Trainer Marty Drexler Steps Away, Cites Impossible Conditions To Profit

Marty Drexler built hundreds of winners out of his Woodbine barn over more than two decades. He will not be setting that barn up again this spring.

Drexler, Canada's second-leading trainer of 2025 and a Sovereign Award finalist for Outstanding Trainer, announced he will step away from training at the end of March 2026 after starting his final horse at Gulfstream Park in Florida in April. He plans to take the remainder of 2026 off and has not committed to returning to the sport after that.

"I'm taking some time off," Drexler said. "It's a combination of things; the financials of the game make it impossible to make money, and I'm tired. I feel like I haven't had the drive I need to have to do it at the level I want to."

The numbers behind that frustration are stark. Drexler charges $110 per day per horse, a rate that has climbed only 15 to 20 percent over 15 years. Everything else, he said, has gone up 75 percent. His weekly payroll for staff alone ran upwards of $25,000. His horses earned roughly $3.5 million in 2025, a figure that, in theory, would translate to $350,000 in trainer commissions at the standard 10 percent cut. In practice, daily out-of-pocket cash outlays for last-minute supplies or staff, money that often goes unreplaced, erode whatever that arithmetic suggests.

"I think I can speak for every trainer; for what we charge for a day rate versus the costs of the real world (supplies, staff, etc.), it doesn't add up," Drexler said. "My day rate ($110) has gone up about 15 or 20 percent in 15 years, but everything else has gone up 75 percent."

He was particularly pointed about one segment of the business: "The business model, in particular in the claiming game, has fallen apart."

Drexler said he had been thinking about leaving training since last year. His career began in 2002, and he moved from Assiniboia Downs in Winnipeg in 2008 before working his way up the trainer ranks at Woodbine. His highest-earning year came in 2024, when his horses pushed just past $4 million in purse earnings. Since relocating to South Florida, he has posted eight wins from 58 starts at Gulfstream Park.

Rather than have his staff prepare his Woodbine stall for the upcoming meet, Drexler will return to Ontario to weigh his next steps. He praised his owners for their support and acknowledged the financial strain extends beyond his own operation: it is, he said, just as hard for owners to make money in the current environment.

Whether Drexler returns to training in 2027 or beyond remains an open question, and one he has not answered for himself yet. For a trainer whose Woodbine barn produced hundreds of winners, his exit frames a quiet but pointed indictment of the economics facing Canadian horsemen at every level of the game.