'The beast of Churchill Downs': How a winning horse named Bango can make track history

The dark bay raised his left hoof and dropped it, pounding the pad at the front of his stall.

He pushed at the stall's gate.

Bango was ready to race.

An announcement came over the speakers at Keeneland, calling the horses to the paddock.

Nearby, Abraham Garcia held Bango's bridle in his hands — a signal to the horse that he was about to do what he loves.

Garcia, Bango's groom, is one of two employees trainer Greg Foley trusts to handle the powerful 6-year-old, who is known to bite.

Some mornings, Foley will ask Bango's hot walker, Tony Ordonez, to let the horse graze on the backside of Churchill Downs. Ordonez will come back a few minutes later and say, "Not today. Muy loco." Too crazy.

That day in Lexington, Bango crossed the finish line third.

It's often a different story when he has home-field advantage, though.

At the Louisville track, "he likes walking out of his stall; he’s full of himself," said Bango's owner, Fred Schwartz. "He thinks he's the beast of Churchill Downs."

A shot at the title

Ask anyone familiar with the horse and they'll compare him to an athletic great: Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, maybe even Muhammad Ali.

That's because over the last four years, Bango became one of Louisville's greats, placing first 11 times at Churchill Downs, tying the record for most races won at the famed track.

Ready's Rocket has been the sole record-holder for more than a decade. He retired from racing at age 9, following his final victory at Churchill Downs in the lead-up to the 138th Kentucky Derby in 2012.

"For most horses, a win means everything going their way," said Travis Foley, Greg's oldest son and Bango's assistant trainer. "But winners can overcome smaller things that your average guy can’t."

And now, on Nov. 4, in the Bet on Sunshine Stakes at Churchill, Bango has a shot to become the winningest horse in the track's history. (Though technically, he already might be. More on that in a minute.)

'Bango!'

The story of Bango's legacy began at a 2008 Keeneland yearling sale, when Greg Foley saw Bango's mom, Josaka, and liked the look of her and her breeding line.

"She could run, too," he said.

The mare's sire was Smart Strike, and the grandsire was Giant's Causeway. Josaka raced just three times in her career, placing third, second and first, respectively, in 2009-10, earning nearly $40,000.

"Then a freak injury happened; she hurt her back hock, her back leg," Foley said.

She became a broodmare.

On March 7, 2017, at Upson Downs Farm in Oldham County, Josaka foaled the dark bay colt, sired by Congrats.

Schwartz, the foal's owner, is from Wisconsin. He said it's hard to pick names when there are thousands of thoroughbreds born in the U.S. each year, so he's stuck with Wisconsin-based names.

In 1977, around the time Schwartz started traveling to Louisville to attend the annual Kentucky Derby, the word "bango" was becoming a part of the lexicon for Wisconsin NBA fans. They voted to name the Milwaukee Bucks' mascot Bango, a moniker that still holds to this day.

The word was born when legendary Bucks announcer Eddie Doucette settled on an exclamation to celebrate the Bucks' Jon McGlocklin draining a long-range basket.

"People standing around the water cooler talking about the game the night before started to say, 'It was a bango jumper that won it,'" Doucette told The Courier Journal from his home in San Diego. "I'd get calls from teachers who said their students were throwing spitballs into the trash can, and every time it went in, they'd shout, 'bango!'"

(Doucette is the same announcer who deemed former Bucks center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's signature shot the "skyhook," but that's another story.)

First place in 11 out of 20 Churchill races

At age 2, Bango joined Foley's barn at Churchill Downs.

Margarito Fierro, his exercise rider, has ridden him most mornings since, and is able to tell when he feels good and when he's ready to race.

"Hola, abuelo," Fierro said on a recent morning, greeting the horse as "grandpa" as he approached his stall before a workout.

At 6 years old, Bango is considered past his racing prime, but (this is where both Greg and Travis Foley knock on wood) there are no plans to retire Bango anytime soon.

Bango has hauled in more than $1.5 million in earnings in four years of racing, including 20 victories in 34 starts.

So, what makes him different?

"They've all got their personalities," Greg Foley said. "You just gotta separate the good ones from the averages ones, the OK ones from the slow ones. It's just like having a star football player on your team and then the rest."

The son of a trainer, Foley has trained horses since the 1980s. Now, it's a full family business, with his sons, Travis and Alex, serving as assistant trainers. In 2020, Major Fed became their first horse to run in the Kentucky Derby. He was born the same year as Bango, also at Upson Downs Farm in Goshen.

Like most thoroughbred sprinters, Bango isn't a very tall horse, but he is a sound horse.

"When we talk about legs — knock on wood — we haven't had any bad knees, bad ankles, bad shins," Foley said. "He's durable. He takes it. And he can run."

Bango has won 11 out of 20 races at Churchill, finishing beyond fourth only twice.

In Bango's 34 career starts, horses have finished ahead of him only 71 times.

When Churchill Downs closed the track following the deaths of a dozen race horses and moved the remainder of its meet west to Ellis Park, known among horse trainers as "Ch-Ellis," Bango raced in an overnight stakes race on July 1 and won.

Since the race was in Henderson, though, Churchill Downs doesn't count the victory.

This is where his spot in history could include an asterisk.

He can overcome that mark during the race on Nov. 4.

"Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Get to the finish line as a winner," Doucette asked. "We’ve got a winner, and his name is Bango."

Stephanie Kuzydym is an enterprise sports reporter. She can be reached at skuzydym@courier-journal.com. Follow her for updates at @stephkuzy.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Churchill Downs first-place record may be broken by horse named Bango