.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} Sitting in her kitchen, surrounded by charts, racing forms, speed statistics, legal pads and with TVG on the television, Maggi Moss is doing what she loves.

“She’s more like a field general in a war than a horse owner,” said Jerry Crawford, who along with his wife, Linda, have been friends with Moss for more than 20 years. “She’s locked away in her little cocoon. Nobody works harder.”

Outworking her competition is what Moss calls her secret to success. She compares it to a game of chess. Since buying her first racehorse in 1997, Moss has dedicated herself to her new passion. And that dedication is paying off.

Last year, Moss became the first woman to take the nation’s winningest racehorse owner title in more than 60 years, and in July, became the first individual woman since 1976 to take the Churchill Downs leading owner’s title. She was the leading owner at Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino in 2000 and from 2003 to 2006. This year, even though she says she isn’t interested in repeating as the nation’s winningest owner, Moss is once again leading, with her horses entering the winner’s circle 130 times. She stands second in overall earnings with $2,695,945, according to equibase.com.

“Everything Maggi does, she wants to do it as well as it can be done,” said Roxanne Conlin, another longtime friend of Moss’. “And her very best is usually better than everybody else.”

Horse sense

Moss has a long equestrian background.

“I started riding horses and showing competitively, hunters and jumpers, when I was 10 with my father,” she said. “We had a farm here in Des Moines. I competed with show horses for 20 years, all the way to Madison Square Garden. Then, I really started focusing on law, and all the horses kind of went by the wayside to concentrate on my law practice.”

Crawford said that around 1997, he invited Moss to go with him to Prairie Meadows to watch some of his horses run.

“I said to her, ‘You have an instinct about horses that can’t be bought or learned,'” he said. “‘You should get into this business.'”

She didn’t say much at the time, Crawford recalled, but when he looked up a month later, she had 10 horses. The rest is history.

“I bought my first horse in 1997,” Moss said. “Then I had five, then 10, then 20, then branched out into New York, then into Kentucky. Now I’m up to 70 horses. It’s become a pretty big business.”

So big, in fact, Moss had to make a decision about whether she could pursue her new passion while maintaining her lucrative law practice.

“In fairness to my partners and the people I worked with at the law firm, and to my clients, I took a leave of absence, which has culminated in becoming of counsel of that firm,” she said, adding: “I was trying to serve two very demanding masters, and I felt like I accomplished all the goals I set for myself as a lawyer in this community. The passion is now with the racing. I really love it.”

Alfredo Parrish, who is a partner along with Moss at Parrish Kruidenier Dunn Boles Gribble Cook Parrish Gentry & Fisher L.L.P., said he wasn’t surprised to see Moss leave active practice with the firm.

National acclaim

“I told her that the law is a jealous mistress,” Parrish said. “You can’t be an excellent attorney, which Maggi certainly was, and be devoted to any other profession.”

“You do it alone. You work it alone, and the wins are your personal private satisfaction,” Moss said. “You put a lot of work into it and then you win. The problem is that here [in Iowa], it has always been a private satisfaction.”

Acreditado, a horse owned by Maggi Moss, is shown at the paddocks before the race at Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino on July 27. After leading the entire race, Acreditado lost in the home stretch to Sharkille O’Neal. Photo by Eric Rowley

Maggi Moss of Des Moines strolls out of the paddocks at Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino before a race on July 27. Moss became the first individual women owner to take the Churchill Downs’ “leading owner’s” title since Sharon Hill in 1976. Photo by Eric Rowley

Moss waits in the bleachers for the start of a evening horse race at Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino. In 2006, horses owned by Moss won 211 races, more than any other owner in the nation. Photo by Eric Rowley

Moss has been the leading owner at Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino from 2003 to 2006. Photo by Eric Rowley

Iowa doesn’t have the passion for horse racing that can be seen around the country, and for someone who works as hard as Moss, that can sometimes be difficult to take.

“The hardest I ever worked at anything in my life was becoming the only woman to have the most wins of any owner last year in the entire country,” Moss said. “I worked so hard. Does it help to work that hard and have somebody recognize it where you grew up? In the city in which you live, where you didn’t leave, where you went to Roosevelt [High School]? On Jan. 2, through all that work and exhaustion, I got calls from every magazine and the Louisville Courier-Journal and newspapers all over the country. The Des Moines Register didn’t care. My own hometown didn’t care.”

When she accomplished something no Iowan had ever done, and no woman had done since the 1940s, and no one in her hometown seemed to care, Moss said she began thinking about leaving Des Moines.

When she traveled to Louisville, Ky., to be honored as Churchill Downs’ leading owner in July, Moss, who graduated from the University of Kentucky, said she was overwhelmed by both the respect and the attention she received.

“I hadn’t been to Churchill Downs since I was in college, and that was the first time I personally had gone to the winner’s circle,” she said. “Three races later, a horse called Indian Champ that I own set the track record for six furlongs. People stood on their feet for 10 minutes applauding. It literally brought tears to my eyes. I’d never seen anything like it. It really was magical. I looked around and thought, ‘This has to be someone else. This can’t be for me.'”

So even though she loves Des Moines, her passion for horse racing has made her consider leaving.

“It’s possible I may leave,” she said. “But I would always leave a place here. In Kentucky, from the chairman of the board of Churchill Downs and everybody you meet, they say thank you. Thank you for running your horses here. We love having you here. We really appreciate you spending all this money here in Kentucky. It’s a very different climate.”

Crawford said because Iowa isn’t as steeped in horse racing tradition, people don’t realize what a big accomplishment winning those titles was. Conlin said if Moss were to leave Des Moines, it would be a huge loss for the community.

“I know how frustrating it is for her,” she said.

‘Personality disorder’

Most horse owners across the country have real jobs other than racing, so they hire someone to manage the whole operation, like deciding which horses to buy, where horses are going to run, when they might need vet work and so forth. But that would be just too easy for Moss.

“I’m actually doing all this by myself,” she said. “What I have are the different trainers at different places in the country. It’s a good six, eight, sometimes nine hours a day, constantly looking at charts, results, racing forms, speed numbers, talking to people, watching replays … it’s a full-time job.”

The hope was that doing it herself would give her the opportunity to do things at her own pace, she said.

“I had hoped that it would give me the opportunity to have a life, like go to a movie or read a book,” she said. “That hasn’t happened yet. I can’t seem to do things in between. The more success I’ve been fortunate enough to have, the harder I work. It must be some kind of personality disorder.”

Crawford said Moss just can’t accept defeat, a trait that made her a great trial attorney and has served her well in her new career in horse racing.

“That’s why every time she tells me she isn’t going to compete for the national title again, I kind of cock my head at her,” he said. “I’m just not sure I believe her.”

Moss insists, though, that she isn’t interested.

“I’m not interested in competing for the national championship again,” she said. “It wasn’t much fun. It was just too much work.”

And Moss knows the only way she can keep her head above water with her stable is to run it as a business, which means she won’t be chasing dreams outside her range, like the Kentucky Derby. Perhaps the best horse she ever owned was Peace Rules. She bought the horse for $35,000 and sold it for $350,000. In 2003, it finished third in the Kentucky Derby.

“I don’t even remotely think about winning the Kentucky Derby,” she said. “If you look at the men and even some of the women in this business, they have massive resources. Why would anyone spend $1 million on a horse? As a woman who has worked really hard and has a tremendous appreciation for the dollar, it makes no sense to me to go through $10 million with the hope of getting a horse to the Breeders’ Cup.”

And besides, Moss’ horses are more than just dollar signs to her. As an animal lover who has dedicated a lot of her legal work to animal rights, her horses are truly her companions. In fact, she still owns the first racehorse she ever bought. It is now 14 years old. “The ones that have been with me for a long time are just like my best friends,” she said.

“Right now, she’s as happy as I’ve ever seen her,” Conlin said. “And she deserves every bit of happiness she’s acquired.”

Crawford said it has been fun for him to watch Moss grow in the business.

“I hope she’s had half as much fun doing it as I’ve had watching her do it,” he said.