago in Bennington, Vt., not far the Green Mountain Racetrack, by his late father Phil O’Neill, Windylea Farm slowly evolved into a thoroughbred racing and breeding operation that is now based in Hoosick Falls, NY.

After competing for several years with a handful of victories at Finger Lakes, Turf Paradise in Arizona, and Canterbury Park in Minnesota, Windylea Farm expanded its racing operation to other tracks in Florida, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana in 2018. It was also the first time that the father-son team also had it first runner at Saratoga: Caitlin’satthebar, who was outrun against other claimers.

The O’Neills came back the next year with their first Saratoga winner: Super Silver. It was also during this time when Kip O’Neill contacted Mark Hennig to train a few of the Windylea Farm horses on the NYRA circuit.

Simultaneously, Hennig, who was an assistant to Hall of Fame trainers Jack Van Berg and D. Wayne Lukas in the 1980s and early 1990s before going on his own to eventually win Saratoga races that include the Personal Ensign Handicap (Summer Colony), the Adirondack Stakes (Raging Fever), and the Schuylerville Stakes (Gold Mover), was also looking to add horses to his stable.

“I was at the Timonium sale