SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Entering 1997, Bill Mott was coming off a year in which he guided Cigar to a second straight Horse of the Year title, won his second straight Eclipse Award as leading trainer, and won the fourth of his nine Saratoga training titles. Todd Pletcher was about to start his second full year of training. Chad Brown was 18 years old. Over the last two decades, Pletcher has become the all-time leading trainer in purse money won, and Brown has developed one of the top barns in the country. Mott, 64, in his words, “just keeps plugging along.” Last Saturday, Mott won his third Alabama Stakes with Elate, a filly who back in January Mott pegged as a one who could win that race. This Saturday, Mott will attempt to win his first Travers Stakes when he sends out Jim Dandy Stakes winner Good Samaritan in what appears to be a wide-open 12-horse field for Saratoga’s marquee race. Mott will attempt to become the fifth trainer in the last 45 years to win the Alabama and Travers in the same year. “Nothing could be much more meaningful to me than winning the Alabama and the Travers,” Mott said Saturday after Elate’s 5 1/2-length victory in the Alabama. “Those are major races. It’s where we race right now. We’re predominantly in New York, and I think they’re two of the more important races on the schedule in Saratoga. This is what everybody’s looking at right now.” Standing in the way of Mott’s first Travers win will be Pletcher and Brown. Pletcher will send out Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming and Belmont Stakes winner Tapwrit. Brown will send out Preakness winner Cloud Computing. “We respect all the competition, but I wouldn’t trade places with anybody right now,” Mott said Sunday after Good Samaritan breezed five furlongs in 1:01.67 over the Oklahoma training track. Over a 25-year period from 1992 to 2007, Mott was a nine-time leading trainer at Saratoga, winning a personal-best 27 races at the 2007 meet. Over the last nine years, Pletcher has won six Saratoga titles – giving him 12 overall – while Brown set a single-meet record by winning 40 races and his first title last summer. “These other guys do a great job with their horses. They place them well,” Mott said. “Maybe they’ve adjusted a little bit more. The game’s a little bit different than it was. You got a lot of partnerships, and they’re popular; they have a high winning percentage. It’s nice to have a high winning percentage, but it’s not my main goal. Would I like to be 25 percent? Sure, but I’m probably not going to be because I run horses sometimes maybe where they shouldn’t run.” Mott is competing with Pletcher and Brown not only on the track but also for the favor of owners. WinStar Farm, which owns Good Samaritan, has horses with Pletcher. Mott trains for Juddmonte Farms, for which he trained 2014 champion older filly Close Hatches. Brown also trains for Juddmonte and in recent years was given the top turf horses Flintshire and Time Test, the former voted the champion turf male of 2016. “I was slightly surprised about the change, but I still have horses for them,” Mott said. “I had Grade 1 winners for them and a champion, but I guess Chad’s got a big win percentage, and perhaps that’s what they’re looking at. I don’t know what goes into the equation other than he’s doing quite well.” Mott said his goal is to be among the top 10 trainers in purse money won annually. According to Equibase, Mott has indeed been in the top 10 in that category in 16 of the past 17 years. “Doesn’t matter if I’m second, third, or ninth,” Mott said. “I figured if I could stay in the top 10, I’m still in the game, and we’ve done that for I don’t know how many number of years.” For his career, Mott ranks fifth all time in purse money won with $259,745,593, and his 4,767 victories are eighth all time. By year’s end, he likely will pass D. Wayne Lukas, who has 4,786 career wins. “The true test of a champion is the test of time,” Mott said, “whether it’s a horse or a person or whatever. If you can consistently do it, I think it’s important.” In Good Samaritan, Mott has the chance to win his first Travers. He has run seven horses in six runnings, finishing second in 1999 with Vision and Verse and in 2009 with Hold Me Back. Good Samaritan was Mott’s fourth Jim Dandy winner. Good Samaritan had never run on dirt before the Jim Dandy. Good Samaritan was pre-entered in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and Juvenile Turf, but his connections opted to stick with the turf. Had he not come out of a third-place finish in that race with an ankle chip, he might have run on dirt in late November. In the Jim Dandy, Good Samaritan rallied from last and beat, among others, Always Dreaming and Cloud Computing, who were third and fifth. “Frankly, I didn’t know what kind of race to expect when we put him on the dirt for the first time,” Mott said. “It was something we wanted to and we needed to do, No. 1, to get our horse on the dirt and show he can handle that and beat top horses and looking down the road at him being a stallion prospect. We like the way he’s going, and we respect all the competition, but I wouldn’t trade places with anybody right now.”