H. Graham Motion

Born: May 22, 1964 | Birthplace: Cambridge, England | Residence: Fair Hill, Maryland

Started Training: 1993, Laurel | Circuit: Tampa Bay Downs, Kentucky, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Southern California

Motion often has his best days on the sport’s biggest stages. He has sent out 190 graded-stakes winners since taking out his trainer’s license in 1993 following the death of his employer, Maryland-based trainer Bernard P. Bond. He has had at least one graded-stakes winner for 27 consecutive years and 10 in 2022, including a pair of Grade I winners, Spendarella in the Grade I Del Mar Oaks and Highland Chief in the Man o’ War Stakes. At press time, he had surpassed $6.8-million in 2022 purse earnings, his best year since 2017. Motion is best known as the trainer of Animal Kingdom, who won the 2011 Kentucky Derby and the 2013 Dubai World Cup Sponsored by Emirates Airlines. He collected his fourth Breeders’ Cup victory in 2019 at Santa Anita with Sharing in the Juvenile Fillies Turf. Other Grade I winners include the likes of Better Talk Now, Main Sequence, Film Maker, Shared Account, Miss Temple City and Ring Weekend, who won the 2014 Tampa Bay Derby, a Grade II event. His other Tampa Bay Derby victory came in 2002 with Equality. Motion paid his dues early in his career, working for Hall of Fame trainer Jonathan Sheppard after graduating from Kent School in Connecticut. After six years, Motion joined trainer Jonathan Pease in Chantilly, France, where he met his wife Anita, who was then working for trainer Alain de Royer-Dupre. In 2014, Motion’s Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf winner Main Sequence was named Champion Male Turf Horse and Champion Older Male. That same year, Motion won both the Grade III Endeavour Stakes and the Grade III Hillsborough Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs with Pin Oak Stud’s Cloud Scapes.