Trainer Brad Cox seeks Kentucky Derby Day to remember in Louisville

• Brad Cox learned via text in February of 2022 that his horse Mandaloun won the 2021 Kentucky Derby after Medina Spirit's disqualification. It wasn't the victory he envisioned as a small child.
• Cox grew up walking from his childhood home to Churchill Downs with his father Jerry, who was a $2 bettor. Brad would work as a hot walker, groomer and assistant before becoming a trainer himself.
• In the beginning, Brad only had a handful of horses. Now he trains between 200 and 250. He finished No. 1 in earnings three of the last five years (2025, 2023 and 2021), averaging $29.29 million.

Inside the living room of his childhood home on Evelyn Ave., a very young Brad Cox grabbed a piece of cardboard so large it rivaled him in size, placed it on the floor and sketched out a racetrack.

“What horse are you?” he asked those around him, escorting plastic equine figurines to his scribbled starting gate.

Some were the namesakes of history’s most famous horses. Others figments of his imagination. “He didn't know much history,” Brad's older brother Doug Cox said, “because he wasn't very old himself.”

What Brad did know was that he wanted to be a horseplayer. Specifically, he wanted to win the Run for the Roses. His mother Mary still has his fifth-grade drawing prophesizing such. On it he declares: “I’m going to win the Kentucky Derby.”

Some 3 1/2 decades later, Brad has done that. Just not in the way he dreamed. Instead of standing in the winner’s circle on May 1, 2021, he got a text in February of the following year notifying him that Mandaloun had won Derby 147 after Medina Spirit’s disqualification.

Woo. Congrats.

Sure, the purse money’s still good. As is the green and white plaque affixed to Barn 22 on the backside at Churchill Downs. But the victory lap, the rose petals and the view of the track from the sport’s most coveted piece of real estate still evade him.

Perhaps not for long.

Brad Cox had three of the top five contenders for Derby 152 in Commandment, Further Ado and Fulleffort before Fulleffort had to scratch Thursday, April 30, with a bone chip in his left hind leg. Together they dominated the prep races, each colt rounding out March with his own win (Fulleffort the Grade 3 Jeff Ruby Steaks, Commandment the Grade 1 Florida Derby and Further Ado the Grade 1 Blue Grass).

“I don’t know if he’s a Kentucky Derby favorite, but I think he can be a Kentucky Derby winner. And that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the winner, not the favorite.”

Jerry Cox, father to Doug and Brad, was a $2 bettor. He’d make the walk two blocks from their home to Churchill Downs, hang out with his buddies and put money on the ponies. Doug, 18 years Brad’s senior — “He was a surprise,” Doug said with a laugh — was interested in horse racing two days a year: Oaks and Derby. The rest of the time, “I was just wanting to play (basket)ball and chase girls.”

Brad wanted to join Jerry at the track, accompanying him on walks as a little boy and falling in love with the sport.

“That’s when the bug bit him,” Doug said. “... I know there’s people that have passions for things, but I’ve never seen it up close like this.”

In high school, Brad Cox reported to Churchill Downs at 6 a.m. to walk horses and clean stalls for trainers like Burt Kessinger, Jimmy Baker and Jenks Fires. During Brad’s sophomore year of high school at Iroquois, Doug tried to talk his little brother out of the business.

Leave the track alone. Stay in school. Get a good education.

Brad held firm.

“I'm going down this path,” Doug remembered Brad saying. “And I know there's going to be some curves. You're trying to straighten these curves out for me, but I know what I'm going to do.”

Brad Cox graduated from Iroquois in 1998 and got a job as an assistant to trainer Dallas Stewart two years later. In 2004, he went out on his own. Those were what the family refers to as the “lean years.”

Being in his early 20s, Cox had a hard time getting owners to entrust him with their high-dollar horses. He had a handful in his barn in the beginning. His Equibase profile reports $10,245 earnings in 2004.

About two decades later, Cox trains between 200 and 250 horses. He’s finished No. 1 in earnings among North American trainers in three of the last five years (2025, 2023 and 2021), averaging $29.29 million per season in that span.

His oldest son Bryson, 28, got into the family business after working on a breeding farm in Lexington. He loved being around horses, but the buzz of the racetrack pulled him back like gravity. Harsh wakeup calls at 3:45 or 4 a.m. are made more bearable by the passion he inherited from his dad.

"It's just a very exciting thing being around race horses and preparing them for races," Bryson said. "When it all comes together on race day and you get the job done, it's very rewarding."

No two horses are the same. And Bryson Cox sees his dad's willingness to let each colt or filly tell him when they're ready to race as the makings of a great trainer. It also makes the size and success of his operation all the more impressive.

“There's a negative connotation sometimes in the racing business about people that have that many horses — ‘Oh, it's just easy for them,’ and, ‘Your horse isn't getting the right attention if you're in one of those big barns,’” exercise rider Katie Tolbert said. “… But he (Brad) started out that way. And he’s grown and worked incredibly hard and dedicated his life to being successful.”

Tolbert started working for Cox about a year after his breakthrough horse Monomoy Girl won her second Breeders’ Cup in 2020. The rider wanted out of New York, where she was when Cox’s assistant, Dustin Dugas, invited her to come with them to Florida for winter training. Cox came down for the races and asked where else she wanted to go, to which Tolbert replied, “Anywhere but New York.” That’s how she ended up in Kentucky.

Since joining Cox’s staff, Tolbert has been impressed with his focus. Every day he pours over every horse, knowing where they ran last, where they’re going to run next and what their long-term plan is. He still pulls on his time as a groomer and hot walker to get a feel for how each horse is and where to place them.

“I don’t think too many people have the ability to do that,” Tolbert said. “But he loves it. And when he’s not doing it, he’s thinking about it.”

If Cox goes on vacation, he keeps his iPad closer than his sunscreen. The phone is constantly ringing, and it doesn’t care whether he’s at a Kentucky Wildcats football game or on the putting green with friends.

“He's the only person that's ever called me on the phone, and as soon as I say ‘Hello,’ he'll say, ‘Let me call you back,’” Doug Cox said.

It’s a 24-7 job. But it’s what Brad Cox always dreamed of doing. And it’s what pays for his houses in Kentucky, New Orleans and soon-to-be Florida.

Tolbert imagines most people in the industry would put Cox in “the top handful” of trainers. But he’s still driven by a desire to show his mettle. To prove that the young man from Louisville’s South End could manage all this all by himself.

A win on Derby day this year, two blocks from his childhood home, would give Cox a long-awaited chance to stop and smell the rose garland.

Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at [email protected] and follow her on X @petitus25. Subscribe to her "Full-court Press" newsletterhere for a behind-the-scenes look at how college sports' biggest stories are impacting Louisville and Kentucky athletics.