Mike Goebig & Dwayne Knowles - People’s Choice Trainers of the Year
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The final tricolor of the 2006 and 2005 Grand National
was hung on the Broadmoor banner as Goebig and Knowles
celebrated Stand And Deliver’s Park Saddle World Championship
victories with the stallion’s owner/breeder Tara Good.
by Ann Bullard
They’re a team. Each has his own responsibilities, both with Broadmoor business and with horses. Separately, each is an outstanding trainer. Together, they put together a team of horses and riders that have lit up horse show ‘scoreboards’ all year.
Goebig has won your votes before, most recently in 2005. This year, you recognized both trainers’ records and service to the Morgan industry, voting them co-trainers of the year.
The Master’s Touch. Not only is that the name of the four-time world champion park saddle horse, it describes what his trainer brings to all his horses. A third generation horseman, Goebig has done little else. At 56, the trainer with the short-cropped gray hair and sparkling blue eyes continues to add new pages to the Morgan record books. With his repeat win aboard Stand And Deliver in 2006, he moved ahead of Judy Whitney Harris as the ‘winningest’ trainer of open park saddle world champions in history.
“It’s been a lot of fun competing with him,” Harris said of the trainer she has known since he was a little boy. “He’s a very capable horseman and a fine gentleman.”
Broadmoor took 21 horses to the 2006 Grand National and World Championship Horse Show. They brought home seven world championships, one reserve world championship, 11 Grand National titles and one reserve Grand National Championship. Both Goebig and Knowles won blues and roses.
Stand And Deliver is a headline maker in more ways than one. Signed Sealed Delivered’s performances demonstrate her sire’s ability in the breeding shed. Knowles drove the stallion’s first get shown to win the Two-Year-Old Park Harness World Championship and Two-Year-Old Park Harness Mare and Gelding Grand National title. Knowles teamed Get Busy, the young stallion by Astronomicallee, to win World and Grand National Championships in Three-Year-Old Park Harness.
Goebig’s rides added another pair of world and Grand National championships to the farm’s collections. Copper Beech’s Treble’s First Take earned the Four-Year-Old English Pleasure World Championship and Grand National English Pleasure Mare title. Rhoda Hoenmans’s Whitemud Dixie DanceKing trotted off with the Three-Year-Old Park Saddle World Championship and the qualifying mare and gelding title.
Broadmoor’s amateurs, ladies and junior exhibitors had equally impressive shows. Allyson Wandtke rode CN The Master’s Flyte to win the Amateur Park Saddle Stallion Grand National title and the Amateur Park Saddle World Championship. Kim Germ matched up with Gotti to top the Ladies Amateur English Pleasure World Championship. Janet Morgan of Sharon Morgan Farm and RJM Roulette picked up the reserve world champion title in Amateur Masters Pleasure Driving while Caitlin Harrison jogged off with the Reserve Grand National Western Pleasure Youth Finals aboard Mtn Laurel Election Day.
One might say Mike Goebig’s 36th year of operating a public training stable was the best yet.
“Not many people have survived 36 years. There’s a little more tread [left] on the tires, I hope,” Goebig said.
One might say Goebig was in the Morgan business before he was born. His family stepped into this world in 1948. As a third-generation horseman and second-generation Morgan enthusiast, he had a big role to fill.
“I’ve never done anything else,” he said in an earlier Horse World interview. Nor does he ever wish to do so.
Knowles, a relative late-comer, began riding barrel racing horses at age 13. His first experience with Morgans came at Goebig’s original farm in Coopersburg, Pa.
“The school bus used to go by there every day,” Knowles recalled. “I’d go there to work cleaning stalls and doing yard work after school.”
That summer, he found a job with Patty Kent. The driving distance was farther than Goebig’s.
“My parents didn’t want to drive me back and forth,” the younger trainer recalled. “They kept after me to go to Mike’s. At first, he said he had no job. Finally I knocked on the door one day and a job had opened.
“Mike started teaching me about Morgans,” Knowles said. “I didn’t realize I could make a living by training horses. I went to college to major in accounting. It was the only thing I could really do in high school.”
Still the horses beckoned. Knowles accepted his first [and only other] training job with Limerick Morgans, where he produced local, regional and national champions. He and Goebig became partners in 1994.
The partners divide their work, but along no set standard.
“I do all the office work: scheduling, entries, billing and work horses. Mike handles all the breeding and works horses. What horses we each have depends on what we’re working that’s already in the barn. With a new horse, it may come down to whose turn is next,” Knowles said, pointing out they have 30 stalls to be filled. “If an amateur park horse comes in and Mike has one, I take the one coming in. We usually have two western horses that I work.”
“I think the biggest thing is that our breeding studs produced a number of world champions,” Goebig said. “Of the horses that won at Oklahoma, 90 percent were bred by our customers and made here at the farm. Dwayne and I worked the sire, dam and great grandsire of both Stand And Deliver and CN The Master’s Flyte.”
Managing the book for World Champions Stand And Deliver for Tara Good and The Master’s Touch for Cindy Nord and for Tony Lee’s Astronomicallee takes much of Goebig’s non-training time. Last season, the farm sent out 130 shipments of semen; collection at an FDA-approved facility also enables international shipment of frozen semen.
Lee is one of the farm’s ‘newer’ clients, having been there about a dozen years. Goebig and Knowles trained his amateur park harness world champion Queen’s Vanity Flair, sire of Stand And Deliver.
“Mike and Dwayne are the perfect combination, that’s for sure. Each has strengths and play off each other very well. That’s evident with the clientele they have. It’s great being in a barn where many of the clients have been there forever,” Lee said.
“Broadmoor is a great barn to be part of. It’s a joy to go up there. They make it fun, almost like a retreat or a vacation. They both take their jobs and their friendships very seriously. They’re very loyal to their clients and friends.”
Once the show horses come home from Oklahoma, their shoes are pulled and they get to play. It’s time to bring in babies.
“We have lots of babies and started bringing them in during November,” Knowles said. “Some didn’t pass the 60-day trial and needed to be turned back out. Almost all the others are wearing plates and have been hooked.”
About half of Broadmoor’s client base is amateurs with a few juvenile riders. Young horses and those owners who prefer to watch than show themselves make up the rest.
“I enjoy amateurs,” Knowles said. “We have to try a little harder to make the combination work. The horse needs to understand that this person is feeding them, that caring for their owners is their job. Basically, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
He spoke of some challenges working with amateur riders. “We try to work with the horse to make it available for them, not make the amateur go crazy trying to be with the horse. These people are doctors, accountants and lawyers and can’t do that stuff. Amateurs are there to have fun. Yes, they want to win, to look the best they can, but it’s not always their fault. Maybe the horse could do more for them. That’s why we have success. If an amateur screws up at a show … it’s their horse. They pay the bills. Yes, we want them to do well, but a lot beat themselves up more than we could ever do.
“I get a big kick out of watching amateurs show,” he continued. “We have some we can put on any horse. Some have horses at home and can practice more. We have a barn of more mature ladies, including three 70 and over.”
Presently, only two junior exhibitors ride with Broadmoor. “It’s hard for them because we have so many adults,” Knowles said. “We both enjoy working with the kids, but we don’t have a ‘kiddie barn.’ We don’t offer lessons because of our strong breeding program.
While Knowles is more the stay-at-home, Goebig spends much of his time working with the American Morgan Horse Association. He was reelected president for what he calls ‘the last time’ at the recent AMHA Convention and is an international ambassador for the breed.
Both know how to relax at home. Goebig is a gourmet cook, a benefit Knowles thoroughly enjoys. Home also provides a chance to relax a little, to read, watch television and relax as much as possible. Travel is a favorite joint pastime.
Both look forward to a new season, to introducing young horses to the arena and to established teams’ return.
As Goebig put it, “The most fun about having a public training stable and showing horses is that every year is a new year.”
Neither would have it any other way.
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