The Chilean ex-jockey shook his Indian comrade.
“Bhupat. Bhupat, wake up, we’ve got to go. We’ve got to go to the farm,” Luis said. “If we go any later, we won’t be able to make it.”
Power long since out, snow falling fast and furious, Bhupat Seemar woke up shivering and knew it was only going to get worse.
“If we have to go now because we won’t be able to get there later…” the 21-year-old intern pondered. “Then how are we going to get home?”
Secondary issue. There were 150 horses to fetch and feed on Taylor Made’s sprawling farm in Nicholasville, Ky. The five-strong team of five-continent interns could bang that out in two hours. The Taylors and the interns had taught the horses to come to the gate when called. Not today, the horses had hunkered down, backs to the north-west snow, and three of the five interns failed to show. The oddest of odd couples – Chilean-born retired jockey and Indian-born college graduate – were the last men standing.
“We have snow in India, we have the Himalayans, but I had never been in a place where there was such a snowstorm,” Seemar said from the sales pavilion Tuesday afternoon. “There are tears coming to my eyes, my nose is running, I’m shivering, whatever I’m wearing, it’s not enough. I’m saying to myself, ‘If I would have been in the Marines or the Navy Seals, it would have been easier than being here.’ ”
From daylight to nightfall, nowhere to go for lunch, the snowed-out pair powered through the task at hand.
“We had all this job to do. My God, it was tough, but it was good,” he said. “It made a man out of me. Those hardships always make you better.”
Way better.
While Seemar was at Taylor Made, he was always thinking better. On his days off, he hitched a ride with Taylor Made’s Mark Taylor to learn anything he could.
“To see what he sees in these yearlings,” Seemar explained. “I was the greenest person there. They worked me to the bone, but I learned everything about conformation from these guys. That gave me a little advantage and I progressed up.”
When Bob Baffert inspected a yearling Seemar was showing, he was making plans to continue to progress up.
“I was telling someone who was with me, ‘One day I want to go work for him.’ They all started laughing at me,” Seemar said. “I always had the confidence; I always knew that this is what I wanted to do. The process of how to get there was a whole other story.”
After 18 months with Taylor Made and six months with Kentucky-based Chris Speckert, Seemar landed a job with Baffert through a three-way thread – his uncle Satish Seemar knew Sean McCarthy whose wife, Kim, still works for Baffert. As assistant Eoin Harty moved on and Jimmy Barnes took his spot, another door opened.
“I said, ‘Look, I’m ready to do any job.’ I went straight from the bottom. I walked hots, I did everything,” Seemar said. “I got lucky. I was around and slowly I went up in life.”
Seemar worked for Baffert for five years – the War Emblem and Point Given years – before moving to Dubai to work for his uncle, a six-time leading trainer in Dubai.
That lasted 18 years until Satish Seemar retired and his nephew took over in 2022. He was champion trainer in 2022 and 2024, leading trainer every year in earnings and won the Grade 1 Dubai World Cup with Laurel River, formerly trained by Baffert, in March. Seemar finished second in the 2022 UAE Derby with Summer Is Tomorrow, which helped him earn a trip to the Kentucky Derby. He finished last. And lit a fuse.
“Since I was a kid, I was watching the Kentucky Derbies. I could never think I would have a horse to run it but now that I have, we have tasted a little bit of blood. I want to go and do it,” Seemar said. “In my first year training I had a horse that ran in the Kentucky Derby so it’s like I want to go win that race not just run it. I might have some horses; I might have even bought some horses this year to get me there.”
In order, Seemar wants to win at Royal Ascot, then the Kentucky Derby and then Saratoga. Sure, he’s thinking about launching a string at Saratoga.
“It’s in the plans,” Seemar said. “It has to be a process. I need to have horses that are good enough on the dirt. I know we won the Dubai World Cup, but to come to America, you need to have good horses to compete with the good dirt trainers. Hopefully one day.”
Seemar figures he’s got 10 horses who could compete in the top races at Saratoga. He figures he needs 20 to make it happen.
And it all started mucking stalls and trudging snow while his classmates were moving markets and climbing corporate ladders.
“All my friends, they went to college with me and had great jobs,” Seemar said. “They were all talking, ‘What’s wrong with this guy? He’s going to Kentucky to pick up horse ****. It was quite a joke among my friends. It took a long time but here we are.”
So, we’ll see you next year.
Seemar smiled.
“Stuff of dreams.”
