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Note: Video of Kay Kay and Mike Ball will be up on Kentucky HBPA Youtube as soon as my annoyingly slow wifi cooperates.
(Coady Media/Renee Torbit photo of Chief Wallabee working April 26 at Churchill Downs with jockey Junior Alvarado aboard)
Story by Jennie Rees
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Fifty-five years after their first Kentucky Derby horse, the Ball family of Lexington will have their second when Chief Wallabee goes to the post for Saturday’s 152nd running of America’s most revered race.
Going Straight, a 45-1 shot trained by Elwood McCann, came in 11th in the 1971 Kentucky Derby won by Canonero II. Mike Ball, whose parents Don and Mira founded Donamire Farm in Lexington, was 12 years old.
“It was such an overwhelming experience when it happened,” Mike recalled. “It was unbelievable.”
That feeling hasn’t changed 5 1/2 decades later.
“To think we’ve been in the game as long as we have, and Donamire hasn’t had a Derby horse since Going Straight, yes, this is something very special,” said Mike’s wife, Kay Kay, who like her husband is a former trainer. “Mike had a lot of success when he trained, but not another Derby horse until this year. It’s everybody’s dream, a once-in-a-lifetime thing for us right now.”
Expectations are higher for Chief Wallabee than Going Straight. Chief Wallabee, at 8-1 the fourth choice in the morning line, has emerged as this Derby’s “buzz” horse off his looks, potential for improvement and attention-grabbing workout in blinkers April 20. It doesn’t hurt the buzz that he’s trained by Bill Mott, who won last year’s Derby with Sovereignty. Godolphin’s 3-year-old champion gave the Hall of Famer his first Derby winner to hit the wire in front, six years after Country House moved up into victory in 2019 upon Maximum Security’s disqualification for interference.
Going Straight raced in the name of Donamire Farm, the family operation begun by Don and Mira, who founded the prominent Kentucky-based home-building company Ball Homes. Chief Wallabee was bred and is owned by Mike and Kay Kay.
“Two separate entities, but really the same,” Kay Kay said. “We race in the Donamire silks. It’s a true family business.”
Don Ball passed away in 2018, while Mira celebrated her 92nd birthday April 22. They built Ball Homes into a powerhouse brand, with Don becoming a national leader in the industry. His philanthropic endeavors throughout Central Kentucky included organizing the HOPE Center, a homeless shelter and recovery program for men, and subsequently one for women. The Balls’ non-profit Barkham LLC construction company built apartments at cost for single-parent families, Chrysalis House for women who had completed rehabilitation and regained custody of their children and Shepherd’s House for men who had completed substance-abuse counseling. Barkham also constructed housing for the mentally ill homeless.
Don Ball’s desire to help the less fortunate extended to his horse-racing interests. He was the longtime chair of the Kentucky Racing Health and Welfare Fund, which provides access to medical professionals and assists backstretch workers with health-care costs.
“People don’t understand what the Ball family has meant to thoroughbred racing in Kentucky,” said trainer Dale Romans, president of the Kentucky HBPA, which represents owners and trainers at the Commonwealth’s five racetracks. “Don Ball started the health and welfare fund that’s paid medical expenses for the backside for the last 50 years. It’s good to see them have this kind of success. Nobody deserves to win the Kentucky Derby more than the Ball family. They’ve been on a big uptick. Don would be happy to see that, I know that. He’d be very proud of Kay Kay and Mike.”
While owners playing at the very top of the racing game may have scores of young horses with a focus on the Kentucky Derby, Donamire Farm and Mike and Kay Kay Ball have a combined 14 broodmares, of which three are owned by Mira. The farm raised a total of four male foals of 2023, and three of them will race Saturday at Churchill Downs. Besides Chief Wallabee, the Greg Foley-trained Trouble Calling is set for the $750,000 Pat Day Mile, as is the Bob Baffert-trained 2-for-2 Crude Velocity, who was raised at Donamire and sold by the Balls’ farm manager, Guy Mogge.
Winner of Keeneland’s Grade 2 Lafayette in his last race, Trouble Calling is the third stakes-winner out of Donamire’s Into Mischief mare Into Trouble from her first three foals, all trained by Foley. Now 4, Trouble Shooting won last year’s $2 million Franklin-Simpson at Kentucky Downs to become the Balls’ and Foley’s first Grade 1 winner. The 5-year-old mare Big Trouble won the Fair Grounds’ Pan Zareta.
“I’ve known Mike and Kay Kay Ball for a long time, and they represent everything a trainer hopes for in an owner,” Foley said. “They’re patient, thoughtful and deeply committed to doing right by the horse, first and foremost. They’ve done an outstanding job raising quality horses, and their horsemanship shows in every runner they send to the track.
“They don’t have a huge operation, but it’s top-class. Look how incredible Into Trouble has been: three foals and all stakes winners. I’m proud to train them, including Trouble Shooting giving us both our first Grade 1 win. I hope to start their Derby Day off with a big effort by Trouble Calling in the Pat Day Mile.”
Don Ball owned a large stable in the 1970s and the 1980s, including the Mike Ball-trained graded-stakes winners Summer Advocate, Recusant and Terra Incognita. The numbers had dwindled when Mike (who trained from 1978-1995 before leaving the track to concentrate on Ball Homes) and Kay Kay (who took over the stable, running her last horse in 2013) became reinvigorated while racing their homebred Limousine Liberal. Trained by Ben Colebrook, the gelding’s nine wins from 2015-2019 included the Derby Day Churchill Downs Stakes (then a Grade 2) twice en route to earning $1.8 million
The Balls subsequently went from buying three or four yearling fillies to eight last year as they sought to build their broodmare band, Kay Kay said.
“Kay Kay and myself just had a couple of horses,” Mike said. “When Limousine Liberal came along, he had us there at the Derby every year, running in the Churchill Downs Handicap. On Travers Day he was running in the Allen Jerkens and the Forego. He was in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint three times. Just to have a horse do all those things and be at all those events, you want another nice horse.”
He added wryly, “The most expensive horse you can have is your first good one.”
But the result is the best group of horses the family has had since back in the 1980s, Mike said. Even so, he said he never dwelled on whether they’d have another Derby horse or not.
“If one comes along, they come along,” he said. “You take every horse and try to do what you can with them, whether they’re a seven-eighths of a mile horse or a turf horse or whatever they are. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I know that. We’re not taking it for granted. I know there won’t be one next year. I’ve got two colts. We haven’t bought colts, so far — we might start — but we’ve been buying fillies.”
One they bought was Chief Wallabee’s dam, A La Lucie, for $1.1 million. She got hurt and never raced, with Chief Wallabee her first foal.
“She’s well-bred, great-looking. We had high hopes,” Kay Kay said. “It was disappointing, but it’s turned out all right.”
Chief Wallabee is the Balls’ first horse with Mott, a move made upon the recommendation of mutual friend Bill Harrigan, who prepares the Balls’ young horses for the track.
“We were like, ‘Good idea.’ We’ve known Bill Mott for years,” Kay Kay said. “I’m glad the first horse we sent him turned out to be a good one. I hope he’s going to be Rory McIlroy winning back-to-back Masters and (Mott) back-to-back Derbys.”
Mike Ball said he knew he was sending Mott a nice colt, but “I didn’t think of him as a Derby horse at the time. We had breezed him here at Keeneland and knew he had some talent. But I had no idea we’d be where we are… We don’t have a lot of numbers. It’s luck. The more horses you have and the better bred they are, the better chance you have. But at the end of the day, it’s still luck.”
Chief Wallabee was ready to run last year at Saratoga when he had a couple of setbacks. He won his long-awaited debut Jan. 10, followed by a second by a neck in Gulfstream Park’s Fountain of Youth (G2) and third by a half-length in the Florida Derby (G1). Mott and jockey Junior Alvarado agreed that adding blinkers for the Kentucky Derby could help.
“He just was green between horses, looked like he was running in spots,” Mott said. “He’s an inexperienced horse. He probably just needs a little something to help him focus. I feel good about our horse. He’s doing very well, and he’s a very talented horse… Mike and Kay Kay are excited, and I’m excited for them.”
While both Mike and Kay Kay had successful training careers, neither wishes they were back at the track with Chief Wallabee. They’re happy to leave the training up to their Hall of Fame trainer.
“This is our first time, and I’m a nervous wreck,” Kay Kay said of the Derby. “I’m glad Bill is here to do it. He’s doing a great job.”
Some of that nervousness comes from the heightened attention that has swirled around Chief Wallabee.
“To read all the hype about him, it’s making me stall walk,” Kay Kay joked. “If he was reading it all, he’d stall walk. So it’s good he doesn’t have a phone.”
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(Photos below are screen shots from accompanying video. I didn’t know I’d be writing a story and didn’t get photos. – JR)
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