Aggie Ordonez spent most of her racing life away from the spotlight, tending small strings, working long mornings and building a career around the horses rather than the attention that came with them. At 59, the Southern California trainer has finally found the horse capable of changing that — a chestnut California-bred filly named Om N Joy.
Aggie Ordonez and Om N Joy.
Their partnership has become one of the more engaging stories on the California circuit, taking Ordonez from the quiet routine of a modest stable to major graded races at Santa Anita, Del Mar and Oaklawn Park. Om N Joy, bred by owners Connie and Jerry Baker, is by Om out of the late Hard Spun mare Margie’s Minute. What began as a relatively ordinary juvenile campaign has developed into something few around the stable could have expected.
The filly made her debut at Del Mar in August 2024, finishing third in a maiden special weight. Victory did not arrive quickly. She needed eight starts to break through, finally winning at Santa Anita in March 2025.
Once she did, the change was dramatic.
Om N Joy reeled off five consecutive victories, first establishing herself among California-breds with wins in the Evening Jewel Stakes and Melair Stakes before adding the Fleet Treat Stakes at Del Mar. Her next start elevated the story considerably. In the Grade 3 Torrey Pines Stakes, she defeated Santa Anita Oaks winner Tenma, giving Ordonez and the Bakers a first real indication that their homebred could compete beyond restricted company.
A trip to Keeneland for the Grade 2 Raven Run Stakes followed, where Om N Joy finished fourth.
By then, however, Ordonez was watching the filly as closely as she was watching the form book. Om N Joy had begun to lose weight after a demanding campaign, and the trainer decided that the longer-term future mattered more than squeezing in another start.
“There was talk of going to the Breeders’ Cup but I said, ‘No, we want a strong 4-year-old filly,’” Ordonez recalled. Om N Joy was sent to Kingfisher Farms for seven weeks, allowing her to strengthen before returning for her four-year-old season.
A Life Built Around Horses
Long before Om N Joy arrived, racing had already shaped almost every stage of Ordonez’s life. Her father, Pete Anderson, was a jockey on the East Coast before becoming a trainer. Ordonez grew up around his horses, following him through the barn as a child and becoming increasingly absorbed by the sport.
She was born in Miami, where her father rode during the winter before moving north to New York for the summer season. Her parents initially hoped she would choose another profession. Racing was a very different environment for women when Anderson was building his career, and they encouraged their daughter to attend college. Ordonez did exactly that, studying at Tulane University in New Orleans, but racing soon drew her back.
Her first professional experience came from the media side. She worked on a television magazine programme at Arlington Park, interviewing trainers about their runners in major races. The experience produced an unexpected frustration: Ordonez increasingly wanted to be the person answering the questions rather than asking them.
“I remember thinking during those interviews that I wish I could trade places,” she said. “That I could be on the other side of the camera talking about having a good horse.”
She subsequently worked in publicity at Hialeah Park and spent summers at Arlington before an opportunity arose to train a small string at The Woodlands in Kansas City. It was a modest operation. Ordonez handled much of the work herself — stalls, grooming, training and everything in between — but she loved it.
Further stops at Remington Park and Turf Paradise kept her career moving until Northern California trainer Brent Sumja offered her an assistant’s position. Sumja had a large stable, and the move gave Ordonez an education that a smaller operation could never provide. She learned to manage dozens of horses, recognise physical problems, use therapy effectively and deal with the daily demands of a busy racing stable.
“I got so much experience,” Ordonez said. “You learn so much from cheap horses. A lot of them just need the TLC.” Seven years later, when Sumja decided to retire, he encouraged his assistant to take over several clients. Ordonez went out on her own. Within a week, she discovered she was pregnant. For the next two decades, training horses and raising her son ran side by side.
A Move South Changes Everything
By the early 2020s, Northern California racing was changing. Bay Meadows had already disappeared and uncertainty increasingly surrounded Golden Gate Fields. Ordonez decided not to wait.
She moved south in 2022, initially unsure whether she would be able to remain there permanently. Among the people who made the transition possible were Connie and Jerry Baker. The Bakers had entered ownership in 2016 after acquiring Margie’s Minute. When the mare retired following a career that produced five wins from 28 starts, they kept her and moved into breeding. Om N Joy would eventually become one of her most important legacies.
At the end of the 2022 Del Mar meeting, the Bakers asked Ordonez to sit down with them. She feared they might be ending the relationship. Instead, they told her they wanted her to remain their trainer — provided she stayed in Southern California. Ordonez needed little convincing.
“I thought about it for about one point five seconds,” she recalled. Santa Anita became her new base.
The move brought financial and practical challenges, but professionally it felt natural. Ordonez had grown up around major tracks such as Hialeah, Belmont and Monmouth, and Santa Anita gave her the feeling that she had returned to that world. The transition also came after decades spent establishing herself in a profession historically dominated by men.
Ordonez credits trainers such as Carla Gaines with helping open doors for the women who followed, but her own approach has remained straightforward: work hard, concentrate on the horses and ignore the noise around her.
Then Om N Joy stepped off the van. Ordonez still remembers filming the moment for the Bakers and immediately being struck by the filly. She already knew Margie’s Minute could produce a runner through Om N Joy’s half-brother Vodka Vodka. In the new arrival, she thought she saw another.
She was right.
Om N Joy Comes Back Stronger
Om N Joy returned from her break early in 2026 carrying most of the weight Ordonez wanted to see. The trainer brought her along gradually before choosing an ambitious route back to competition. She finished third in the Grade 1 Beholder Mile at Santa Anita in March and fifth in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park the following month.
Those defeats did not discourage Ordonez. The moment she had been waiting for came in the Grade 2 Santa Margarita Stakes at Santa Anita on May 30. Om N Joy was last at the quarter pole before producing a sustained late run to overhaul the field and win the 1 1/8-mile contest. The performance came only a week after she had competed in the Fran’s Valentine Stakes and represented a new career high. For Ordonez, it confirmed that the filly had matured physically.
“She was looking and running like a 4-year-old,” she said.
The Grade 1 Clement L. Hirsch at Del Mar came next on August 1. Om N Joy again produced her strongest work late, finishing second and convincing her trainer that greater distances could bring out even more. Del Mar subsequently confirmed that the performance earned her a place in discussions for the Pacific Classic.
Ordonez and jockey Kent Desormeaux were left with mixed emotions. They had watched the filly finish with tremendous energy, but could not help wondering what might have happened had that surge arrived slightly earlier.
It also reinforced something the trainer had learned about Om N Joy from the beginning. She does things on her own terms.
“She’s so mellow and laid back that there’s nothing that’s too intense for her,” Ordonez said.
Taking on the Boys
The next decision underlined just how far Aggie Ordonez and Om N Joy had travelled together.
Rather than wait for another race restricted to fillies and mares, Ordonez entered Om N Joy in the Grade 1 Pacific Classic at Del Mar on August 22, sending her against older males over 1 1/4 miles. Distance was central to the decision.
“This is the main event,” Ordonez said before the race. “I know it’s tough. The distance is what she wants to go.” Om N Joy justified the ambition.
Knightsbridge won the Pacific Classic, with Original Sin second and Full Serrano third, but Om N Joy closed from the rear to finish fourth in the 11-horse field. She was the only filly or mare in the race. For a trainer who once stood behind a television camera at Arlington Park wondering what it would feel like to talk about a genuinely good horse of her own, the answer has arrived more than three decades later.
The interviews are more frequent now. So are the telephone calls. Ordonez remains amused by that part of her new reality. During one recent interview, another call interrupted the conversation.
“I’m sorry, I’m getting so many calls every day,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not used to this.” Om N Joy has changed that. She has given a lifelong horsewoman the graded stakes victories, Grade 1 appearances and major-race attention she once watched other trainers discuss.
More importantly for Ordonez, she has given her the horse she had always hoped might one day walk into her barn.
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