Jinks Fires will finally saddle a starter in the Kentucky Derby

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — On April 16, he won the Arkansas Derby with a horse named Archarcharch. Until then, he had never won a Grade 1 stakes race anywhere during his five decades at the race track. Now his phone is ringing off the hook. Now everybody knows his name. On Saturday, he will send the best colt he ever trained to the post for the Kentucky Derby.
At age 70, William “Jinks” Fires has become an overnight sensation.
“You know,” he said Monday, “there has to be a thousand horsemen like me out there ... good horsemen, who just never have had the big horse in their barn and probably never will. But they can train. They work just as hard, and maybe even harder, than the guys with the big names and the high-priced horses because they have to hold cheap claimers together just to make a living.
“I know. I been there and, believe me, that’s a lot harder than training those high-priced colts the millionaire owners send their guys.”
So this is a guy who worked like hell for everything he got and once had to start all over again, but was strong enough because the things that shaped him never once let Jinks Fires forget who he was.
Start with a tiny corner of northeast Arkansas around Leachville, in Mississippi County, light years away from the bluegrass and the mint juleps and the glamour and the sound of “My Old Kentucky Home” on Derby Day. His father was a farmer, but the land seemed to fight him for everything it yielded.
He raised some corn and soy and cotton and later there were a few cows; everybody worked. There were 11 kids and most of them eventually had something to do with horses. Brother Earlie is a Hall of Fame jockey. Jinks’ son-in-law, Jon Court, is the jockey of Archarcharch.
“We got our high school in, but it was a tough life,” Jinks said. “After school, an older brother, Buddy, and I rode out to herd whatever cows had strayed, and by the time we drove them home it would be dark and then we’d have to milk them.
“We never missed any meals, but we ate an awful lot of corn.”
His work ethic was so intense it almost seems genetic. Then he went out and rodeoed down a long, lonesome road ... from as nearby as Manila, Ark., to as far away as Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky and even Wisconsin ... broncs and bulls and barely enough prize money to get you to the next town.
“In 1959, I was riding in west Memphis and a fella, who had seen me ride, called and asked if I would go out to his farm and break some yearlings for him. I did, and when they left so did I — right along with them to Oaklawn Race Track. Except for the Korean War, I never left the horses.”
In 1966, he got his trainer’s license and worked Oaklawn and Churchill Downs. He is probably the trainer with the longevity record at the Downs.