Derby Watch: Halcyon days for loaded Pletcher barn

Except for the college basketball teams at Villanova and Notre Dame, no one has had a better spring than trainer Todd Pletcher, who has shrewdly plotted the placement of his 3-year-olds to knock off three of the biggest final-round Kentucky Derby preps in this country and will seek a fourth on Saturday in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby with Magnum Moon.

Pletcher last week won the Wood Memorial with Vino Rosso and in prior weeks took the Florida Derby with Audible and the Louisiana Derby with Noble Indy. What he is doing is unprecedented, for if Magnum Moon wins on Saturday, Pletcher will become the first trainer to win four of the six biggest Derby preps – including the Santa Anita Derby and Blue Grass Stakes – with four different horses in the same year.

The only trainer who has won four of those races in the same year is – and this will stun you – Bobby Frankel, the late Hall of Fame trainer who wasn’t exactly known for focusing on Derby preps. Yet in 2003, Frankel won the Florida Derby, Wood Memorial, Louisiana Derby, and Blue Grass.

Frankel, though, accomplished that feat with two horses. Empire Maker won the Florida Derby and Wood, while Peace Rules won the Louisiana Derby and Blue Grass.

There are at least three reasons why no trainer has won at least four of the six races with four different horses.

First, the era of trainers having scores of top-class horses under their control is a recent trend, something Jack Van Berg did with lesser horses in the 1970s, D. Wayne Lukas took to a new level in the 1980s, and trainers like Pletcher, Chad Brown, Steve Asmussen, and Bob Baffert have embraced in recent years. Second, trainers these days increasingly give their horses more time between starts. And, finally, those six races are now closer together on the calendar than at any point in their history.

This year, there were only three weeks between the first of them, the Louisiana Derby, and the last, the Arkansas Derby. Decades ago, it was commonplace for a horse to run in, say, the Louisiana Derby and come back in the Blue Grass, which once was nine days out from the Derby, then 21 days, and now is 28 days in front of the Derby. To divide and conquer, you need plenty of soldiers.

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Pletcher in 2013 won three of the six races – the Louisiana Derby with Revolutionary, the Wood with Verrazano, and the Arkansas Derby with Overanalyze – and is 3 for 5 this year heading into the Arkansas Derby.

“We feel very blessed, very fortunate, to be in this position,” Pletcher said in a telephone interview this week. “We were optimistic going back to February, thinking about these races, but a lot has to go right, and that doesn’t always happen. You put a plan in place, but you need horses to stay healthy and step up in their progression.”

Audible won the Holy Bull, then returned to win the Florida Derby. Noble Indy improved upon his comeback in the Risen Star when taking the Louisiana Derby. Vino Rosso exited a pair subpar efforts in stakes at Tampa with his best race yet in the Wood. And Magnum Moon, two starts after a maiden win, captured the Rebel and should be favored in the Arkansas Derby.

“The only one who really didn’t step right up was Vino Rosso,” Pletcher said. “After he won his allowance race at Tampa, he didn’t run quite as well in the Sam Davis, and we thought the blinkers would take care of that in the Tampa Bay Derby. But looking back, maybe we were fooled by his allowance race and he really didn’t like the surface at Tampa. We never lost confidence in him.”

Pletcher is based in the winter at the Palm Beach Downs training center, which is about 45 minutes from Gulfstream Park but an easy ship up to Tampa, a track Pletcher has frequently used to get his horses ready. Always Dreaming won a maiden race there last year before going on to give Pletcher his second Kentucky Derby victory; Super Saver made his first start of 2010 there in the Tampa Bay Derby en route to giving Pletcher his first Derby win; and this year, both Vino Rosso and Magnum Moon raced there and moved forward from the experience.

Magnum Moon, after beating maidens at Gulfstream in his debut, won an allowance race at Tampa prior to the Rebel.

“Tampa can be a tricky track, but we’ve had good luck coming off it,” Pletcher said. “Always Dreaming, Super Saver. It’s an easy ship, and with the two-turn availability, it was perfect for Magnum Moon as a good stepping-stone.”

He’s made all the right moves so far in these preps. “These are signature races in their own right, stallion-making races,” said Pletcher, who knows he’ll ultimately be judged by what happens on May 5.

“The Kentucky Derby is the primary goal,” he said. “Everything’s fallen into place, just keeping my fingers crossed it continues for the next four weeks.”

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