Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem for June 26, 2025

A good Thursday to you all! Big weekend is coming up at Churchill Downs and arguably the best older horse race of the year is set to go in the Stephen Foster (G1). It looks like six of the seven horses are big contenders and the one outlier is trained by D. Wayne Lukas; I’m sure a lot of folks will be pulling for Ascroft to pull the huge upset. 

The news of Lukas’ immediate retirement reverberated all week around the racing world and the story was covered by large media and sports platforms of all kinds. He truly is a giant of the game, his legacy lives and will live on for a long time! Much has also been made about the “training tree” legacy that he created, as so many people who learned under him have gone onto great things. He is indeed “The Coach.” 

I found out this week that my high school baseball coach, Ron Dick, passed away. Coach Dick had been living in Asia in his retirement, doing missionary work and teaching English. We still messaged on Facebook every so often, even though it had been more than 25 years since I played ball for him. He was an important person to me because he was a supportive coach at a time where I needed it. I had a really great senior season of baseball, and I truly believe that helped my confidence in sport and in life going forward to college. 

The term “self-made” gets thrown around a lot and I always tend to believe that nobody is truly self-made. Of course there are many success stories in the world and people that have done great things, but I don’t think it’s ever possible without good coaching or support or help somewhere along the way. I’m sure some will disagree with that, but it’s just been my experience. I can’t think of any facet of my life where I haven’t been benefited because of mentoring or coaching or just someone going to bat for me. Much is made in racing about “nepotism” and how common it is in our game. I never had any connection by way of family to racing other than my dad who was a gambler. But he didn’t know anyone who worked in the game, and dad was gone before I even pursued a career in racing. But from day 1 of trying to break in, I’ve received so much coaching and mentoring from a huge list of people in various areas of the sport. 

I’m sure if you ask Todd Pletcher or Mike Maker, they’ll have lots of stories of how Lukas and others have been instrumental to their success. And they’re now in the part of their career where they get to turn to the coaching and mentor role. I had Nolan Ramsey on my podcast this week and he talked about working for Maker for a long time and all that Maker and his grandfather, Ken Ramsey, had taught him about the game. 

Coaches and mentors are important in so many aspects of life, including racing. I’ve worked in racing for almost 20 years and have met people in just the last couple of years who have taught me more about it than I learned in the first 15. I’ve also been fortunate enough to get to start teaching and mentoring some younger people in the game as well now that I’m more of a veteran. It’s a beautiful cycle.  

So a big thanks to the coaches in our lives and Rest in Peace to one of my favorites, Ron Dick. RIP Coach.