John C. Servis

Servis has spent his life in racing and was at the top of the sport in 2004 when Smarty Jones came very close to winning the Triple Crown. Under Servis' direction, Smarty Jones won the Derby preps at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas and went on to win the Derby and the Preakness. The colt was on the lead in the stretch of the Belmont Stakes, but Birdstone caught and passed him as they approached the wire. Servis grew up a mile from Charles Town Racetrack in West Virginia, where his father, Joe, was a jockey, then a manager of the Jockeys' Guild and finally a state steward. Before taking out his training license in 1984, Servis worked on a horse farm, was a jockey agent and an assistant to trainer Mark Reid. Servis handled Smarty Jones for the late Philadelphia car dealer Roy Chapman. He introduced another prominent car dealer, Rick Porter, to the sport and trained for him until 2006. Porter has become a very successful owner, and his filly Havre de Grace was the Horse of the Year in 2011.

Servis' first graded stakes win came with multiple Grade 1 winner Jostle in 1999. Other top horses trained by Servis include Zonk, Rockport Harbor and Round Pond.

Servis found himself with another big horse in 2016, when Cathryn Sophia won the Grade 2 Forward Gal Stakes and Grade 2 Davona Dale Stakes by a combined margin of 12 1/2 lengths. After she finished a game third in the Grade 1 Ashland Stakes at Keeneland Race Course, Cathryn Sophia powered to a dominant victory in the $1 million Kentucky Oaks to make her trainer only the seventh active trainer to win both the Kentucky Derby and the Kentucky Oaks.

“I’m so happy,” Servis said after the Kentucky Oaks win. “When [jockey Javier Castellano] inched up three wide on the outside, I knew he had horse. Oh my God, to have the Derby and Oaks on my resume, and to have only run one each time, it's fantastic.”

In 2018 Servis won his first career Breeders' Cup race when 2-year-old filly Jaywalk was victorious in the Tito's Handmade Vodka Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies.