Page 132 - April_2023

Justin, Lené, Kaylee, Linda and Mike Joiner.
When seeking a racehorse trainer, every owner looks for that special blend of an exceptional eye for outstanding prospects; top-level training abilities and proven results; superior horsemanship; and great people skills.
But not all owners also include a strong commitment to family priorities on their short list of requirements. Yet that’s what they’ll get with the Joiner family, headed by Mike and
his wife Linda, of Joiner Racing Stables LLC and their full-service offshoot Trinity Farm and Ranch in Asher, Oklahoma.
Although Mike has been a successful trainer since he went out on his own in 1978, he took about a 10-year sabbatical of sorts—shoeing instead of training—from 1990 to 1999 to spend more time with his sons Cody and Justin while they were pursuing high school sports and rodeo careers.
Both sons have worked in the family training operation, which, since it moved last fall from New Mexico to 125 acres with a half-mile race
track in Oklahoma, has been able to expand the family’s capacity for breeding their own mares plus providing mare and foal care, layups and training for the public, and also running a few cattle. Cody, 43, now serves as president of New Mexico Gaming LLC while staying active in racing as an owner, and Justin, 42, manages the farm while Mike and Linda travel the race circuit.
THEIR ROOTS IN RACING
Mike’s interest in racing grew from his maternal grandfather’s passion. B.C. Lawrence, who had a match-race track at his home in Seymour, Texas, took Mike along when he attended races. “I rode my first match race at age 11,” Mike says. “When I graduated from high school, I was living with him and my grandmother, and a year later I went to work for Leo Wood, Blane’s dad, in Lubbock, Texas.”
Linda’s grandfather, Jim Smith, nurtured his family’s horse passion by keeping a horse at his place in Clovis, New Mexico, for his grandkids
Myriam Maynard, Speedhorse
to ride. “I always had a love for horses, although I never dreamed I’d meet and marry a man who was training racehorses,” she says. “I’d been to the races at Lubbock Downs one time around 1967 and that’s really the extent of my racing background.”
During and after high school, Linda worked for several ophthalmologists in Lubbock and
in 1977 she met Mike at Cold Water Country, a country and western dance bar there. “That next spring, Mike started training horses on his own at Raton, New Mexico,” she says. “I visited him there occasionally; we had a short little courtship and married in August 1978.”
THE COUPLE’S GOALS
Early on, like most Quarter Horse trainers in
the racing industry, Mike wanted to win the All American Futurity. “I still haven’t done that,” he says, although it seems to be the only race he hasn’t won.
And although Linda’s intention was to carry on where she started in the ophthalmology field, she realized that to keep her family functioning,
130 SPEEDHORSE April 2023