Kingpins investment has seen a lot within the past year. In September 2018, after flunking out of barrel training, he found himself at a New Jersey auction house known to be frequented by slaughter buyers. That’s where he won the lottery, being purchased by a race trainer with a penchant for rescuing horses.

By May, he was hobnobbing with upper-echelon Thoroughbreds and even befriending a Japanese racehorse.

The trainer who initially bought Kingpins Investment was a friend of Mary Ellet, who had just started looking for a replacement for the aging pony horse she used at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Kentucky. Mary initially thought the gelding had been used at a cattle feedlot – not understanding until later that the word “feedlot” had been used in reference to auction horses who may be slaughter bound – so she decided to take the plunge.

When she got the 4-year-old to Kentucky, there were a few issues that needed attention. He was about 100 pounds underweight; mud fever had caused a crack in the skin on one pastern that made it painful to walk; his hind end seemed weak; and he had edema on his ribs and lower back.

Mary continued with the antibiotics that the gelding had already been started on, and she called in a chiropractor and made sure his saddle and pad fit correctly. And she started riding him.

For Mary, however, riding isn’t just a walk in the park. As she ponies racehorses at Keeneland, the job demands a lot of her horse.

“There are horses galloping, horses leaping all over the place, people yelling,” she says. Add in the commotion and noise of a starting gate, and “for some of (the pony horses), it’s a lot.”

The gelding she now called “Fox” took it all in stride.

“The first time he went up to the gates, he was fine with it,” she says.

Fox puts in about 3 miles a day at the track, where Mary works a shift from 6 to 9 each morning, before going to her office job where she works in equine advertising and marketing.

“He works every day,” she says of Fox.

Just as Fox was settling into his new life, gaining both weight and strength, Mary had an interesting proposition. Her parents have both worked as outriders at Thoroughbred racetracks in California, and her father was friends with someone who facilitated international travel for elite racers.

“One of the guys from U.S. Equine went up to my dad and said, ‘We might have a horse coming into Kentucky from Japan. Where’s Mary at?’ ”

As luck would have it, the horse was going to be training at Keeneland and was in need of a pony horse. Mary got the gig.

Master Fencer arrived at Keeneland four days before the Kentucky Derby, in which he would later place sixth. He continued training at the Kentucky track until it was time for the final leg of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes, where he placed fifth.

It was an amazing experience for Mary, although definitely not your ordinary day on the job.

Translator Mitsuoki Numamoto, who was the Ellet family friend who connected Mary and Fox with the horse from Japan, was on hand to smooth out the language barrier. But still, when Mary and Fox went out on the track with exercise rider Yosuke Kono and Master Fencer, they were on their own.

“The rider did speak a little bit of English – a little bit,” Mary says. “It was a lot of sign language. He did get better, from the very first time that I ponied him to the very end. We knew how to communicate with each other better. I learned a tiny bit of Japanese.

“It was pretty cute. Before I would get there in the mornings, they would practice (English) sentences to say to me.”

It was also interesting to see how Japanese training methods differed from Americans’.

For one thing, the exercise rider, a former show jumper, did some dressage work with Master Fencer to get him rounded up. And in Japan, they don’t use pony horses at all, so Master Fencer was not familiar with the concept.

“Sometimes, when you get a colt next to the pony for the first time, (they ask), ‘Are you a toy? Do I get to bite you?’ ” Mary says. “Master Fencer took right to it, he had zero problem with it. He would try to playfully bite, but it wasn’t aggressive. He was always very, very well behaved with us. He got a little bit excited sometimes, but he always listened and came back down.”

It helped that Fox and Master Fencer had a bro-mance going on.

“They were buddies,” Mary says. While Fox, like many pony horses, can sometimes bite at a racehorse who gets a little too pushy, he was mellow with his new Japanese charge.

“They were definitely friends,” she says. “I think Master Fencer enjoyed the bit of company, because he was in quarantine so long.”

The Japanese-bred racehorse headed home shortly after the Belmont, but Mary intends to stay in contact with her new friends via social media. And there is talk of bringing Master Fencer back to America next year for the Breeders’ Cup, “so there could be a reunion.”

But whether he’s ponying an international jet-setter or a Kentucky-bred blue blood, Fox continues to make Mary proud.

“I knew that he could be a nice horse, I just had to put the time and effort in him. It has been very rewarding to see how far he has come,” the 25-year-old says.

While she was living in California with her family, she relied on family members to help her with horses when she needed it. That wasn’t available in Kentucky.

“This was the first horse that I’ve done everything on my own,” she says. “My parents have never met him.”

And it’s also gratifying to know that he has come so far, after having been in a bad situation.

His barn name reflects that re-emergence.

“Although it’s spelled different, Fawkes is the phoenix from ‘Harry Potter,’ ” Mary says. “Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, this is his second chance.”