Jack Banitt's first training win almost wasn't

Jack Banitt watched the photo finish at Running Aces on May 25, 2025, and braced himself for a loss.

Sullenberger, a pacer by Jeremes Jet and the first horse Banitt trained on his own, had gone off at 2-1 co-choice from post 5 with Brady Jenson in the bike. The race came down to the wire so tight that Banitt, standing near the track in Columbus, Minn., was sure he’d come up short.

He told Harness Racing Update, “I honestly thought he just got beat. From where I was, it
was so close and I felt he just got beat by the smallest of margins.”

He hadn’t. Sullenberger got the nod, and Banitt had his first career training win.

Friends and family had made the trip out that day, and having them there made the moment land harder. It wasn’t just a first win, either. Banitt has since said it proved to himself that he could actually do this, and that it felt good to finally get that particular weight off his shoulders after wondering, like every young trainer does at some point, whether he had what it took.

Banitt’s path to that photo finish started long before he had his own stable. He grew up in Cannon Falls, Minn., and got into harness racing through his father’s side of the family. Around age 10 he started tagging along with his cousin, trainer Justin Anfinson, cleaning stalls and jogging horses at his great-uncle’s farm. It was the kind of introduction plenty of horsemen have had, years of unglamorous work before any of it pays off, the sort of grounding that makes a first training win mean more than a number in a program.

He went out on his own as a trainer in 2025, and the results were modest by design. Twenty-eight starts produced three wins, all of them with Sullenberger, along with 15 top-three finishes and $63,716 in purse earnings. For a first-year trainer building a stable from a single horse, that’s a foundation, not a headline number, and Banitt has treated it that way rather than rushing to expand before he was ready.

The barn has grown since. Banitt now has eight horses in training, including Wundrfoal, a two-year-old filly who ran second at 49-1 in the Night of Champions two-year-old filly trot at Running Aces, a result that punched well above her odds. He’s also added Beachys Mistress, an eight-time winner brought into the stable in July 2026. Between a promising freshman filly and a proven, race-tested mare, Banitt’s barn looks nothing like the one-horse operation it was in May 2025.

He’s not done adding to it. Banitt’s goal is to build the stable out to 12 horses, and he’s still chasing a milestone that’s eluded him so far: a final. For a trainer who got his first win by the width of a photo, patience seems to be part of how he operates, one horse and one target at a time.

 

by Harnesslink Media