Upstart Trainer Claire on Rise in Indiana, Louisiana

Rising young trainer Alexis Claire's recently completed first season at Horseshoe Indianapolis nearly began with disaster, when her $10,000 claimer Bootdaddy Justice  clipped heels in his first race off the claim and was vanned off the track on June 27.

"I thought, 'Oh gosh, I just claimed this horse, and this is going to be a total loss,'" recalled Claire, 29, who struck out on her own last year after working under leading trainers Eduardo Rodriguez and Brendan Walsh.

Instead, the Indiana-bred Bootdaddy Justice fully recovered and returned to the track three weeks later, going on to win four of his next five starts for Claire and propelling her to a solid 13 wins in 42 starts at Horseshoe, ranking in the top 25 trainers for the 123-day meet.

After selling her car last year to buy two horses and get her own barn up and running, Claire has steadily built her barn with a judicious eye for claimers, banking $447,879 so far in 2022, her first full year on her own.

A yoga instructor who gallops her own horses, Claire attributes her success to her intuitive connection with the animals. "I think when you take care of the horses, they take care of you," she said. "I try to tell horses, 'I honor you, I respect you, I love you,' and they really know."

Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Claire nursed a love of horses from childhood, when she kept a scrapbook of clippings about the Kentucky Derby (G1) each year and began taking riding lessons around age 8.

Claire competed at a high level in hunter/jumper competitions and was working with a non-profit that gives off-the-track Thoroughbreds a second career on the show circuit when she first met Rodriguez at Arlington Park in 2014.

"She was with a group of jumpers, and they came to the racetrack to buy horses," recalls Rodriguez. "I sold a horse to them, and then she said, 'I'd like to get on (race)horses.' So I said, 'come on!' She started galloping and she was real good, she learned real quick, and she's real smart."

Starting out as an exercise rider for Rodriguez, Claire later took the trainer's test to become an assistant trainer. She also dabbled in ownership interests in some of the horses in his barn.

In 2018, she called Rodriguez in excitement to let him know she'd bought her first horse, at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale. "How much did you pay?" he asked her. Rodriguez struggled to contain his alarm when she replied, "five hundred dollars." 

Claire broke the colt herself, naming him Healing . Initially skeptical, Rodriguez got a shock when Healing crossed the wire second in his first race, later winning by disqualification, and won outright by more than 10 lengths in his second start. All told, the unwanted $500 horse, which had failed to draw a bid at auction, returned Claire $51,000 in purses and claiming price. 

In 2020, Claire moved to Kentucky to work as barn foreman for Walsh, a gig that included memorable stints working with grade 1 winners Santin  and Maxfield  . "She was a good girl, always, very dependable, and a good horsewoman, so it's no surprise at all she's done well," said Walsh. "It's always good to see people go on and do good things, because it's not an easy game."

By the following summer, Claire decided to take the plunge and start her own barn, selling her car to claim two horses at Arlington Park while she slept on a friend's couch.

"It was a huge risk, but when I owned horses on the side I got to try out different methods of what I thought would work," she said. "I could train a horse, but I didn't feel at peace until I went out and proved it, and I wanted to go out and prove it. Nothing was handed to me. I had to go out and self-start this thing, and failure wasn't much of an option."

Good fortune struck early, when one of Claire's claimers won her fourth career race at Arlington Park, a $14,000 claiming race. She initially owned all the horses in her barn herself, but by the end of that first meet at Arlington, she caught the attention of Hoffman Racing owner Keith Hoffman, who asked if they could partner up.

"She has a great talent and eye for claiming a horse, and her performance after the claim has just been outstanding. She has a very impressive record right off the bat," said Hoffman. "I've owned horses since 2013, but this has been the best year I've ever had."

Hoffman's most lucrative partnership with Claire came with Lt. Junior Grade , a $20,000 claimer who won five of his 12 starts for her, including three wins at the recent Horseshoe meet, with earnings of more than $123,000. "The horse has been fantastic, moved up in the ranks, done very well, and she's the one who looked at the horse to begin with before we decided to claim him," he said.

In October, Hoffman was deep sea fishing in the Caribbean when Lt. Junior Grade made his first start at Keeneland for Claire. He watched the race on his phone, shouting in ecstasy as the 4-year-old ridgling won by a neck. His joy quickly turned to disappointment when Claire called to let him know the horse had been claimed—though the $40,000 price, double what they paid, helped soften the blow.  

Claire is campaigning at Fair Grounds this winter and is targeting Kentucky in the spring, with plans to stable at Churchill Downs. 

"My goal is not to have claimers forever, it's just the only way I was able to start my business," she said. But I hope that I've proved that I can take average horses and improve them, and improve the value. If I can do that with cheap horses, imagine what I can do with some resources."