BY CYNTHIA MCFARLAND

A movie script writer couldn’t have crafted a better finale.

When the hammer dropped on the $3 million Gunner Runner colt at the 2025 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company March sale, it was fitting recognition of a man who has been one of the leading consignors of 2-year-olds for the past quarter century.

A favorite on the sale grounds, the colt had captured attention with a blazing fast eighth work in :9.60, but even Eddie Woods, the colt’s trainer and consignor, was pleasantly surprised when Donato Lanni as agent for Zedan Racing, secured the final bid at $3 million, an all-time OBS record.

Surrounded by reporters and fellow horsemen offering heartfelt congratulations, Woods was emotional. Not only did he sell a record-breaking horse, but he did so in his backyard at the sales ground where he’s been active for 31 years. Adding to the impact was the knowledge that he would only hang his consignment boards at one more sale.

After hundreds of stakes winners, multiple Eclipse champions and decades in the industry, Eddie Woods has announced that the 2025 OBS Spring Sale will be his final consignment. 

As of April 10, 2025, Eddie Woods currently ranks second among Leading Consignors of 2-year-olds for 2025 North America Sales, having sold 19 head for a gross of $6,448,500.

 

Irish-Born and Bred 

Born in 1958 and raised in Meath, Ireland, Woods grew up in a family where horses were front and center. His father, Paddy Woods, was a steeplechase jockey turned trainer, so it was no surprise when young Eddie took up the mantle.

“I started as a steeplechase jockey when I was 15 and rode in Ireland and England until I was almost 28,” Woods said.

By the mid-1980s, times were changing in Ireland as wealthy international owners bought up property around the family farm. Woods was ready to head for America and try his hand in the Thoroughbred industry there.

He arrived in Ocala in 1986 and immediately sought a farm position but had no background with the breeding end of the business, as his horse experience was all race related.  

Woods was hired at Cashel Stud, but the former jockey soon realized working with mares and foals was too slow paced for him. Fortunately, an old family connection provided the solution and only a few weeks later he was working at Tony and Joanne Everard’s Another Episode Training Center.

“My parents had been friends with Tony Everard since childhood; they grew up together,” Woods said. “At the time, Tony was taking consignments to Miami and needed help on the farm while he was gone. I went there and stayed working with him and Joanne for about eight years.”

Woods admits coming to Ocala from Ireland was a bit of a culture shock. 

“It’s a different ball game here with training, even though we had flat horses at home. The biggest things were the dirt and the turns. At that time, all racing at home was on turf. We trained on other surfaces, but only raced on grass,” Woods said.

As he worked for the Everards learning the ins and outs of training horses and juvenile consignments, there was no question in Woods’ mind that this was the direction he wanted to pursue.

“In 1993, I got fortunate to meet Bobby Spalding (farm manager of Elmendorf Farm in Lexington) at the Keeneland November Sale. He was looking for someone to train the Elmendorf horses in Florida,” Woods said. 

It was the opportunity Woods needed to go out on his own. Before the year ended, he’d rented a barn in the 700-acre Classic Mile Park training center in Ocala.

“I rented one barn before the end of 1993, and it was full. Shortly after that I needed another one. To begin with, it was all Elmendorf horses, but it gradually expanded,” he noted.

“Joe Greeley, who owned Sabine Stables, came over to Classic Mile one day during the winter of ‘93-‘94 and asked if I’d like to help him buy some yearlings to go to the 2-year-old sales. He had his own farm to train them, and they’d come to me to get finished up and I’d consign them for the sales. Bob Kelly partnered with him. We bought a horse at Saratoga and several at the Keeneland September Sale. They gave me an opportunity to buy some quality horses,” Woods said.

He took his first 2-year-old consignment in his own name to OBS in April 1994 for the Spring Sale. He couldn’t have known it then, but it was the start of a legacy.

Woods continued leasing barns at Classic Mile until 1996, when he moved to Post Time Training Center with 70 to 80 horses, but his client base continued to expand.

Also among his clients at the time were Dennis Foster and Bob Leonard.

“Bob wanted to buy some land with rolling hills because he liked his horses to trail uphill,” recalled Woods, who had been training out of Post Time for about three years when Foster and Leonard bought a 414-acre piece of property on Highway 40 west of Ocala.

“The same day they bought that property in 2000, I bought 240 acres off them,” Woods said.

Woods finally had the land to develop an operation tailored to his specifications, which is exactly what he did. Eddie Woods Stables grew to six barns with a total of 196 stalls, 41 paddocks, multiple round pens, a one-mile mile dirt track and seven-furlong turf course.

 

Making an Impact

From the late 1990s all the way through 2024, Eddie Woods consistently ranked among the leading consignors of 2-year-olds in North America.

Woods can’t name a favorite out of the many horses that have come through his barns and gone on to success at the track. He does admit that the “firsts” are always the most memorable. There are several equine stars in his earlier years who helped establish Woods in the upper echelon of training and two-year-old sales. 

“I feel things grew because of them,” Woods said of such standout graduates as Left Bank, 2002 champion older horse; Midnight Lute, 2007 champion sprinter and winner of the 2007 and 2008 Breeders’ Cup Sprint (G1); Big Brown, 2008 Kentucky Derby (G1) and Preakness Stakes (G1) winner and 2008 3-Year-Old colt Eclipse champion; Lady Eli, 2017 turf female Eclipse champion and winner of the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1); Spring in the Air, Grade 1 winner in the United States and 2012 champion 2-year-old filly in Canada; and Union Rags, multiple graded stakes winner, including the 2012 Belmont Stakes (G1) and later, a successful sire.

 

 

Numbers Don’t Lie

Woods’ program has produced hundreds of stakes winners, both from horses that have gone through his training program and/or his consignments. 

In 2002, Eddie Woods was the leading consignor of Grade 1 winners in North America. From 2015 through 2018, Woods ranked #1 among leading consignors of two-year-olds for North American sales. In 2024, he ranked fourth among leading juvenile consignors, having sold 49 head for a total of $10,060,500. 

At the 2024 Eclipse Awards program this past January, two of Woods’ training grads were recognized with championship honors as Citizen Bull was named champion 2-year-old male, and National Treasure was named champion older dirt male. 

Eddie Woods has been an OBS shareholder since 1998 and a board member since 2000.

“It was a great moment when the Gun Runner colt topped the OBS March 2025 Sale at a record-breaking price of $3 million under the Eddie Woods banner. What a way to put an exclamation point on a great career. Now, let’s hope the horse becomes a star on the racetrack,” OBS President Tom Ventura said.

“Eddie has earned the trust and respect of owners, trainers and horsemen from all over the world. His horsemanship is unparalleled and his honest and straightforward approach is appreciated by all those that rely on his opinion,” Ventura said.

“The quality of horses that the Eddie Woods team has sold at OBS has helped propel us to be the leading source of 2-year-olds in training in the world. We are thankful for all his contributions to OBS and will continue to lean on him in the future for his insight and perspective,” he added.

 

 

Sales and races

Woods’ remarkable success as a trainer and consignor have resulted both from horses purchased specifically for sales and from horses trained for clients who race.

Whether he’s working with pinhooks or homebreds, Woods always has high hopes for quality horses with good pedigrees.

“We’ve had some great clients who’ve sent us hand-picked horses,” he said.

 

Solid Connections

It’s often said, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” In Woods’ case, it happens to be both. He is the first to say that his connections with good people in the industry through the years have been instrumental in his success. This also applies to running his own farm where he’s been blessed to have a core group of employees who have worked with him from the beginning.

“We’ve been fortunate to have really good staff, who are the backbone of our operation. We’ve had the same vet, Bill Russell, from the get-go,” Woods said.

Woods and his first wife, Gayle, divorced long ago. Their son David is also involved in the racing industry and works with FanDuel Sports Network.

In 2001, Woods met Angela Mellerick, who’d apprenticed at Highclere with hopes of being a jockey. 

“She came to the U.S. from England to teach summer camps, worked for some steeplechase trainers in Aiken and ended up in Kentucky, which is where we met. We’ve been together a long time and got married in 2018,” Woods said.

“Angela had her own successful business in Kentucky. She’d leased two broodmare farms where she prepped yearlings for prominent operations and had mares for multiple clients. We had a long-distance relationship for a while, and she gave up her business to come down here to Ocala. It was a huge move on her part,” acknowledged Woods.

He appreciates Angela’s knowledge and horsemanship, noting that she plays a significant role in every aspect of the operation, especially when it comes to buying and selling at the sales.

“She’s a fabulous judge of a horse and an extremely hard worker—at the sales and at home on the farm. She’s part of this seven days a week,” says Woods, who values Angela’s input and level-headed approach—to business and life.

 

Swan Song

Woods has made it clear that the 2025 OBS Spring sale is his last venture as a consignor, but simply walking away from the industry isn’t the kind of retirement Woods envisions. 

“I plan on still being involved. People have approached me about doing some consulting and I may partner up on a few horses,” he said.

Travel is a passion that had to take a backseat due to the demands of training and prepping sale horses, but it’s definitely on the agenda going forward.

“Now we can have time to do things we couldn’t afford to do when we were younger. We plan to travel and see some of the world,” Woods said.

This fall, Eddie and Angela will head out on a three-week adventure that will take them across northern Australia, Papua New Guinea, and wrap up on the stunning beaches of Bali.

Among the 38 horses he’s entered in this Spring sale, he doesn’t anticipate another record-breaking sale topper like the $3 million colt in March but is confident he’s brought a solid group of horses. No doubt, some of these will add to his expanding list of stakes-winning graduates.

“I never wanted to do anything else,” he says simply of his life’s work over the past four decades.

Not many people can say with conviction that they wouldn’t have chosen another path in life. Eddie Woods is one of the few who can.

 

Return to the April 15 issue of Wire to Wire