Born to run
story by Scott Ball
They call them hot bloods. They have something special, the kind of quality that can't quite be put into words, but it takes only a quick glance to know they have what it takes to win, to be champions.
William "Buff" Bradley breeds and trains some of Kentucky's finest thoroughbreds. He is also the father of 12-year-old Jett, a middle-school track star, who almost always wins her cross-country races through the hilly Kentucky countryside. However, Buff doesn't want his daughter to get too comfortable at the front of the pack.
"Time only matters when you're in jail," he says.
The thoroughbreds Buff trains also are often in the lead as horses thunder down the home stretch at Churchill Downs and Keeneland. Buff began breeding, raising and training race horses with his father, Fred, when he was just a teenager. Among their most successful are Brass Hat and Groupie Doll, multi-million-dollar-winning champions.
"Something that people strive for their whole life in the business is to have one horse, and we've had two that we've been able to breed and raise and turn into champions," Buff says.
The 340-acre Indian Ridge Farm is home to Buff, his horses and his family. The horses gallop across the rolling landscape where Jett trains almost daily. A former competitive runner himself, Buff has high hopes for his daughter. He says he has noticed a lot of himself in Jett and hopes one day she will earn a scholarship for long-distance running.
Jett's success might parallel that of Buff's most recent champion filly, Groupie Doll, a two-time Eclipse-award-winning filly who won more than $2.5 million during her career.
"I did the mating. I bred her. I pulled her out of her mother. I raised her," Buff says about Groupie Doll. "I said, 'Man, this is the one we've been waiting for; we'll keep her.' I didn't know she was going to be a champion. I just knew she was the big, good-looking filly that we needed."
Buff also sees the potential for his daughter to be a champion.
"I ran her first 5K with her, and she ran it really well," Buff says about Jett. "She's appropriately named."
Buff watches from in front of the Keeneland Grandstand as North of Eden, a 2-year-old filly he trains, races for the first time in her career in a maiden claiming race. She finished sixth.
Displayed on the center of the mantle in Buff's office is the trophy Groupie Doll won in the 2013 Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Sprint. The silks jockeys wore while riding champion thoroughbred Brass Hat hang on the wall above it.
Buff straightens the collar of his assistant Chelsea Moysey moments before she rides gelding Fourosixoone for potential buyers at an auction at the Kentucky Horse Park.
Jett Bradley listens as her father, Buff, gives her a pep talk just minutes before she attempts to beat her personal cross-country best at a track meet on the grounds of the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives.
Buff soothes 4-year-old Fourosixoone, named after the zip code for Frankfort. The horse was being put up for auction as a retired race horse with a career of five races.
Buff jokes with his life-long friend and employee Keenan Bishop while working on a 1950s Ford tractor in front of the barn they built together on Indian Ridge Farm.
Carrying a bucket containing Leroy's dinner, Buff walks the family pig from his day pen to his night pen.
As the sun sets, Buff looks over the farm where he has been raising horses since the 1970s.