Repo Rocks Is Racing's Most Improved Horse. How Did Jamie Ness Do It?

When Repo Rocks (Tapiture) finished ninth, beaten 16 lengths, in the Oct. 29 GII Bold Ruler S. at Aqueduct it looked like the horse had hit rock bottom. He ran a 62 Beyer, had lost six straight races and his last two starts by a combined 29 1/4 lengths. He had won just three from 29 lifetime starts.

But on Saturday that same horse will be the second choice at 4-1 in the morning line for the Metropolitan H. at Belmont Park. He's won five of his last six starts, all of them in stakes company and has a legitimate shot of winning one of the most prestigious races on the calendar, one with a $1 million purse.

What has changed? The trainer. After the Bold Ruler, his owner, Double B Racing Stables, transferred him from trainer Gregory DiPrima to the barn of Jamie Ness. Some six months later he is the most glaring example yet of Ness's ability to take seemingly ordinary horses and turn them into winning machines.

He says there are no magic formulas, just hard work and good horsemanship. When it comes to Repo Rocks, even he has trouble explaining how he got the horse to where he is.

“I don't really know,” Ness said when asked to explain the gelding's turnaround. “The owner sent him to me maybe six months ago. He had been a pretty good horse, but his form had been tailing off. I had a couple other horses for them that had done good. They said see what you can do. For whatever reason, he just did good in our program. He's a big, strong, sound, good training horse. We're just happy to have him.”

When pressed for more answers, Ness said he believes the work he has done with Repo Rocks in the mornings has paid off.

“When I first got him, I was looking to get his confidence back up,” he said. “I thought maybe I would run him in a two other than allowance or even run him for a tag. That was the route we were thinking about taking. Then he worked really good. He's kind of a hard horse to train. He wants to get out, he kind of wants to run off. I think I got him settled down and training right and that was the key to it. Since he worked so good, we decided to take a shot in a stakes (the Let's Give Thanks S. at Parx). We took a shot and he won. He just got up. I thought then he'd be a bottom level stakes horse around here and we'd be fine. But he just kept getting better and better and better and here we are.”

After the race at Parx, he returned at his home track to win the Blitzen S. and then Ness started aiming higher. Repo Rocks won the GIII Toboggan S. and then the Stymie S. before finishing second in the GI Carter H. He returned to the winner's circle in his most recent start, the GII Westchester S, which he won by 5 1/4 lengths and earned a 109 Beyer.

Repo Rocks started off his career in the barn of Bill Mott, going 0-for-7 for the Hall of Famer. He was claimed for $40,000 by Tom Morley and managed to win a maiden special weight race for that barn. Then, he was claimed by his current owners for $40,000 at the 2021 Saratoga meet and turned over to trainer Juan Vazquez. After making seven starts for that trainer he was sent to DiPrima, who has struggled to make it to the winner's circle over the last two years. His combined record for 2022 and 2023 is 4-for-118.

Jamie Ness | MJC

Those who have closely been following Ness's career couldn't have been that surprised that Repo Rocks had blossomed under his care. Ness, who started training in 1999, is a prolific winner on the Mid-Atlantic circuit. He has 3,947 career wins and is winning at a rate of 25% for his career. He's had three years where his winning percentage has topped 30%. Ness is a regular at Parx, where he's won the last three training titles, Delaware Park and at the Maryland tracks.

When you consistently do that well, win at such a high percentage and improve so many of the horses that come into your barn whispers and innuendo are sure to follow. Ness acknowledges that there are those within the industry who believe that his success is too good to be true and that he must be cheating. He said that's something he has been able to block out.

“There's nothing I can do about that other than bring my horses over,” he said. “We're running under the same protocols that everybody else is. They can say whatever they want. It doesn't bother me.  We'll prove it on the racetrack. I have turned some horses around but I've had a lot of horses that go the other way. They don't talk about those horses. Former stakes horse that become bottom-level claimers. We've been winning at a high percentage for a long time, so I've been dealing with the naysayers for a long time. I've learned to deal with it and at the end of the night I know that I'm doing the right thing That's all that matters.”

He said there was a time when he let the doubters get to him.

“It was a little tough at first,” he said. “I wanted to fight back. Early on when I was winning training titles all over the place I had a little trouble with it.  But now I don't really give a flying you know what about that stuff.  I know, my owners know, my jockeys know the work we put into this. Success doesn't come by accident.”

Ness arrived at Belmont mid-week to prepare Repo Rocks for the most important start of his career. He will also be represented Saturday by Calibrate (Distorted Humor) in the GII Brooklyn S. Calibrate will be making his first start for him after being trained by Coty Rosin. Ness isn't downplaying the moment. Despite having nearly 4,000 wins, he rarely competes at this level. Repo Rocks is just the second horse Ness has started in a Grade I race. The other was Ghost Hunter (Ghostzapper), who finished 11^th in the 2017 GI Arlington Million.

“Winning this, It would mean everything to me,” he said. “The other horse we ran in a Grade I, he was just overmatched. This time I'm coming into the race with a shot. It makes those times I was running $5,000 claimers at Beulah Park and all the hard work we've put in worth it. Hopefully, it will pay off on Saturday. It's would be good for people like me who are good trainers, but maybe don't have the top horses or opportunities that other people get. It's kind of for all those guys. We've got this opportunity and we're really going to try to take advantage of it.”

It could happen. Repo Rocks is on a roll and his speed figures suggest he's as good as anyone in the field. And he's got Jamie Ness behind him.