A veteran trainer and five-time graded stakes winner who has campaigned runners from Longacres to Del Mar, Hollywood Park to Churchill Downs.
Mike Puhich grew up inside Thoroughbred racing and has spent more than forty years training at the highest levels of the sport.
His father Nick trained at Longacres in the 1940s and 50s before becoming a jockey's agent. His uncles Ivan and Stanley spent their careers as agents in Southern California. Mike got his first horse from his father at twelve and never looked back.
He took out his trainer's license in 1981, opened his own stable in 1983, and learned the craft under the late T.D. McLaughlin at Longacres. When McLaughlin retired in 1985, he handed Mike the keys to his entire barn.
In the decades since, Mike has campaigned horses on dirt, turf, and synthetic at tracks across the country, from New York and Kentucky to Texas and Southern California.
From the Pacific Northwest to Southern California to Texas, a career built on horses who showed up on the big days.
Well-bred son of Cape Town who won at Ascot before taking the $300,000 Lone Star Derby in his American three-year-old campaign.
Rallied from sixth to run down Windribbon by a head in the 86th Longacres Mile (G3), giving owners Bob and Molly Rondeau's Giddyup Stables Washington's signature race.
Captured Washington's signature race at Emerald Downs, delivering a hometown graded stakes victory in front of the home crowd.
Won the Del Mar Derby on the way to a start in the Breeders' Cup Turf, an early national-stage success for the Puhich barn.
Back-to-back signature wins at Emerald Downs: the Gottstein Futurity in 2014 and the Emerald Downs Derby in 2015.
Mike's first graded stakes winner. The win that announced him as a young trainer to watch in the Pacific Northwest.
A recent maiden winner who carried the barn onto the Southwest Stakes trail at Oaklawn Park, the latest in a long line of developing prospects.
Horses have their own individual personalities. You can't treat them all the same.Mike Puhich
Individual programs built around each horse's class, distance, and surface preferences. Decades of experience across dirt, turf, and synthetic.
Straight assessments and smart spot-picking, from maidens through graded stakes, with a national network of tracks and connections.
An experienced eye at the sales and on the farm to help build a stable, place a young prospect, or find the right next race for a horse you own.
Interested in placing a horse in the barn, discussing a sale, or just talking racing? Reach out and Mike will get back to you personally.