Veteran trainer David Vance, one of the fixtures on the Kentucky and Arkansas racing circuits, has announced his retirement following a 58-year career.
“It's been a great run but I've decided it's time to retire,” Vance said. “Horse racing is in my blood and it's all I've known my entire life. I've told myself I'd train as long as I physically could and now is the time to retire. I'm proud our family will remain involved in training horses with my son, Tommy, and daughter, Trisha, who are third-generation trainers.”
Vance was most known as the conditioner of 2000 Champion 2-Year-Old Filly, Caressing. Owned by Vance's longtime client Carl Pollard, Caressing won the 2000 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies en route to her season-ending championship honor. The trainer will close his career with 3,193 documented wins, which ranks 32nd all-time in North America. He is ranked 11th in all-time wins at Churchill Downs with 380.
Turning 83 in August, Vance is a lifelong horseman who began training on his own in 1965. As a teenager, Vance was a jockey and one of the leading riders in the 1950s at the now defunct Thunderbird Downs in Las Vegas. Along with his brief career in the saddle, Vance was the assistant to his father, Richard, until he started his own stable.
It didn't take long for Vance to find success as a trainer when he won his first of four Churchill Downs leading trainer titles in the 1967 Spring meet. His other three titles came in the 1980-'81 Spring meets and the 1994 Fall meet. Vance has also won multiple training titles at Garden State Park, Keystone Park and Oaklawn Park.
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