Prolific four-year-old, the star of Mark Hibdon’s operation based at Delta Downs, was North America’s winningmost horse
She won’t be Horse of the Year, but what a horse, what a year.
More than 44,000 horses are detailed on Equibase as running in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico in 2024 and Tennessee Moon won more races than any other, her 12-month spree of 13 wins taking her out of the footnotes of the second-tier circuit and into the national headlines.
Racing is a numbers game at every level, in every circumstance, and Tennessee Moon conquered its accumulative variant in hardy, efficient, sleeves-rolled-up style.
The four-year-old Calumet-bred daughter of Ransom The Moon ran 18 times for those 13 wins, hit the place twice, banked $190,000 in purses for owner-trainer Mark Hibdon, whose shrewd claim of the filly for $5,000 in November 2023 set this runaway train in motion.
Not that the understated Texas native, usually based at Delta Downs on the other side of the Louisiana state line, will blow his trumpet about it. “Everyone asks me this,” says Hibdon, anticipating the inevitable question about the metamorphosis of Tennessee Moon into a winning machine.
“But I didn’t do anything,” he goes on. “We got her home, we fed her, we figured out what she liked to do, found the right spots for her, never put her in over her head. I could tell you plenty of stories about cheap claims that didn’t work out, but this one was different.
“I’d seen her run a couple of times and saw she was a gutsy type, thought I’d keep an eye on her. When she won at Delta Downs [Oct 2023] she went so easy, showed so much speed for that level of race … Jon Arnett claimed her that day, and when she came back to Delta four weeks later I told my wife Melinda that I was going in for her, and mine was the only claim in the box.”
Shape of things to come
A month after that claim Tennessee Moon won her first start for Hibdon, and she began 2024 in the same vein, rolling gate-to-wire in a starter allowance to score by more than ten lengths, the shape of things to come.
From January 6 to December 20 – with a short vacation in August – she turned up and got the job done time and time again, ranging from Fonner Park in Nebraska (four wins) to Arapahoe Downs in Colorado (three wins), from the exotically named Energy Downs 307 Horse Racing in Wyoming (one win) to the home-sweet-home of Delta Downs (five wins), where she is eight-for-eight lifetime.
Small beer, perhaps, in comparison with the starriest names, but intoxicating stuff nevertheless. An 18-race campaign is a hectic schedule for even the most hard-knocking cut-and-come-again sprinter, but Tennessee Moon has made it look easy.
“It’s a lot of races, but sometimes you don’t realise the extent of it because these races haven’t taken very much out of her, not every race has been a hard race,” says Hibdon.
“She is a hardy filly, which helps; she’s always fresh and ready to run, she has a great personality. She stands up on her hind feet and tells us she’s ready to go.
“She loves going to the track, loves her work, gets on really well with our gallop boy Sergio. She puts in a lot of miles but it seems to come easy to her. She’s just different, she’s unique.”
No-nonsense nature
Tennessee Moon’s no-nonsense nature extends to the parameters of her job, as neither different tracks, different surfaces, different distances nor different jockeys have managed to derail the success express.
Her 13 wins were gained between five furlongs and a mile-sixteenth – “I think 6½ furlongs suits her best,” says Hibdon – on fast tracks and a sloppy track, for an ensemble cast of six jockeys, in claimers, allowances and low-level stakes, usually on the lead but sometimes from off the pace. Anything goes when Tennessee Moon goes.
“She doesn’t need anything,” says Hibdon. “Every race she goes for, I’m confident she’s in a good spot. She doesn’t have to be out there in front, but she often is because she has a really fast cruising speed and her rivals can find it hard to stay with her.
“It just seems easy for her,” he adds. “Even when she’s got beat, it hasn’t been her fault. She ran her worst race when she was sixth at Fonner, but she was kicked in the post-parade, and although she was completely sound you don’t know how it might have affected her in the race.
“And I’ve been blessed with good jockeys like Daniel Cardoso, who has really good hands, and Alex Birzer, who has been great with her.”
Paradoxically, Hibdon’s brightest memory of an unforgettable year is a day when his superfilly got beat. After all, life isn’t all about winning, it’s also about taking part, and Tennessee Moon was the willing vehicle to make a dream come true for Hibdon and his family. Not just Delta, Fonner and Arapahoe, but Churchill Downs too.
Hibdon had never had a runner under the Twin Spires, had never even been to the Louisville track, so when Tennessee Moon took her chance there in the $100,000 Claiming Crown Glass Slipper in November the day was not just about the result (fourth).
Going to the big league
“That was the most fun we’ve had,” says Hibdon. “It was our opportunity to go to the big league, me and my son Ronnie drove her there, made the most of every minute of it – just to be at Churchill Downs, around all that history, where all those great horses have run and won, so much nostalgia for any racing fan.
“There are a lot of us that don’t have the big horses for the big races. But she’s our big horse, so getting to run for that kind of money with a horse like her, what else could you ask for? It was pretty awesome.
“Everyone was so kind, treated us so well. I thought she deserved her chance at that level, and perhaps I should have worked her a bit harder in the build-up – if I could do it over again, I’d do it differently. But we enjoyed it all.”
That would surely be the only thing Hibdon would do differently when he looks back on 2024. It has been his most successful year with a licence – 90 winners, more than a million dollars in purses, the rising tide of Tennessee Moon lifting all his boats.
He has 34 in the barn at the moment, numbers flickering up and down a little with the habitual flux of claimers coming in and going out, and owns all but one of them.
“I’m not really cut out to be a public trainer. I don’t like to be on the phone a lot,” he explains. “I just love these horses, love taking care of them.
“Sometimes I think about maybe cutting back the numbers, but then I get tempted by the claim box again. The Lord is taking care of us for sure.”
Extraordinary horse
Hibdon quietly deflects any praise for his stellar year on to his staff, rattling off their names in a rush, Jose, Lucy, Dino and the rest, credit falling liberally where it’s due, and reckons that he hasn’t ever thought about what it means for him personally, an ordinary horseman with an extraordinary horse. It comes as no surprise to learn that there have been offers to buy Tennessee Moon, with even less surprise to hear that Hibdon isn’t selling.
“There’s been a few people interested,” he says. “Back in April, May time, I was offered $40,000 for her. She’d won five or six for me by then, and that was a lot of money – but I turned it down and I’m glad I did. I just couldn’t sell her.
“She has a following now. People come to watch her run, and that’s fun for me but also a little bit of pressure, as I don’t want her to get beat too often. But she always gives 100 per cent, so when she doesn’t win it’s my fault and not hers.”
What next, then, for the phenomenon? More of the same, although the schedule will perforce be different as Tennessee Moon loses some of the race conditions that have assisted her ascent.
Hibdon says he’ll probably slow down a little bit with her, be more selective with her races, but for now he’s picking up right where he left off, as Tennessee Moon is set to begin her 2025 campaign in a $75,000 stakes at Delta Downs on Friday [Jan 3]. It might be too much to hope for another year as prolific as the last, but even in the highly unlikely event that Tennessee Moon never wins again she has already left an enduring impression on Hibdon and his family.
“Oh, of course, she’s the best I’ve ever trained,” he says. “She’s also the one with the most personality, the most fun to be around.
“And we’re not delusional. We know she’s no million-dollar mare, but for us, at our level, she is a superhorse. She’s done so much for us.
“If I ever had a Derby horse or a Breeders’ Cup horse, it would be a different situation, a different feeling, but I can’t imagine even that would be as much fun as this filly winning all these races for us. We’re so proud of her.”
North America’s winningmost horses in 2024
13 Tennessee Moon
As above
11 Spikezone
Never off the board in 14 races, his most prestigious success coming on his final start in a stakes at Parx Racing
9 Inside Stunt
Cleaned up in claimers and allowances at Mahoning Valley (seven wins) and Thistledown (two wins)
9 Gran Andrews
All nine victories gained at Charles Town in starter allowances, and never out of the first four elsewhere
9 Uptown Amanda
The queen of Puerto Rico, racing exclusively in claimers at Camarero and hitting the board all 11 starts
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