Jack Van Berg, a thoroughbred trainer who earned the sport's highest honors, died Wednesday in Little Rock.
Van Berg, 81, had been hospitalized at Baptist Medical Center with complications from cancer.
Born John Charles Van Berg on June 7, 1936, in Columbus, Neb., he was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1985, a year after he was presented the Eclipse Award as Outstanding Trainer.
His 6,523 career victories rank fourth among trainers in North America, according to Equibase. He had career purse earnings of $85,925,482 and often said his career highlights were led by champion horses Alysheba and Gate Dancer.
"Nothing came close to those two," Van Berg said at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs in 2016.
Alysheba, under Van Berg's direction, won the 1987 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes but fell short of the Triple Crown with a fourth-place finish in the Belmont Stakes.
Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times interviewed Van Berg on the 10-year anniversary of the Belmont loss and asked Van Berg if he still thought about the race.
"Do I still think about that race? Sure I think about it," Van Berg said. "So does my banker. He has nightmares."
Van Berg continued to have plenty of success. Gate Dancer won the 1984 Preakness and in 1988, Alysheba won the Breeders' Cup Classic and the Eclipse Award as Horse of the Year.
Van Berg was one of the first trainers to keep barns at multiple locations around the country. His early racing days were spent mostly in Nebraska, but his main barn was at Hollywood Park in the mid-1980s.
Van Berg moved his base of operation to Oaklawn in December 2013 when Hollywood Park closed.
"I just think it's a pathetic thing," he told the Los Angeles Times. "It's ridiculous to let something like this that so many people love and thrive on close. They did everything they could to kill racing. I've had enough. I don't like California racing anymore."
After moving to Arkansas, his earnings increased each year, from $140,690 in 2013 to $1,223,503 this year, his highest total since 1997.
"He was a guy who was always trying," said trainer Tom Howard, who has horses stabled at Oaklawn for the 2018 season. "He tried right to the very end. It seemed like a couple of years ago, he caught a good, deep breath, and things were coming around for him."
Long-time Oaklawn trainer Randy Morse said he had known Van Berg since the 1960s, when Morse was a child and his father, Charlie Morse, had a barn next to Van Berg's at Ak-Sar-Ben Race Track in Omaha, Neb. (Ak-Sar-Ben is Nebraska spelled backwards.)
Van Berg followed his father, Hall of Famer Marion Van Berg, into horse training and trained his first winner at Ak-Sar-Ben in 1957.
"They dominated racing in Nebraska and pretty much everywhere, but especially in Nebraska," Randy Morse said.
Jack Van Berg is survived by a son, Tom, and daughters Tracy, Tori and Tammy. Another son, Tim, died earlier this year.
Sports on 12/28/2017