Jordan Blair riding wave with Oceanic into KY Preview Turf Sprint
Kentucky HBPA press release by Jennie Rees (Coady Media photo of Oceanic winning an allowance race at Keeneland)
Louisville-based trainer Jordan Blair’s breakout year can take another step up in Sunday’s $250,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Turf Sprint at Ellis Park, in which Surfside Stables’ Oceanic is the 9-2 second choice behind 3-1 favorite Coppola in a full field of 12. Now 7, Oceanic finished a close fourth in the Ellis race last year.
“He’s an old pro, a veteran in our stable,” Blair said. “We’ve had him since he was 2. It took us a while to figure him out. But once we did and figured he was a turf sprinter, he’s really thrived. He’s won one stakes for us and been second in several. We ended up in the Breeders’ Cup one year, which was a lot of fun, but didn’t go well. Our goal this year is Kentucky Downs and the $2 million Sprint race.”
A win in the Preview Turf Sprint would be Blair’s biggest to date — and give Oceanic a fees-paid spot in the $2 million Kentucky Downs Turf Sprint (G2). A win at Ellis, let alone Kentucky Downs, would be more milestones on a 10-year training career that has steadily risen and picked up steam this season. Blair already for the first time has surpassed $1 million in purses for the year. His 18 wins in 2024 – reflecting an excellent 22-percent clip – are on pace to top his career high of 23 victories in 2020.
Blair — who cheerful describes himself as “43 going on 23” — said the turning point in building his stable really was “just time.”
“When (you’re) a young trainer that’s not as established, sometimes you get pushed around a little bit,” said Blair, who now has about 30 horses, split between his main base of Churchill Downs and with others at Colonial Downs for the summer. “Sometimes you have to take it. It’s been a learning curve, figuring out how to win races and putting horses in the right spots and not have your stable decimated by claiming. You have to make strategies. We dropped (claims) on probably 25 horses this spring and got three or four. Big shakes for everything.
“… Getting clients is really a hard thing, especially with the big stables as they are now. Everyone wants their horses with a ‘name’ trainer. So it just takes time. For me, it was a slow burn, making those relationships and building on them and having to do well for those people. Once you start winning, it definitely makes this easier.”
Blair grew up in Lexington, graduating from Tates Creek High School and the University of Kentucky with a business degree. With his mother, Debbie, working for the Breeders’ Cup, Blair went to the World Championships for the first time at Churchill Downs in 1988.
“Alysheba, in the dark, and that’s when I became a fan,” he said of the 1987 Derby winner’s dramatic victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic long before Churchill had lights.
Blair didn’t know what he wanted to do, but knew “I didn’t want to be inside behind four walls.” He ultimately dove into racing by working at fellow Tates Creek grad Kenny McPeek’s farm in Lexington, saying, “I never looked back.”
Blair was at the Breeders’ Cup in California with McPeek’s horses when he met then-jockey Jordan Springer.
“She came back to Kentucky with me the next year and we got married in 2014,” he said. That’s the same year he started training, with his wife his sole exercise rider before having their young daughter and son.
For the record: “She kept her last name to defuse the confusion of two Jordan Blairs,” Jordan Blair said. Asked if they just call each other Blair and Springer, he said, “No, no. Just a lot of Jordans.”
