Breakfast at the Gallops
Watch Aiken's Future Racing Stars Workout
Friday, March 13, 2026
8:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.
Aiken Training Track
Tickets: (ticket outlets noted below)
$20 in advance
$30 at the gate
Purchase online at:
This will be an opportunity to observe juveniles who are preparing to
go to the races and older campaigners, work before leaving to go to
the racetrack. Local trainers will be on hand to talk to participants about the various training methods used to train Aiken’s equine athletes.
A light breakfast will be served. Those in attendance should enter the Two Notch Road entrance that is closest to Audubon Drive. Vehicles must stop for all horses.
A portion of the proceeds from the event will go to support the Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum.
Ticket Outlets
- H. Odell Weeks Center (1700 Whiskey Road)
- True Aiken (146 Laurens St SW, Aiken, SC 29801)
- Meybohm Real Estate (142 Laurens Street NW)
- Aiken Training Track Office (538 Two Notch Road SE),
- Aiken Visitors Center & Train Museum (406 Park Avenue SE)
More information:
- 803-642-7631 or 803-643-2121
Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum
"Home of Aiken's Racing Champions"
Information: 803-642-7631
Hours of Operation
Tuesday - Friday 2 pm - 5 pm
Saturday 10 am - 5 pm
Sunday 2 pm - 5 pm
Free admission
Guest Speakers
Joe Sharp has been involved in Thoroughbred
racing his entire life. His father, Marc Sharp, has trained horses since 1981, and his mother, Sara Escudero-Calhoun, rides the stable pony. He spent his youth mostly in Lexington and Charles Town, West Virginia.
“I learned a whole lot of horsemanship from my dad, and my mom’s always been there for me, too,” Joe told Marty McGee of Daily Racing Form. “When I was 9, my dad put me on a mailing list for condition books from a few tracks. He’d let me pick out spots for his horses. Obviously, he would censor them, but I was on my way. I couldn’t get enough of it.”
After a few years as a jockey and exercise rider, Joe moved to training. He worked for Mike Stidham for five years and spent about four years with Mike Maker during which time he oversaw Maker’s Keeneland stable.
Joe scored his first win as a trainer on Sept. 10, 2014, when his first starter, Holiday Drama, won a claiming race at Kentucky Downs. Holiday Drama was ridden by Joe’s wife, Rosie Napravnik, a two-time leading jockey at Keeneland whose career wins include the 2014 Kentucky Oaks (G1) and Breeders’ Cup Distaff (G1) with champion Untapable and the 2012 Grey Goose Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with champion Shanghai Bobby.
Joe and Rosie, who met at Delaware Park in 2009, married in 2011. They have two children. Joe also has an older daughter.
Joe, who gallops and breezes many of the horses he trains, races at Fair Grounds during the winter and has strings in Kentucky and New York during the year.
Text reprinted from:
THE
HOTTENSEN FAMILY
Joe Sharp
Larry Rowe
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Larry Rowe was born in Lewis County Kentucky.
At the age of 14, Rowe began working for Lexington horseman, John T. Ward. Ward owned the Fort Springs Training Center, which was near the Keeneland racetrack in Lexington, Kentucky.
Rowe was assigned four yearlings to care for, which included cleaning their stall, grooming them and breaking them.
He was a natural with horses, and when he was old enough, he started traveling to some of the major tracks with John Ward’s horses – Belmont Park and Saratoga in New York, Hialeah in Florida. Aiken was well-known amongst the country’s leading stables as the place to winter, and it was no surprise that Larry found his way there, too.
“Mr. Ward was sending some horses down, so I got on a Greyhound bus and headed south,” he said. “I found my way to the track and became a freelance exercise rider, although in those early days I did a lot of my riding for John Gaver.
John Gaver was the trainer for Greentree, the renowned racing and breeding operation operated by John Hay ( Jock) Whitney and his sister Joan Whitney Payson. Under his tenure, the stable produced such champions as Shut Out, Capot, Tom Fool, and Stage Door Johnny.
While in Aiken, Larry also exercised horses for S. Allen King, the trainer for the Philadelphia socialite and Eclipse-award-winning breeder, Adele Paxson.
Text used with permission of Mary Jane Howell.