“Good shoes take you to good places” is an axiom that nails it (pun intended) when it comes to horseshoes and Thoroughbred horses. Shoes can be a factor in who makes it into horse racing’s most desired place: the winner’s circle.
“You can’t make them run faster, but you can make them move as fast as they can,” said Frankie Gaurneri, a farrier for 38 years on racetracks in Kentucky and elsewhere.
You could probably guess that Guarneri’s shoeing method involves far more than just nailing “racing plates”—aluminum horseshoes—to the horse’s hooves. Balance is at the top of the list for maximizing running performance, according to Guarneri. Surprisingly, every horse has plenty of imbalance to overcome.
Horses’ hooves aren’t like our feet, which—with a few exceptions—are the same size. The four hooves on the same horse can be different sizes and shapes and vary in length and width. For instance, back hooves grow faster than front hooves. It is common for a heel on a front hoof not to match the heel on the other front hoof, or for one hoof to have a longer toe that must be trimmed to match the other front hoof, according to Guarneri. “You have to trim more toe on one hoof and more heel off the other hoof to get them both level and matching,” he said.
An accomplished farrier such as Guarneri can look at a horse and see the straightness of the legs and direction of the hooves as the horse walks. Many horses toe in, with hooves pointing in under the horse, or toe out, their hooves pointing away from the horse. “When they toe in, you’ve got more foot on the inside. You have to take that extra foot off to balance the hoof,” Guarneri said. The reverse is done when a horse toes out.
Guarneri can counter a conformation defect with how he trims a hoof and the amount he trims. He can remedy imbalance with horseshoes that are a full circle, rather than u-shaped. Extensions and built-in supports in shoes can offset or correct any issue a horse may have. Guarneri and other farriers know which plate can accomplish what outcome.
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In 1946, Triple Crown winner Assault ran with a hoof that earned him the nickname “Club Foot Comet.” It came from a birth defect that resulted in an abnormally upright hoof. The horse’s farrier would have performed corrective trimming to overcome the abnormality when Assault got his first shoes, according to Guarneri. “Trimming the hoof from the ‘quarters’ [sides] of the hoof back to the heel will make that heel drop,” he said.
The outcome is a horse that still can run. Assault is perhaps the most famous example of club foot correction.
The knowledge required to analyze the needs of each horse and make the right decision on how to trim the hoof and fit a shoe exactly to its shape isn’t necessarily handed down from one generation to another.
A New Orleans native, Guarneri went to the late Bud Beaston’s Horseshoeing School in Oklahoma, when physical growth derailed his career as a jockey before it could begin. “[The school] had eight-week classes, but I went five or six months when I was 17,” Guarneri said. “I figured I’d go the longest to shoe more horses and learn more.”
An apprenticeship under farrier Russell Rogers followed. It returned Guarneri to his hometown, where Rogers shoed horses at the Fair Grounds Race Course. This is where things “took off,” said Guarneri.
It was a first step to landing in Kentucky, Guarneri’s home base since 1999. Rogers was farrier for Louisville-based trainer Forrest Kaelin, who had taken horses to New Orleans from Kentucky for a race meet. Rogers decided to put Guarneri on Kaelin’s horses, telling the well-respected trainer, “Let him do the work. If he has any problems, I’ll come help.” Rogers never was needed.
The Fair Grounds put Guarneri in the right place at the right time when Mike Maker, an assistant to the late trainer D. Wayne Lukas at the time, needed a shoe fixed. A good job by Guarneri led to shoeing for the legendary Lukas in New Orleans. “I thought I’d just do Wayne’s horses in New Orleans, but he brought me with him up to Kentucky,” Guarneri said.
One of Guarneri’s first experiences with Lukas in Kentucky occurred two weeks before the 1999 Derby with a horse named Charismatic, who had been shipped from California to run in the Lexington Stakes at Keeneland. After finishing first in the Lexington Stakes, Charismatic went on to win the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, the first and second jewels in racing’s Triple Crown.
Over time, Lukas’ trust and confidence in Guarneri’s work had the Hall of Fame trainer flying the farrier to racetracks across the country. “I’d do 22 horses one day and 22 the next at Delaware Park,” Guarneri recalled. Today, the 56-year-old farrier shoes eight to 10 horses daily.
An internet search suggests that it usually takes 45 minutes to an hour to shoe a Thoroughbred. Guarneri does it in 25-30 minutes “depending on how good the horse stands. Each hoof will take me eight to 10 minutes,” he said.
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For humans who “break in” new shoes, it may come as a surprise that a Kentucky Derby starter such as American Promise—Lukas’ final Derby horse, who ran for the roses in 2025—and all starters get new shoes the day of a big race or a day or two before. Guarneri prefers to shoe horses the day before a race in case a horse is skittish and needs another day to get calm.
The process of shoeing an 1,100-pound animal requires a combination of strength, skill, a strong back and courage. With American Promise, Guarneri lifted the horse’s left front leg and flexed the knee back toward him to have the hoof facing upward. He used a pliers-like tool to pull old nails out, and used a rasp on the hoof bottom and toe to trim excess growth. He then retrieved a new shoe from the hundreds in his truck and held it against the hoof to match it to the hoof’s shape. He tapped the shoe on the outside edges with a hammer to change its shape, holding it each time against the hoof for an exact fit. Finally, he nailed on the new shoe.
If you’re wondering about pain or any sensation for the horse: The hoof wall is like a human fingernail—there’s no feeling when you clip them.
And for the record: Farriers are not blacksmiths. Blacksmiths work with metals. Farriers work only with horses.
As it is for all farriers, job security for Guarneri is the wear on horseshoes. The source of wear is not where you might think it would be. It is not where the hoof hits the track surface while the horse is running but what happens after it hits. The hoof slides briefly along with the lowest section of a horse’s leg, the pastern, that flexes down to the racing surface. It’s no wonder that new shoes are needed monthly, on average, except in the winter when hooves grow more slowly.
Horses can run “barefoot” or “barehoof,” but hoof protection has been around for a long time. In 1897, four bronze horseshoes, complete with nail holes, were found in a tomb in Etruria (present-day central Italy) dating to 400 BCE.
In 1751, the book No Foot, No Horse by Jeremiah Bridges was published in London. It emphasized the importance of hoof health. You’ll still hear the phrase “no foot, no horse” uttered by racetrackers everywhere … maybe along with the sound of a farrier’s hammer.