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“For sure, winning back-to-back races at The Meadowlands,” the 21-year-old responded when asked what this year’s highlight has been. “That was the greatest thing in the world. Winning one was awesome, coming back and winning in the very next race was pretty wild. The guys were not all there that day, but there was still George Nap (Napolitano), Corey Callahan, Mark MacDonald, Marcus Miller.”
Not bad competition to be against for someone so young. Boyd won’t brag about his wins, but he has quietly drawn strength from them.
“It’s for sure a confidence booster,” he said. “But you’ve still got to be humble because at any point and time it can be going bad, like it kind of is lately. You take the good with the bad.”
Boyd’s victory pace has slowed from where he was during the summer, but he’s wise enough to understand the ups and downs of the sport. He knows they happen to 25-year veterans as well as a relative newcomer like himself.
“I’m in a little lull,” he said. “I kind of spoiled myself this summer. I was used to winning at least 10 races a week there for a while. Now I’m slowing down a little bit.”
Nonetheless, this has far and away been the best season to date for Boyd, who had 91 drives and eight wins for $46,000 in 2019 and 433 drives and 48 wins for $301,863 in last year’s Covid-shortened season.
This season, he has 1,513 drives with 224 wins, 223 seconds, 224 thirds and $1.54 million in purses. Braxten has also gotten into training over the past two seasons, with 25 wins in 142 starts and $154,281 in earnings.
The Michigan native has come a long way from the summer of 2018, when he was helping his dad, Brett, around the barn while preparing to play golf for Jackson (Mich.) Community College. Back then he told ustrotting.com “I would absolutely kill just to be able to show up at Hoosier, or Scioto, and I guess The Meadowlands, but I would like to think a little bit more realistic. But man, that would be one dream come true, to be able to drive horses every night and do what I love. I would never work a day in my life if that was my job.”
Don’t look now, but it’s his job. And his golf game has suffered because of it.
“I probably play two times a summer and when I do play, I’m just terrible,” he said. “I’ll try to play more here in Florida.”
Boyd is currently driving at Pompano Park in South Florida and is also racking up frequent flyer miles by competing at Harrah’s Hoosier Park in Indiana. It’s not an easy commute, but in Boyd’s mind, it beats sitting around.
“It’s really not too bad to fly right now if you book them far enough in advance,” he said. “I just don’t like to race only a couple days a week. I’m getting drives up there, I get to come down here to race and I have some horses down here. I didn’t want to give up those drives up there. I’m not sure what I want to do when I’m done here. I may go to Pocono or Hoosier, those are my two options.”
Either way, he is doing what he dreamed about three years ago, although he’s had to work hard at it.
Boyd got his P license in Minnesota in the summer of 2019 and went to California with an acquaintance.
“I thought maybe I could get a couple drives and I wanted to learn how to drive,” he said. “My dad sent two horses out there so I would drive those and after I did well with them, people kind of put me up. There’s not that many drivers out there; there’s basically 11 or 12 guys so people would give me a shot.”
He remained on the West Coast until March 2020, but came home once Covid hit. Braxten was still attending college part time and when racing started again, Brett got him some horses at Running Aces in Minnesota. Boyd finished in the top six in the driver standings while also driving for several other trainers as well. He hit the board 87 times in Minnesota and then headed to Florida for the first time.
“I was happy with last year,” he said. “Considering where I was, I did all right.
“I went to Pompano because it’s a place you can meet some people. I figured people down here are willing to use young kids. I didn’t really get a catch drive until mid-November last year but started getting a bunch near the end.”
The move paid off, as Boyd has done some impressive things this season. He finished second in the Tioga Downs standings behind Hall of Famer Wally Hennessey.
“I was getting a lot of really good horses there,” he said. “When you drive at a track so often you get to know little tricks about the track and that helps you immensely. You know when to move, when not to move; if something’s going to open up. And I knew every horse like the back of my hand because I drove every one of them and that makes it so much easier.”
Boyd is third in the driver standings this fall at Pompano, where Hennessey is also the leader. He has driven at 13 tracks this season and won at 11 of them. Braxten has driven in 25 races at The Meadowlands and remembers his first one as “very nerve wracking. It was scary.”
He finished sixth in that race.
He finished fourth in his lone drive at Yonkers, a division of the New York Sire Stakes where he was racing against the sport’s current No. 1-ranked horse, Test Of Faith.
“I had no shot,” he said with a laugh.
Boyd hopes to get increased drives at Yonkers and The Meadowlands, but for now has no problem grinding away at other places. When pressed on who has helped him get to this point besides his dad, Braxten said the list was so long he didn’t want to start naming people for fear of leaving someone out.
“So many people have given me opportunities,” he said.
Boyd won’t consider this a breakout year just yet, noting that he just wants to keep trending upward. But he had to admit, he’s ahead of where he thought he might be at this point.
“If you told me last summer how this summer was going to go, I would have hoped it would be like this,” he said. “But did I think it would be? Probably not.”
by Rich Fisher, for the USTA
