Those unfamiliar with the deep cuts of Delaware Park racing history may not realize the significance of trainer Kenny Black’s presence in the shedrow this summer.

For Black, it’s a return to the site of some of his biggest wins in the saddle, and where he earned leading rider laurels in 1981. 

When asked where he’s from, Black replies that he’s “from the racetrack.” He spent his early years on the West Coast, traveling state-to-state with his father and younger brother, both jockeys themselves. He was riding at bush tracks as young as nine years old, and when he became a teenager, training to become a bug jockey began in earnest.

In the late 1970s, his father got a job out east with trainer Chuck Taliaferro, who also housed and mentored a young man a few years Kenny’s senior named Steve Cauthen. Cauthen, of course, would soon rule the riding world, winning the Triple Crown aboard Affirmed and reaching the highest levels of not only racing fame but also of general public acclaim.

“There’s probably never been a better ambassador for horse racing than Steve Cauthen,” Black says. “All the young aspiring jockeys idolized him. He was everybody’s hero. And you can’t find a better role model than him.”

Like Cauthen – whom he considers a longtime friend – Black, too, had an early ally in Taliaferro. The trainer advised him to stay on the East Coast for his time as a bug, away from the stiffer competition in California. It turned out to be the right move. 

He was first under contract with trainer John Forbes, and then connected with agent Chick Lang, Jr., who helped him climb aboard some of the best stock the early 1980s had to offer. He won 58 races at Delaware in 1981, and his title season there was capped by a victory in the then-Grade 2 Delaware Oaks with Up the Flagpole (dam of future Delaware Oaks winner Runup the Colors and second dam of Horse of the Year Mineshaft).

Other notable East Coast mounts for Black included stakes winner Sportin’ Life (sire of classic winner Bet Twice) and Fall Highweight victor Piedmont Pete, who was in the running for champion sprinter in 1981.   

But on Decmeber 7 of that year — almost precisely two years to the day after his first mount at the Meadowlands in 1979 — the West Coast kid was staring down another frigid winter in Maryland, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of it. He loaded up his car and made a beeline for California.

“I wanted to ride with the best,” remarks Black. The sunnier weather was an added bonus.

He achieved further success in California – a stakes win by a nostril over the legendary Bill Shoemaker remains one of his most treasured moments – but his riding career eventually tailed off through the late eighties and nineties, with his last recorded mount in 2002.

But he was a racing guy, through and through, and though life as a jockey was now in his rearview mirror, Black wasn’t about to give the racetrack life up for good. His journey from rider to trainer took him first through the barn of John Shireffs – where he sat astride a young future Kentucky Derby winner in Giacomo – and then to trainer Jason Orman, where he served as an assistant.

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Black then joined longtime California owner/breeder E.W. “Buddy” Johnston’s Old English Rancho operation, first as assistant, then moving up to head trainer. He won three graded stakes, even making it to the Breeders’ Cup in 2016, with Grade 1 winner What a View. 

After Old English Rancho merged with Harris Farms in 2018, Black moved on to train in Kentucky, but was unable to get stalls there this past winter. Instead, he went to the Fair Grounds, where, funnily enough, another cruel winter was waiting for him — specifically, one of the most brutal winter storms in New Orleans history.

“In twelve hours, it snowed like twelve inches,” Black remembers, laughing ruefully. (It was less than that, but still shattered snowfall records.) “It shut the whole city down.”

Then, two weeks before the beginning of the meet, Black moved his horses to Delaware. His stable is small but mighty, with a winner on the meet in One Improbable as well as the well-bred Vekoma Kid, most recently second and entered later this week.

There’s also Black Volt, a sleek and speedy son of Cairo Prince. With an older half brother in stakes winner Soontobeking and a string of promising workouts, the 2-year-old is entered for his first start Thursday at Colonial Downs, and has Black excited for the future.

Overall, Black has a win and two seconds from five starters at the meet. It’s perhaps a far cry from his days as the leading rider, but that’s OK.

Delaware Park, Black says, is incredibly horse-friendly: “So quiet and serene; they get to graze all the time and roll in the sand.”

“It’s good for them. It keeps them happy.”

Black is happy, too.

“I love being back here,” he says. “It’s such a beautiful place.”