LOUISVILLE, Ky.LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Val Brinkerhoff is a cowboy’s cowboy, jarred and bucked and tossed about so much in the horse-racing game that the doctor in the area of tiny Fillmore, Utah told him: “You’ve got more x-rays in this hospital than everybody in the county combined.”
As a kid, he would hunt jackrabbits, pheasant, deer and elk, pumping gas and changing oil at his dad’s Chevron station until he was old enough to gallop the family’s old palomino up and down the dirt road outside of town.
His skin, a slightly weathered bronze, shows his days spent toiling in the horse-molding sun. His walk hints at his Evel Knievel-esque medical report.
The moment that shook his world so strikingly, so surprisingly? It was just a couple of years ago, when a cash-soaked stranger with zero knowledge of the horse business walked in the front gate of Del Mar’s racetrack and started asking how to buy a horse.
The most random head-shaker of a story — a question a wife asked while splitting from her husband, a $550,000 ring, a Facetime call during an NFL game as some beers greased the wheels for a $100,000 purchase — has thrust that 67-year-old cowboy fully into the spotlight on Kentucky Derby weekend.
Brinkerhoff and a filly named Where’s My Ring will take a shot at the Kentucky Oaks on Friday at the racing cathedral Churchill Downs.
Where on God’s green earth do we start?
“I’ve never even heard of something like this,” Brinkerhoff said.
Count that as confirmed, given that the odds of something with this many twists and turns happening hover somewhere between Biden and Trump becoming golf partners and never.
Owner Michael McMillan, that stranger hunting a hobby after buying a house within walking distance of Del Mar, agreed.
“Funny story, right?” he said.
Kick off this whopper with Brinkerhoff, who was too tall at 5-10 to shed enough weight to consistently remain a jockey. He used to poke around the dusty “bush tracks” in Utah, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to keep the lights on in racing’s unforgiving minor leagues.
As a trainer, Brinkerhoff saddled one horse of major-league note with Restrainedvengence, a $1 million winner who finished third in the Dirt Mile at the 2021 Breeders’ Cup.
Then came McMillan, who walked into Del Mar without a four-hooved clue.
“We didn’t know anything about him,” said Brinkerhoff’s wife, Kelly.
That they met in the first place? Biden and Trump are more likely to play 36 and share some beers at the 19th hole.
First, McMillan had to get an itch. Secondly, he had to be at Del Mar that day. Thirdly, the women he talked to at the office had to have a connection to Brinkerhoff after a couple swing-and-miss run ins with bigger trainers.
The itch, McMillan explained: “I needed a hobby to balance my personal and work life. I wanted someone who we could be friends at the track and hang out. We hit it off immediately.”
McMillan built up the bank through being in the family behind McMillan Firearms, whose rifle business includes sniper rifle sales to the military. He also owns a medical biologics and billing company with offices in Nevada and Texas.
At first, he connected with a couple of big-name barn bosses. The feel and fit felt off, so the woman decided to introduce him to the Brinkerhoffs.
“She owed me a bunch of money for breaking horses for her, like 40 grand,” Val said. “So I guess she felt obliged to send him over to me.”
The connection was instant.
Soon, the duo of Val and McMillan were chasing horses. Brinkerhoff traveled to the famed Keeneland (Ky.) September Sale with a budget of $125,000.
Brinkerhoff landed a colt for $70,000 before the horse who eventually would reach Churchill Downs’ second-biggest race of Kentucky Derby weekend hit the auction block.
It was obvious that the horse was promising enough that the amount of money remaining would not get the job done.
“When they let her out of that stall to look at her, she had an air about her that she was something special,” Brinkerhoff said.
He picked up the phone to call McMillan, a fan of the NFL’s Raiders who has a home in Las Vegas.
During a game.
“I had Val on Facetime and they were all around me saying, ‘Do it! Do it! Do it!’ ” McMillan recalled. “Nobody was watching the game. I’d had a few beers, so I got the courage to do it.”
Brinkerhoff smiled at the re-telling.
“I bid 85, someone bid 90, someone else bid 95,” he said. “I said, ‘One more, Michael. We’ll get her.’ He gave the go ahead and we got her for $100,000.
“The people with him at the game where cheering. That was a lucky day for me … and him.”
They had a horse. They needed a name.
“My wife at the time, Stephanie, we split up and I left,” McMillan said of the chapter in September 2022. “She called and asked, ‘Where’s my ring?’ She couldn’t find it. It’s a 10 1/2-carat ring, so I told her, ‘It’s in the safe.’
“It was a tough spot back then, but we’re back together. Things are perfect.”
McMillan and the Brinkerhoffs? They’re perfect, too.
The owner calls them family. When he recently bought a house in Simpsonville, Ky., to get a foothold in the market, he offered for the couple to live upstairs.
“At one point, Kelly said she was praying every night for something to change,” McMillan said. “They’ll be at the house instead of the trailer they were in.”
They met. They got the horse. McMillan’s relationship blossomed. It all became something surprising, bigger and more.
“It’s cool what horse racing has done in my life,” the owner said. “This horse, what it means to us is amazing.”
Funny story, right?
