Winning the Battle
Kentuckian Hume Wornall, the co-breeder of Kentucky Derby starter Coal Battle, is a big believer in the Louisiana-bred program.
By Denis Blake
Although 2025 was a banner year for Louisiana-breds as they flashed their talent in graded stakes around the country, none made it to the starting gate for the 151st Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. But one of those 19 elite horses could have been a Louisiana-bred, and he perhaps can best be described as a Kentuciana-bred. That horse is Coal Battle, who was sired by Louisiana stallion Coal Front and bred jointly by Louisianan Jay Adcock and Kentuckian Hume Wornall. The talented runner is trained by longtime Louisiana conditioner Lonnie Briley and is owned by Alabamian Robbie Norman’s Norman Stables LLC, which has campaigned numerous top Louisiana-breds over the years.
Coal Battle co-breeders Hume Wornall (left) and Jay Adcock at the 2025 Kentucky Derby.
Adcock is among Louisiana’s most accomplished breeders as the owner of Red River Farms in the northwest part of the state, and Wornall is a lifelong horseman whose family has ties to the ’80 Kentucky Derby winner. No, that doesn’t refer to the amazing filly Winning Colors who won the Run for the Roses for trainer D. Wayne Lukas in 1980, but rather the 1880 Kentucky Derby, as in the sixth edition of the famous race won by a horse named Fonso.
“It was my third great grandfather, but it was listed in his son’s name and my grandmother was a sister to him, so I used to tell everybody my family had the horse that won the derby in ’80, but it was 1880,” said Wornall about Fonso. “I was at the Keeneland Library the other day, and my wife wanted to walk through there. So I asked them about the 1880 Derby, and it was called the “Dirty Derby.” It was so dry and dusty that everyone complained, and they were watering the streets so that the people in their fancy clothes in carriages going to the racetrack wouldn’t get as dirty. Well, it goes on to read that they said they were going to water the track, but they only watered the stretch from the finish line going back. So for most of the race, you couldn’t even see the horses. They said it was like a cloud of dust. He didn’t breed him, but it’s kind of a neat story.”
Then, 140 years later, Wornall and Adcock became the breeders of a Kentucky Derby starter when Coal Battle made it to Louisville with a resume that included a win in the $1.25 million Rebel Stakes (G2) at Oaklawn Park. The colt spent part of his 2-year-old season in Louisiana, where he broke his maiden at first asking at Evangeline Downs and then posted his first stakes win in the $100,000 Jean Lafitte Stakes at Delta Downs.
Coal Battle was raised at Wornall’s Beech Spring Farm in Kentucky, but he could very well have been foaled in Louisiana, as the co-breeders often rotate their mares between the two states.
Of course, Wornall didn’t know the young foal was headed to sport’s most famous race, but he did have a feeling he could be a runner.
Coal Battle as a yearling had the good looks that promised his future racing success.
“I used to manage Elmendorf Farm back in the 1980s for Mr. Jack Kent Cooke, who also owned the Redskins (now the Washington Commanders of the NFL),” said Wornall. “So I would just walk through the yearlings, and you kind of get a little inclination of attitudes. And this colt, he was special. I never told Jay, but I would just say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s nice.’ And he’d never seen him until I sent him down there to the Texas yearling sale, and actually he didn’t even see him there because he didn’t go that year. But I guess they had sent a picture of him on the sale grounds. And Jay was like, ‘Wow, he is nice.’ The key to me on horses is their attitudes. And you could just do anything with this colt. When you chirped to him out in the paddock or in the fields, he would just come walking toward you.”
The colt sold for $70,000 as one of the highest prices at the sale and the top amount paid that year for a yearling by Coal Front. Wornall and Adcock were pleased with that price, and of course even more thrilled to see the horse go on to the Kentucky Derby. Even though his 11th-place finish was a letdown, it was still an experience that only a select few breeders get to enjoy.
“There’s people who have been in the game all their lives and have never had one,” Wornall said about seeing a horse he bred in the Kentucky Derby. “So it was quite an ordeal.”
There’s no easy way to breed a graded stakes winner, especially one that makes it to the Kentucky Derby, but using a stallion with six-figure stud fee and a mare worth six figures or more sure helps.
Wornall and Adcock took a more difficult route.
Coal Front currently stands for a $4,000 fee at Red River Farms, which is $500 less what it would have cost to claim Coal Battle’s dam, a West Virginia-bred named Wolfblade who made her final career start at Charles Town Races.
The final claiming price of Wolfblade is a bit deceiving, however, as the daughter of Midshipman did show talent early in her career by winning her career debut as a 2-year-old and finishing third in a West Virginia-bred stakes race. Wornall and Adcock liked that she had a long racing career to prove her soundness, as she won nine of 39 starts and earned a respectable $143,465.
“We look for mares that have some speed and hopefully a little black type, and we like for them to win $100,000-plus, and we both love Midshipman,” Wornall said why they liked Wolfblade. “We get these mares in, and Jay does a lot of the pedigree work, and I’ll do a lot of the conformation work and try to get horses that look like they’re going to throw some frame and some size to the foals.”
They also both liked Coal Front and are part of his ownership group that brought the stallion from Kentucky to Louisiana. The resulting foal of the moderately-priced stallion and mare has already earned nearly $1.3 million and is preparing for a 4-year-old campaign.
While Coal Battle is the most accomplished horse bred by Wornall and Adcock, the two have enjoyed a long and successful partnership for so long that Wornall isn’t quite sure exactly when it started.
“Now the guys up here [Kentucky], they’re not laughing at me near as much as they used to about being down there [Louisiana], because they’re like, ‘Damn, y’all are doing pretty good,’” Wornall said. “My banker likes it too. If you can keep your wife and the banker happy, then you’re in some tall cotton.”
Louisiana bred Secret Faith pictured winning the 2025 Louisiana Champions Day Ladies Sprint. The filly by Aurelius Maximus out of St. Jean has won 10 stakes and earned $701,022 to date. Hodges photo.
“It’s scary to think about how time flies, but it’s probably getting close to 30 years,” said Wornall. “When it started, we’d never met when he had sent a mare up here. It was just all on the phone. The mare had been somewhere else, and they couldn’t get her in foal, and somehow or another, Jay got a hold of me. I got her in foal, fortunately, and we’ve been doing business ever since, all on a handshake. We’ve just had a good relationship.”
In addition to Coal Battle, Wornall and Adcock have bred several other top stakes horses, including three top Louisiana-breds out of the Macho Uno mare St. Jean, who remarkably ended her racing career in a low-level claiming race just like Wolfblade. But she fit the profile of a Wornall-Adcock mare, and she clearly had talent to be a top producer for those who looked hard enough at her pedigree and race record.
Another Louisiana bred from the Wornall Adcock partnership, Rising Inflation won the 2025 Louisiana Champions Day Ladies Turf, one of three stakes won by the Mitole - Any Given Trace filly, who has earned $310,350 to date. Hodges photo.
St. Jean has produced Midnight Fantasy, Strong Promise and Secret Faith, who have combined to easily eclipse $1 million in earnings. Midnight Fantasy, a daughter of Midnight Lute, banked more than $340,000 with stakes wins at Fair Grounds, Mahoning Valley Race Course and Oaklawn, and the other two are still adding to their totals. Strong Promise, a 5-year-old gelding by Broken Vow, has three stakes wins with earnings of more than $360,000. Secret Faith, a 4-year-old filly by Aurelius Maximus, who stands at Adcock’s Red River Farms, has won an incredible 10 stakes races in just 15 starts with earnings of $701,022.
That all adds up to a lot of breeders awards for Wornall and Adock. And there might be more to come as Wornall is high on the mare’s Louisiana-bred 2-year-old by Frosted.
Unfortunately for the breeders, St. Jean has since passed, but her lineage will endure as the breeders still have a couple of her daughters.
The duo also bred Louisiana-bred Rising Inflation, a daughter of Mitole who started her career at Saratoga and made five starts on the East Coast before coming home to Louisiana, where she has three stakes wins and a bankroll of more than $310,000.
That means even more breeders awards.
“That really helps, once you get the pipeline going where you have horses running each year and still running as older horses,” said Wornall. “We’ve gotten spoiled on that because sometimes it seems like we have something running every weekend.”
Although the horses bred by Wornall and Adcock don’t always bring huge money in the sales ring, partly because they might not have the most in-demand or fashionable pedigrees, they make up for that with their performance on the racetrack and the subsequent breeders awards.
Wornall said some of his Kentucky brethren used to question why he was breeding horses in Louisiana while living in the heart of Bluegrass country.
Kim and Hume Wornall at their Beech Spring Farm in Kentucky.
“Now the guys up here, they’re not laughing at me near as much as they used to about being down there, because they’re like, ‘Damn, y’all are doing pretty good,’” he said. “My banker likes it too. If you can keep your wife and the banker happy, then you’re in some tall cotton.”
Breeding a horse that runs in the Kentucky Derby, along with a bevy of Louisiana-bred stakes winners, sure makes it fun too.