Time for Trouble Named Claiming Crown Horse of the Year

Time for Trouble  is the 2023 Claiming Crown Horse of the Year for being only the third two-time winner in the annual multi-race event created to honor the hard-knocking warhorses that populate America’s racing programs largely out of the limelight.

The National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association and the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, co-founders of the Claiming Crown, announced the Horse of the Year winner June. 14. Time for Trouble, a now 7-year-old gelding and two-time winner of the Kent Stirling Memorial Iron Horse, was selected Claiming Crown Horse of the Year among the eight winners last December at the Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots in New Orleans.

Created to give blue-collar workhorses their own championship day on the lines of the Breeders’ Cup, the Claiming Crown races are for horses that have competed at a certain claiming level (or less) during a designated time frame. The event is staged each year by the National HBPA and TOBA in conjunction with the host track and with an assist from the state HBPA affiliate. 

The 2024 Claiming Crown will be Nov. 16 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., for the second time in three years.

Time for Trouble is the first horse in the program’s 25 years to win the same Claiming Crown race in back-to-back years. The only other two-time winners are Al’s Dearly Bred, who won the 2001 and 2006 Emerald, and Antrim County , who won the 2008 Iron Horse and 2009 Jewel.

“It’s definitely a great achievement,” said Louisville-based trainer Jeff Hiles, who co-owns Time for Trouble with Thorndale Stable’s Paul Parker of Paducah, Ky. “We’re going back in it this year, if he stays healthy. In order to do that, he’s going to have to be on top of his game, because those races are difficult. He’s been a really good horse for us. He just barely got beat in the grade 2 Suburban this past week at Saratoga. He just doesn’t stop.”

Hiles, the son of longtime Kentucky HBPA president Rick Hiles, and Parker claimed Time for Trouble almost exactly three years ago for $8,000 at Churchill Downs. Their good luck started by out-shaking 12 others who also dropped a claim for the gelding. 

Time for Trouble has earned eight of his 11 career victories and $575,027 for Hiles and Parker. That includes the 2023 Claiming Crown Iron Horse—for horses who have run for a claiming price of $8,000—in New Orleans and in November 2022 at Churchill Downs.       

The son of English Channel started 2024 by winning allowance/optional claimer at Oaklawn Park, followed by a third in the Essex Handicap (G3) and a pair of fourths in Keeneland‘s Ben Ali Stakes (G3) and Saratoga Race Course‘s Suburban Stakes (G2). The gelding is Hiles’ top money-earner in a training career in its sixth full season since working as an assistant for Kenny McPeek.

The Claiming Crown Horse of the Year is voted on by the National HBPA’s Industry Awards Committee chaired by Todd Mostoller, the Pennsylvania HBPA’s executive director. Time for Trouble, Hiles, and Parker will be recognized at the 39th annual TOBA National Awards Dinner on Sept. 7 at Fasig-Tipton in Lexington. 

“Time for Trouble is a poster boy for how claiming horses, even at cheaper levels, can rise up to compete in racing’s upper echelon with good horsemanship, a dream and some luck,” Mostoller said. “These horses give smaller stables the hope that they, too, can some day land the proverbial ‘Big Horse.’

“For the vast majority of horsemen, that doesn’t mean a Triple Crown, Breeders’ Cup or necessarily a graded-stakes horse—though that can happen. Rather, they’re very good horses at their own level of competition and take their owners and trainers on a joy ride— adventures that can include running in the Claiming Crown and being part of a big day of racing.”

Parker vouches for that.

“I think it’s wonderful that they give an award like this, anything you can do for guys like me,” said Parker, who owns the popular ’50s style diner Parker’s Drive-In in Paducah. “It’s great to get any kind of accolade at the level I play at. I’ve got one mare I breed. I’ve got a shot of getting a good horse one day. But am I ever going to win the Breeders’ Cup? Am I able to even think about getting a Horse of the Year? I doubt it. But to get Claiming Crown Horse of the Year, that’s something.”

Time for Trouble has raced well for Hiles and Parker on turf and dirt, fast and sloppy tracks and at distances from 1 1/16 to 1 3/4 miles. Before hopefully returning to the Claiming Crown, Hiles said Time for Trouble could go back to Saratoga for the Aug. 4 Birdstone Stakes at 1 3/4 miles on dirt—a race in which he was second last year. The trainer also has his eye on the new $500,000 Nashville Gold Cup at 2 1/16 miles on turf Sept. 11 at Kentucky Downs.

“Those races are tough in themselves. He barely won the one this past winter,” Hiles said, referring to a head victory over Florida-based Proverb  in last year’s Claiming Crown. “But he’s a good horse, and he’s been really good for me. He’s graded-stakes placed this year and has made about $176,000 so far in 2024, and we’re not even halfway through yet.”

The deadline to make a horse eligible to the Nov. 16 Claiming Crown at Churchill Downs is Oct. 26, with entries to be taken Nov. 9. More information is available at claimingcrown.com or by reaching out to National HBPA CEO Eric Hamelback at 859-259-0451 or ehamelback@hbpa.org.

This press release has been edited for content and style by BloodHorse Staff.