Lon Wiggins

Lon Wiggins won the first graded stakes of his training career at Arlington in September, 2012, when Gold Edge captured the Grade 3 Arlington-Washington Lassie by a neck, her third win from three starts this summer. The win was satisfying for Wiggins. Gold Edge is a 2-year-old filly with more than her fair share of quirks. Wiggins and his barn patiently have helped Gold Edge through them, and the filly has prospered.

Lon Wiggins, son of Hal Wiggins who trained Rachel Alexandra to her extraordinary Kentucky Oaks win, bases in stable between the Arlington, Churchill and Oaklawn Park meets.

With the backing of some of his father's clients, most notably Dolphus Morrison, the breeder and original owner of defending Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra, Wiggins has posted some high win percentages in 2012.

Lon was the one following Hal around the stables when he was only waist-high, trying to take in all the horsiness, waiting for the day when he could work on his own. “I always loved being around the horses, getting up in the morning with Dad,” Wiggins said.  He galloped horses until a few years ago, and before striking out on his own in 1997 he served as an exercise rider for Steve Asmussen and Bill Mott.

His first year training was 1997. By the early 2000’s, racing at Arlington and Hawthorne with a little Oaklawn thrown in to start the calendar year, Wiggins got up to 112 starters in 2003, but he has never run that many horses since. His 15 wins in 2008 were a career-best, and the most his runners earned in a season was $271,527 in 2010. In 2012, Gold Edge has accounted for three of Wiggins’s five victories.

At auction, Wiggins has successfully chosen horses that went on to race well and turn a substantial profit for their owners including Casanova Killer (Graded Stakes Placed)-bought for $7,000 at KEE Sept and was sold privately for $350,000 after breaking her maiden. Flashy Gray (Graded Stakes Placed) was purchased for $45,000 at KEE Sept and sold for $775,000 at KEE November after breaking her maiden.

Two trainers have been employed by Morrison in his 3 1/2 decades of ownership: Hal and Lon Wiggins. Morrison picks his personnel carefully, in the steel business that made him wealthy and with horses.

“Lon is a good trainer,” Morrison said. “He’s very experienced, very knowledgeable, very intelligent, and he really studies what the very successful trainers do and copies it.”  It seems reasonable to take Morrison at his word. Wiggins’s understanding of Thoroughbreds is as organic as it gets, and he knows the animals from the ground level and up to the saddle.