Hennig Enjoying Rewarding Meet at Saratoga

At the end of the spring/summer meet at Belmont Park, Mark Hennig found himself seven wins away from 1,500 for his career.

While on a family text conversation, one of his sons had this thought: wouldn't it be something if Hennig could get to that number during the 40-day prestigious meet at Saratoga Race Course? Wonderful idea!

"I said, 'yeah, like we are going to get seven wins at Saratoga," Hennig said on the morning of Aug. 12 outside his barn on the Saratoga backstretch. "It's been a long time since we won seven races at Saratoga."

His son proved to be a modern-day Nostradamus because Hennig got to that number when he won the final race on Aug. 12 to claim career win No. 1,500.

It came when Spinning Colors , a 3-year-old filly owned by William Parsons Jr. and David S. Howe, posted a mild upset, taking the 1 1/16 mile race on the inner turf by two lengths for jockey Dylan Davis.

"I made it," Hennig said in the winner's circle. "This filly has really found a home on the turf. I was optimistic but, the first time facing winners, you never know."

After four uninspiring starts on dirt to start her career, Spinning Colors has won two of three on grass.

Hennig has had a solid meet thus far at the Spa. After the Saturday card, he has seven wins, three seconds, and four third-place finishes in 28 starts from his horses. It is the most wins the 58-year-old Hennig has had at the Spa since he had six in 2009. He also won eight races twice—in 2003 and 2004. 

His Saratoga benchmark came in 2000 when he won 11 races.

"It really has been a phenomenal meet," he said. "I keep pinching myself."

He did not come to the Spa with the goal of getting to 1,500 wins. Fifteen hundred is a nice number, but it is not the kind of thing where cake and ice cream and a bucket of champagne are served to mark the day.

"One of my clients made me aware of it a while back that I was 12 away from it," he said. "I was kidding him at the time, saying 1,500 kind of feels like a participation trophy. When I reached 1,000, I thought that was significant. I guess 1,500 is something that people celebrate, but I am not going to go crazy over it."

When Hennig began looking over the first condition book for the meet, he thought he had a chance to do some good. And he has.

"You have to have live horses that can win here," he said. "You open up that first book, and, sometimes, you are like, 'I'm not going to win a race in the first book.' This year, as I was going through the book writing horses in, the confidence grew."

Hennig said he has 40 horses on the grounds and included in that group are 2-year-olds that will not run at the Spa. 

With 16 days of racing remaining in the meet, Hennig is not predicting multiple more trips to the winner's circle. But he is quietly optimistic that things will go well before the summer winds blow him and his horses back to Belmont Park.