Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem for Oct. 27, 2025

A good Monday morning to you all! Welcome to Breeders’ Cup week. I hope you all have fun this week and don’t get overwhelmed with a billion pieces of content about two great days of racing. I think it’s easy to get Breeders’ Cup fatigue when discussion of it is going on everywhere, so my advice is to trust yourself and your opinions, listen to those you really trust, and tune out the rest. Every horse is going to look good in their works, otherwise they wouldn’t be here. 

One quick plug for our shows this week is that we’ll have Kellie Reilly on for much of the show on Thursday to discuss many of the International competitors and give a good primer on those overseas shippers coming to California. That’ll be out late Wednesday for Thursday. 

So on Monday I often try to write about my favorite story of the weekend, and I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of just talking about the biggest events or biggest races from around the country. I mean, next week’s column will assuredly be about the Breeders’ Cup. But this week, my favorite story came from Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio, but it’s a lot bigger than just one race. 

The one race is worth mentioning though, as Who Dey took home the Best of Ohio Endurance Stakes for trainer Tom Drury and jockey Willie Martinez. For Martinez, it was set to be the last race of his fantastic career that dates back to 1989. Sent off as a 2-5 favorite in a small field, Who Dey had to work before prevailing by just a head in the end. For Willie Martinez, it marked the 3,755th time that he’d been on horseback walking into the winner’s circle. Now, I always take jockey retirements with a grain of salt, because 80% of them come back and ride again at some point. But Willie has kind of been inching towards this retirement, mostly just riding in the summers at Presque Isle the last few years and taking winters off. He’ll now go to work for the Jockey’s Guild for his second career. 

On Twitter (currently X) there’s an account called “The Hall of Pretty Good” and it’s a baseball account that elects players who aren’t Hall of Famers, but still are worth giving some serious recognition to for a great career. I feel like that’s kind of where Willie Martinez’ career kind of falls. He likely won’t be enshrined at Saratoga, however three Grade 1 wins including a Breeders’ Cup Sprint (G1) victory aboard Trinniberg and another couple of dozen Grade 2 and Grade 3 wins make for one heck of a resume. I mentioned earlier the 3,755 wins to go along with over $86 million in career purse earnings and all that while having ridden much more sporadically for the last decade. Pretty good indeed. 

I think sometimes in sports we tend to focus so much on the stars that we tend to not realize how hard it might be to just have a long sustained and solid career. To achieve at the level Martinez did for well over 30 years is a real accomplishment. It took a combination of talent, hard work, health, perseverance, and a good demeanor amongst horsemen and fellow riders to stay at a level like that for such an extended period of time. 

So hats off to Willie Martinez on a great run in the saddle and hopefully more good years working with his fellow riders through the Guild.