Born: Dec. 19, 1959, San Antonio, Texas
Residence: Louisville, KY
Family: wife, Cindy; sons Rowdy and Will Clay. Rowdy serves as his assistant trainer.
Education: Attended two years of junior college and one year at Texas Tech University. Cody Lambert, who went on to become a champion bull rider, was his roommate in college.
Racing Background: Second-generation horseman whose father trained Quarter Horses at his family's training center in New Braunfels, Texas. Werner was a state champion bareback rider in high school and rodeoed in college. He began training at age 21 in 1981 after college. Like Hall of Fame Trainers D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert, started his career with Quarter Horses. Werner made the switch to Thoroughbreds in 1998 and gained national attention in 2001 when he saddled five winners from just seven starters at the Keeneland spring meeting. Four of those wins were with 2-year-olds, which have become his forte. Later that same year, Touch Tone nearly pulled the upset in the Haskell Invitational (G1) won by Point Given, later named Horse of the Year. Werner generally splits his time between the Kentucky and New York circuits, but stables at Delaware Park in the summer and now runs a string at Parx Racing, formerly Philadelphia Park, citing better purses and support for locally stabled horsemen. Werner is a hands-on horseman who takes many of his techniques from his experiences training rodeo horses and applies them to his racehorses, teaching them cues and increasingly complex tasks. When one of his horses is nearing a race, Werner will gallop the horse himself, saying "I can tell in three strides what's going on." Currently ranked 30th with earnings of $247,880 in 2011.