West Point Thoroughbreds has added three trainers to the team: Jerry Hollendorfer, Ralph Nicks, and Anthony Dutrow.
Hall of Famer Jerry Hollendorfer joins longtime WPT trainer Craig Dollase in conditioning the stable’s West Coast-based runners. He’ll train 3-year-old filly Street Surrender and our new Ghostzapper filly purchased at the Barretts Sale 2-year-old in training sale.
West Point Thoroughbreds has added three trainers to the team: Jerry Hollendorfer, Ralph Nicks, and Anthony Dutrow.
Hall of Famer Jerry Hollendorfer joins longtime WPT trainer Craig Dollase in conditioning the stable’s West Coast-based runners. He’ll train 3-year-old filly Street Surrender and our new Ghostzapper filly purchased at the Barretts Sale 2-year-old in training sale.
During a training career that has spanned 40 years, Hollendorfer has notched numerous training titles and won over 7,000 races. His most notable runners include Songbird, Blind Luck, Shared Belief, and Dakota Phone.
“We’re committed to maintaining a strong presence on the Southern California racing circuit”, said WPT president Terry Finley. “We think it’s important to have multiple trainers in each region and are honored to have Jerry on our expanded team. He’s one of the most respected and accomplished horsemen in the game.”
A former Bill Mott assistant, Ralph Nicks keeps a string of horses in Florida all year long and also races quite a bit on the New York and Kentucky circuits. He took over training WPT’s 3-year-old filly Colonel Nina last month.
Nicks was a jockey for a brief time before going to work for his father, trainer Morris Nicks. During his 14 years with Bill Mott, he worked with grade one winners Cigar, Fraise, Ajina, and Escena. He went out on his own in 2004 and has trained grade one winner Aubby K and graded stakes winners Cool Conductor and El Caballo amongst others.
“We have number of Florida-breds in the barn and felt having a Florida-based trainer would be a huge asset to us,” said WPT Chief Operating Officer Tom Bellhouse. “Gulfstream Park has done a great job expanding their year-round racing program. We’ve admired Ralph’s body of work for quite a while and the racing world really took notice when he was leading trainer with a 27% win rate at the 2015 Gulfstream summer meet.”
Anthony (Tony) Dutrow, son of the late trainer Dickie Dutrow and former Bobby Frankel assistant will begin training some of the stable’s Midatlantic-based runners. He’s based out of Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland.
Dutrow has trained grade one winners So Many Ways, Grace Hall, Rightly So, Cat Moves, Seattle Smooth, Burning Roma, Embellish the Lace, and The Big Beast.
“With Fair Hill being centrally located, it’s very easy to get to a good number of Midatlantic tracks” said Terry. “The purses in the region have really gotten stronger too. We have two fillies, Ring Knocker and Tizthefastlaine, who are best suited for the Midatlantic and the time was right to bring Tony aboard. We’ve been friends for a long time. He’s an excellent horseman.”
