Breeders’ Cup Breakthrough: George Weaver Driven by Quiet Confidence

[Wandering Eyes]

There is a no-frills air to George Weaver, evident in everything from his worn-in boots to the strictly utilitarian office in his Palm Beach Downs barn. Weaver has little interest in shouting his success from the rooftops. He'd rather let the horses do the talking.

“I feel like your horses should do the advertising for you,” Weaver said. “When they win, I think it tells everybody what you're about. We let the horses kind of tell us when they're ready to go. That always leads to the best success on the track.”

One filly who has done plenty of advertising for the Weaver stable as of late is Cy Fair (Not This Time). By defeating the boys in the 2025 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, she provided Weaver with a career-defining milestone.

 

 

Over the past 24 years, Weaver has amassed a long list of highlights from 1,100-plus career wins. Based primarily in New York with a winter string at Palm Beach Downs, Weaver has scored marquee Grade I wins with the likes of Lighthouse Bay, Vekoma, Sacred Wish and Dorth Vader, but earning a breakthrough win at the Breeders' Cup holds a unique weight.

“Winning the Breeders' Cup as a trainer, I guess, is justification,” he said. “There are many really talented horse people and trainers out there. If you don't get the ability to work with that caliber of horse or one that can take you there, it doesn't take long for people to kind of label you as, 'Okay, well they're a good trainer, but not for the big horse.' For me as a trainer, luckily we've had some big horses on big stages and it just justifies the job that we do in our program. It gives people confidence that we can get the job done.”

Weaver and Cy Fair at Palm Beach Downs | Katie Petrunyak

Weaver's own quiet confidence is what has led a growing number of prominent owners to entrust their horses to his care, and it's the same trait that first opened doors for him in the industry.

The Louisville, Kentucky native had no background in the business, but his parents started taking him to the races when he was just an infant. One of his earliest memories is of the time his father took the family to Claiborne Farm to visit Secretariat.

“I remember him running down the paddock when they whistled for him,” recalled Weaver. “I've always loved horses and wanted to be around them. When I got into my teenaged years, I went to the races any time that I could.”

Through a friend of a friend, Weaver's mother got him a summer job at Kenny Burkhart's farm when he was in high school. The next year, Weaver stood outside the gates of Churchill Downs hoping to find someone in need of a hot walker. The assistant for John Hennig gave him a shot and Weaver seized the opportunity to work on the backside.

Weaver eventually moved to the powerhouse barn of D. Wayne Lukas in New York. During his seven years there, he formed a pivotal friendship with assistant trainer Todd Pletcher. As the Lukas stable dominated through the mid-90s, the pair was frequently side-by-side in win photos for icons like Serena's Song and Tabasco Cat. When Pletcher went out on his own in 1996, Weaver soon followed.

Working for a pair of Hall of Famers provided Weaver a front-row seat to greatness. He still considers Lukas's 1994 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Flanders to be one of the best fillies he has been around. Yet for Weaver, the true value of those years was more about the character the two barns instilled in him

“You weren't going to survive in Wayne's barn–or Todd's barn for that matter–if you didn't have a work ethic,” he noted.

Weaver opened his own stable in 2002, joining forces with Cindy Hutter. Already a team both professionally and personally, the two had worked together in the Lukas and Pletcher barns, and by the time they launched their own operation, they were already building a life together.

George Weaver with D. Wayne Lukas and Todd Pletcher after Tabasco Cat's victory in the 1994 Belmont Stakes | Coglianese

“Our son was on the way and it was time to take a leap of faith, so we decided to go on our own,” Weaver recalled. “It's a game of perseverance. You just have to stick with it. At the time when we went on our own, we had a handful of horses and it was stressful. I wasn't born in the game, but I got lucky enough to be educated underneath Todd Pletcher and Wayne Lukas and all the assistants in that barn.”

The first horse that Weaver picked out at auction was Saratoga County, a $100,000 purchase for Evelyn Pollard. The son of Valid Expectations handed Weaver his first graded stakes win in the 2004 GIII Gotham Stakes and the next year, earned three straight graded scores including the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen.

Weaver's international profile reached new heights in 2023 when he became the third American trainer to conquer Royal Ascot with Crimson Advocate (Nyquist) in the G2 Queen Mary Stakes. The win was a poignant triumph for the Weaver barn as Cindy was on hand to celebrate just one year after surviving a traumatic brain injury.

For Weaver, a win in the GI Kentucky Derby at the racetrack where he first fell in love with the sport has always been a goal, but so has a victory at the Breeders' Cup.

He made it to his first World Championship in 2012 with Bona Venture Stables's Summer of Fun (Include), who finished third in the GI Juvenile Fillies Turf. He was expected to have the heavy favorite a few years later in the 2020 Breeders' Cup Sprint with Vekoma (Candy Ride {Arg}), who had won all three starts that year including the GI Met Mile and GI Carter Handicap.

“Everything was going perfect,” Weaver explained. “He was the right horse at the right time. The day he was supposed to ship, he had a temperature and we had to withdraw, which really broke all of our hearts. I'm very confident he would have won that race that day, and it just wasn't meant to be.”

Cy Fair breaks her maiden on 7-10-25 at Saratoga | Sarah Andrew

The chips finally fell into place with Cy Fair, who hails from the same family as Crimson Advocate. Weaver had a hand in purchasing the daughter of Not This Time for $185,000 at the OBS April Sale. When the filly initially RNA'd, Swinbank Stables's Jake Ballis called Weaver and asked why he thought she had not sold.

“I said, 'She's just small, a little light-boned, but I didn't see anything wrong with her,'” he recalled. “So I went back and looked at her and I was like, 'You know what, Jake? She is okay. If you guys like her, let's try to get her.'”

Weaver said that despite her size, Cy Fair was a star of the barn from the get-go.

“She's always been a pistol,” he shared with a fond smile. “She's forward-training, like you give her one small cue to go and she's ready for you. We wanted to run her at Ascot if she could come along fast enough, but I wasn't going to be able to move that quick with her at the gate and mentally I could tell that she wasn't going to take to that. So we took some time and she broke her maiden at Saratoga. Following the win in Saratoga, she finished second. It was a little disappointing, but I think she got a little keen. It was a matter of her just learning how to not be tense in a race situation.”

Weaver and his team worked to teach the young filly how to relax on the track, and she returned the favor with a three-length win in the Algonquin Stakes at Woodbine.

By the time Cy Fair arrived at the Breeders' Cup, her partnership included Swinbank Stables, Medallion Racing, Joey Platts and Mark Stanton. She went off at 5-1 in the Juvenile Turf Sprint and Weaver said that as he watched the race, he had almost never felt so confident.

“I was standing next to Cindy and my son Ben,” he recalled. “We had some seats right there in the front boxes, which is my preferred place to watch live. The racing fan comes out of me and I want to be out front. It doesn't really happen very often this way, but in Cy Fair's Breeders' Cup, I was very happy the whole way. There wasn't one point where I was worried at all.”

As soon as Cy Fair hit the wire, Weaver shared a celebratory moment with his wife and son before heading toward the winner's circle, his mind racing through the years of near-misses and hard work that had finally culminated into that moment.

“It's so hard to explain to somebody that doesn't know horse racing, that feeling when you win, and to win a race of that caliber, how much goes into it,” he explained. “A lot of things flash through your mind about your career, what the filly has done for us, and just appreciation for the filly as an athlete.”

Following her victory at Del Mar, Cy Fair returned to Weaver's base at Palm Beach Downs for a well-deserved break.

A packed winner's circle after Cy Fair's victory in the 2025 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint | Breeders' Cup Eclipse Sportswire

 

“She got about 60 days off here,” reported Weaver. “She went out to her paddock for most of the morning and tack walked for a while. We've got her back going and she's had three breezes back since. She's doing excellent.”

According to Weaver, Cy Fair's 3-year-old debut will likely be in the GIII Limestone Stakes at Keeneland on April 10. Her connections are hopeful that it can be the first step toward a return trip to the Breeders' Cup.

Weaver is quick to credit his owners and staff for the stable's success at the Breeders' Cup, but he said that the heart of the stable is Cindy. Though she is no longer working alongside him on the racetrack every morning, the pair stood hand-in-hand in the winner's circle after Cy Fair's victory and their son has taken the reins of ponying duty each morning.

“She is the backbone of our barn and we miss her terribly out here,” he said. “Luckily, we've been able to keep it going, but our whole stable and its success has been built on all the hard years of work that she put in to get us where we are.”

The Breeders' Cup trophy is a cherished milestone, but it hasn't changed Weaver's perspective or his appreciation for the quiet routine of overseeing his stable each morning.

“I just love horses,” he said simply. “I'm lucky because I chose to do this when I was young and I never really had a doubt about it. I loved the action. I liked winning. I loved watching horses develop. It's kind of crazy. We get to come out every morning and be outside with horses. I mean, why not? What else would you wanna do?”

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