TRF Executive Director Maggie Sweet Joins TDN Writers’ Room

Wandering Eyes · 2025-03-12T19:50:19Z

In the 25 years that she worked overseeing Todd Pletcher's racing stable, Maggie Sweet only had to concern herself about horses from the time they were two until around five. In the one year that she has been executive director of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, the nation's oldest Thoroughbred retirement facility, she has learned that inspiring the industry to spend the money to care for them for the next 25 years is a much harder part of the bargain.

The TRF currently provides permanent lifetime homes for 400 horses, primarily at eight correctional facilities across the country where incarcerated men, women, and juvenile offenders care for them in groundbreaking programs to teach work and life skills to the inmates. And while other programs only accept horses who can be retrained for a second career, the TRF accepts horses whose racing careers have left them unable to go on to a second career, but who are still comfortable and pasture-sound.

“Working with Todd, by the time they were five, they were definitely off to a second career,” said Sweet, who appeared as the Gainesway Guest of the Week on the show. “Here at the TRF, the first ones we get are five, and the average age of the herd is 21. So we get the horse at age five can who no longer compete on the racetrack, and is not sound enough for a second athletic career,” said Sweet. “And then that's 25 years of dignified lifetime care that we are committing to.”

The TRF recently concluded a six-month strategic planning session which revealed some important things to Sweet and the board.

“It used to be a difficult thing to find a second home for a horse,” she said. “And now it's become much more a matter of course, but I think what most of the industry participants have in their mind is the re-home, re-train, re-home model of it, which is a much shorter stay, and therefore a whole lot less money than it costs to take a horse and keep it for 25 years. Our cost per year, even if you budget at $3,000 per year, over 25 years, that's $75,000. And I think other organizations have done a better job of telling their story.”

Sweet challenged anyone who hasn't been supporting lifetime retirement for the length of time they have been in the industry to “please call me, contact me, come to our website, sign up for our newsletters, or go to our social media,” to learn more about the TRF.

Elsewhere on the show, which is presented by Keeneland, in our “Fastest Horse of the Week,” segment, which is sponsored by WinStar, we discussed WinStar stallion Timberlake, Into Mischief's only Grade I-winning two-year-old at stud. With a 103 Beyer, Skippylongstocking (Exaggerator), winning his third consecutive Michelob Ultra Challenger Stakes, was the fastest horse of the week.

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, 1/ST TV, and 1/ST Racing, the team of Zoe Cadman, Randy Moss and T.D. Thornton reviewed the weekend's top performances, including the return of Horse of the Year Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna), and discussed the retirement of legendary racecaller Trevor Denman. They also reviewed Dan Ross's op/ed in the TDN this week about why it's important and beneficial to support smaller trainers.

Click here to watch the podcast.

Click here for an audio version.