page_title: Steve Asmussen
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Steve Asmussen / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: I took photo on Nov. 20, 2008.Billy Hathorn (talk) 00:16, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
context_page_description: Steven Mark Asmussen is an American Thoroughbred racehorse trainer. He is a two-time winner of the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer and was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2016. His horses have won the Breeders' Cup Classic, Preakness Stakes, Belmont Stakes, Breeders' Cup Distaff, Kentucky Oaks and Dubai World Cup.
context_section_description: Asmussen was born in Gettysburg, South Dakota, then moved to Laredo, Texas at age two. His father, Keith, is a retired jockey and his mother Marilyn is a trainer who became the first woman to win a major quarter horse race with Vespero in the 1978 Kansas Futurity. They now operate El Primero Training Center and the Asmussen Horse Center, a breeding and sales operation, both in Laredo. The family was close-knit; Asmussen's grandmother, Helen M. Asmussen, died at the age of eighty-three, on Mother's Day, 2007. Asmussen attended her funeral instead of going to the post position draw for the Preakness Stakes that he later won with Curlin. She had followed every race that her grandsons entered. Keith Asmussen told Tricia Cortez, formerly of the Laredo Morning Times, that his fellow Laredoans do not "have a clue how big Laredo is and has been in the horse industry, and after today, it will be even quadrupled. Some of the best horses have been trained and conditioned in Laredo."
  Steve Asmussen's older brother, Cash Asmussen, currently a trainer himself, is a retired Eclipse Award-winning jockey with championships in Europe as well.
  Asmussen began riding as a jockey at age sixteen, competing for two years at racetracks in New Mexico, California, and New York until his height and weight ended his riding career. "No one would believe me if I didn’t have the pictures to prove it," he said later, having grown to over six feet. "My parents were 5'5" and 5'2". I don’t know what happened."
  Asmussen graduated from United High School in Laredo in 1985. He and his wife, Julie Marie Asmussen, have three sons.
caption: Asmussen Horse and Rider Equipment is located near the intersection of Saunders and the Bob Bullock Loop in eastern Laredo.
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