When Brooke Bays was a child, she loved horses — everything about them.
“She was horse crazy as a little girl,” says Doug Bays, Brooke’s father. He recalls that her bedroom was full of stuffed horses, and “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” a 2002 animated Western film, often was on repeat.
“When she was about to turn five, I got her some riding lessons with Kelle (Grimm), on English saddle, that turned into every day, every morning,” Doug says. That first horse — Rhianna Santana, though she went by Anna — was a 5-gated American Saddlebred.
Then, Brooke wanted to add hunter-jumper to her riding repertoire. Then, it was barrel racing. One day, she called her father and said, just for the fun of it, she was going to go over to Henderson, Kentucky, to be a hot walker for John Hancock, a longtime trainer and horseman at Ellis Park Racing & Gaming and throughout Kentucky, who had an important role in helping Brooke begin her journey to becoming a thoroughbred racing jockey.
“Two days later, she was getting work as an exercise rider,” says Doug, who is agency president at AssuredPartners’ Evansville and Owensboro offices. “I knew it wasn’t going to stop there. That turned into the next journey.”
The childhood riding enthusiast turned 28 in late July and has raced professionally since 2022. Those early lessons with Grimm at River Wind Stables in Newburgh, Indiana, set the stage for a full career. “I worked with her for a long time (with) American Saddlebred show horses,” Brooke says. “I did some jumping, barrel racing, then I fell in love with race horses and haven’t looked back.”
“She was just a natural. She would sleep in the barn if there was a way to build a room out there,” says Grimm, who is retired from training. “She was 16-17 when she ran barrels. She enjoyed the jumping. She’s the danger girl, lives for a challenge.” Right after completing an online high school diploma program in 2015, “she got in thoroughbreds, (and) she did it four or five months before she told me,” Grimm says.
More than a mentor, “Kelle is kind of like a mother to her,” Doug says. “Kelle took Brooke under her wing. She has really done a lot for Brooke.”
“We kind of bonded,” Grimm adds. “God put us together. I needed her and she needed me.”
Back to that hot walker job, in which someone hand-leads horses around to
cool them down after a race or exercise. “I had just turned 20. I started working for John Hancock at Ellis Park,” Brooke says. “They helped me get my first hot walker and exercise rider license. I did that on and off for three years. Sometimes I’d do some freelance (work). John Hancock is big into two year olds every year.”
Next came work for D. Wayne Lukas, an all-time great trainer with multiple Triple Crown race wins, who passed away June 28. “I spent 12 months working at the Lukas barn, at Ellis Park, Churchill, in Arkansas at Oaklawn (Park in Hot Springs), back to Louisville,” Brooke says. Lukas’ operation had horses from California to Kentucky and beyond. Sebastian “Bas” Nicholl was a veteran assistant trainer for Lukas who worked a lot with Brooke as she was learning more about thoroughbred race riding. “I spent most of the time with Sebastian when I was with Lukas’ barn,” Brooke says. “I wouldn’t put my heels down riding, and Bas taught me that. He was a key for me in the Lukas organization.” She also worked for Michael Maker Racing Stable at Ellis Park and did freelance work for the company during her time riding last winter at Turfway Park Racing & Gaming in Florence, Kentucky.
Brooke has had to work hard to find horses to ride in races daily. She had three probationary races at Kentucky racetracks Churchill Downs, Keeneland, and again at Churchill in 2022 — that is part of the path to becoming a full-time jockey. Brooke is going into her eighth year in the business and has gotten work as an apprentice jockey pretty consistently in 2024 and 2025.
“It’s very difficult for women to break into that industry. She has been determined,” Grimm says. “Most jockeys have agents to get them mounts. She’s had more success doing it herself than having some- body help her do it. I’m super proud of her. It’s not an easy world that she’s in.”
That was amplified on Dec. 21, 2022, when Doug got a call telling him Brooke had been in a riding accident at a Henderson County off-track facility where she would go to exercise and ride horses. The fall broke her pelvis; she was in ICU for three days. Although she didn’t need any surgeries, the recovery took months.
“She refused to use a wheelchair to leave the hospital,” Doug says. “She worked so hard on rehab. Eight weeks to the day of the accident, she got back on a horse. She’s stubborn, but you can’t be scared, you can’t be hesitant. She was going to prove them wrong if somebody said no. She wanted to be the one who overcame. But she really wasn’t right physically for 10-11 months.”
Brooke knew she rushed back too soon. “I came back after three months and started riding, but it took 12 months to get to feel like myself again,” she says. “Mentally and physically, I thought I was ready, but I was in denial. I just rode more horses until my legs felt strong again. I hung around the jockeys room and wanted to keep around the horses.”
Her first victory was in May 2023 aboard Mikie O’Prado in a maiden claiming race with a $17,000 purse at Horseshoe Indianapolis Racecourse. She had her first full year in 2024 riding May through October at Presque Isle Downs before ending the season at Tampa Bay Downs. Presque Isle Downs is in Erie, Pennsylvania, and that’s where Brooke will be until October, when she might head back to Turfway Park in northern Kentucky. Doug says Brooke also may return to Tampa Bay Downs. That said, she calls Evansville her home base.
She is a little more than halfway to the 45 wins needed to earn her full-time jockey license. This year, she’d made 100 starts by mid-August, and she hit the board (win-place-show) in 37 percent of those races. Six of her seven wins as of press time came at Presque Isle Downs, with the other at Woodbine Racetrack in Ontario, Canada. Her earnings are climbing, too: She banked $369,715 in 2024. Through Aug. 27, she had raked in $225,898.
Brooke has been showing up to learn the game of riding thoroughbred race horses for quite a few years now, and she’s determined to get to that finish line.
“I just want to do better than last year,” Brooke says. “Consistency is the key. The track opens at 6:30 in the morn- ing, (so) I do gallops and morning works. I ride races in the afternoons. If you don’t show up, you’re probably not going to do all that well.”
