The jockey is a new mom. The trainer is a novice. A $1.5 million race awaits.

When Awesome Treat won Ellis Park’s $250,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Ladies Sprint, the 6-year-old mare provided more than just a victory and a cut of the $152,500 in purse earnings for Lexington jockey Sophie Doyle and trainer Justin Wojczynski.

For Doyle, it was her first stakes victory since she had her daughter Emilie in July 2022. For Wojczynski, it was the biggest victory in a young training career spanning only 135 starts.

Awesome Treat gave them something else: the opportunity to run in Saturday’s $1.5 million, Grade 2 Exacta Systems Ladies Turf Sprint at Kentucky Downs. That’s America’s richest turf sprint for fillies and mares, regardless whether the horse is a Kentucky-bred such as Awesome Treat and runs for the entire $1.5 million or others running for the $900,000 base purse.

“When you’ve ridden at the top of the game, and to go and have a baby and make a decision to come back again, I felt like until I actually won a stakes of that caliber, a race like that was always missing,” Doyle, winner of the Grade 1 Cotillion aboard Street Band in 2019, said of taking the Aug. 3 Ellis prep at 25-1 odds. “You want to come back and not just be floating around to ride. To win a nice race like that meant a lot for my career and my family, and the fact I had an opportunity from Justin and the owners to ride a nice horse like Awesome Treat again. It was a really great feeling. And I’m very grateful to have another opportunity again this week with Awesome Treat at Kentucky Downs.”

“That’s certainly something people notice and see,” Wojczynski said of both the prep victory and now running in the Kentucky Downs stakes. “To win a race like that is big on a lot of fronts. People see you can do it. Winning races is fun. Winning big races is fantastic. As far as racehorses, we’ve got about seven or eight. To have a horse in the spotlight like that is a big deal for us, for sure. For an ultra-small racing stable, that’s a real big deal.”

Proof Doyle is back

Awesome Treat is 20-1 in a wide-open race in which Spendthrift Farm’s Ruby Nell is the 7-2 favorite as the multiple graded-stakes winner ships in from Hall of Famer Richard Mandella’s California stable. But consider that in her only two turf starts in Kentucky, Awesome Treat paid $52 and $105.78 (a Keeneland allowance in the spring) to win.

Doyle, who is engaged to Emilie’s father, trainer Chris Davis, said the victory — Awesome Treat came up the rail to nail the talented Red Carpet Ready at the wire — proved to herself and horsemen she was back.

“Especially, you hate (hearing), ‘You’re a woman and you had a baby’ and everybody thinks you’re going to be out there riding with your head in a different spot than most of the riders out there,” said Doyle, who resumed riding in April. “It’s nice that people are putting their trust in you and know that you can get the job done if you have the tools underneath you.”

The British-born and -raised Doyle said she’s Mum to Emilie until she gets the leg up on a horse in the paddock — and even then she’ll wave in the post parade to her cheering daughter. But after that, she’s Sophie Doyle, race-rider, until the horse comes back to be unsaddled.

“As soon as she’s out of sight, I go straight into jockey mode,” she said. “My mind is all about what goes on in the race, how we’re going to break, what our position is going to be. And I really ride the same as I did before. I still ride as aggressive, still want to win as much as anybody else out there.

“After I come back and get off the horse, I’m done talking to the trainer and the owners, then I go back into Mum mode.”

However, Doyle acknowledged that motherhood has changed her priorities off the racetrack.

“I don’t put as much pressure on myself right now,” she said. “I’ve got so much going on that I really don’t have much time to get stressed out about horses, if I ride them or don’t ride them. If one of the top riders like Jose Ortiz or Luis Saez or Tyler Gaffalione was on Awesome Treat, I’d be like, ‘I wish you the best of luck.’ There would be no malice or ‘why didn’t they keep me on the horse?’ I’m very grateful if the opportunity happens. And if it doesn’t and the horse goes on to somebody else, I wouldn’t get mad. It’s not like I wouldn’t care. I just don’t get stressed about it. I still have my daughter to hang out with today.”

‘A well-rounded education through work’

Wojczynski, 40, began training in 2020. He’s having a breakout season with his small string. His seasonal record of 7-5-2 in 38 starts, with earnings of $394,909, might not even be a good week for a trainer such as Steve Asmussen. But it reflects a stable that’s taking root, and numbers don’t necessarily reflect ability and horsemanship.

While Wojczynski has been training racehorses for only a few years, he has been in the industry and around top horse people since graduating from Michigan State.

“I think my parents thought I should be a veterinarian, and I didn’t think that was going to be for me,” he said. “So I took an internship down here in Lexington and I’ve gone from job to job learning about different things. I tried to soak up a lot of different aspects and get a well-rounded education through work.”

Work took Wojczynski to Lane’s End and Pin Oak Stud farms, then to the track as an assistant to trainer Rusty Arnold. He got into the sales and sales-prep world with Ciaran Dunne in Ocala, Florida, and Cary Frommer in South Carolina.

When he and his wife, Gemma Freeman, had their daughter Elodie in 2018, Wojczynski moved back to Kentucky full-time and with Freeman established White Pine Thoroughbreds. In addition to having racehorses for his own clients, he gets other trainers’ young horses ready to go to the track and older horses ready to return off layoffs at The Thoroughbred Center training facility. Additional work with babies and racehorses getting time off is done at their farm north of Lexington.

Wojczynski continues to buy and develop a few young horses for resale. Indeed, his training career started mainly with horses that didn’t get sold. Wojczynski caught a break when a trainer who didn’t have any extra stall space recommended him to Ricky and Kim Sikand, owners of Awesome Treat.

Awesome Treat has split her season between Woodbine, where she’s with trainer Steve Attard, and in Kentucky with Wojczynski. Between winning that Keeneland allowance race and the Ellis prep, the mare ran in three Group 3 races in Canada, her best finish a fourth over Woodbine’s synthetic course. She pretty much had to win the Ellis Park automatic qualifier — her first stakes victory — to make the field at Kentucky Downs with a fees-paid spot.

“She’d done really well leading up to that, had run a good race at Woodbine and she came back and was really fresh,” Wojczynski said of his first stakes victory. “She was really on her game in the receiving barn at Ellis. We thought maybe she had it in her that day. Got a good patient ride and got lucky a little bit with the rail opening up — and Sophie and Awesome Treat did the rest.”

Wojczynski thinks the extra furlong, and particularly Kentucky Downs’ long stretch, will work in Awesome Treat’s favor.

“She’s really a large horse, a big imposing mare,” he said. “At Ellis, I think going around that big turn was beneficial to her. And I think the same will be with the turn at Kentucky Downs and that big stretch. Once she uncorks herself and starts running, she’s got a nice turn of foot and she just keeps going. She’s all heart and all racehorse.”

Six women jockeys have ridden in the Kentucky Derby. She wants to be the seventh.