Mike Cline

Jonathan Richard Cline, the son of former Lane's End farm manager Mike Cline, died unexpectedly in Lexington, Kentucky Wednesday, Sept. 20. He was 43. The son of Mike and Paula Cline, Jon Cline graduated from the University of Virginia in 2002 before finding his first job in the pallet industry in Cincinnati, where he met his eventual wife, Mandy. The couple would go on to have two sons, Charlie, now 12, and Mikey, 8. The visitation and Celebration of Life will be held Sept. 27 at Guardian Angels Church, 6539...

Mike Cline, who recently retired from his post as Lane's End Farm's farm manager since that important operation's inception in 1979, will join the Fasig-Tipton yearling inspection team for the company's 2021 selected yearlings sales. "The Thoroughbred industry has great confidence in the Fasig-Tipton process for our selected sales," said Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning. "We are thrilled to add an exceptional and respected horseman like Mike Cline to our inspection team. He will bring vast experience and an outstanding eye for quality horses."

The Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers' Club (KTFMC) has announced Lane's End Farm's Mike Cline will be honored as the 2020 Ted Bates Farm Manager of the Year. Cline has been part of Lane's End since 1979, when Will Farish hired him to manage the then-new farm in Woodford County near Versailles. Cline grew up in Versailles as the son of a farm manager and attended the University of Kentucky. He worked on the racetrack with Hall of Fame trainer Mack Miller, then returned to the Versailles area to manage Big...

Mike Cline, "the only farm manager Lane's End has ever known," according to a press release from the farm announcing the news, is retiring after a 40-year career at the storied nursery. "It would be hard to overstate Mike's importance to Lane's End and everything that has happened here since the farm's inception," said Will Farish, "I hired Mike back in 1979 and he has overseen everything from the broodmares, to stallions, to sales, to barn construction, to pasture maintenance." Many successful people in the industry came up under Cline's...

The ever-growing threat to American life that is coronavirus COVID-19 has rapidly chipped away at horse racing's business after shutting down the affairs of all major sports. Only a handful of tracks are choosing to stay open without spectators as of this writing, and news of the four-month postponement of the GI Kentucky Derby drove home once and for all that the sport would not be unaffected by this crisis. But deeper into the heart of Kentucky than the Twin Spires, are stallion and breeding farms. As much as racetracks,...