Even in ordered world of Pletcher barn, Derby can't be tamed
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Training hours at an American racetrack often feel like barely controlled chaos. But step inside the Todd Pletcher barn and chaos springs to order. His shed row, efficiently bedded with wood shavings, always remains clear. Open the door to an office with every object neatly arrayed and there Pletcher sits at his clutter-free desk.
Pletcher has won more than 4,500 races and his horses have earned more than $359 million during a training career that began in 1996. The man rules the fiefdom of early-season 3-year-olds. No horseman has sent more runners to the Kentucky Derby since the turn of the century. Pletcher’s first Derby starter came in 2000, but “starter” is the wrong word: There were four that year. Forty-four more have followed, and now Pletcher is back at the Derby with another four-horse contingent. Top to bottom, he concedes, they are the best group of horses he ever has brought to America’s biggest race.
Audible won the Florida Derby, Magnum Moon the Arkansas Derby, Noble Indy the Louisiana Derby, and Vino Rosso the Wood Memorial.
In a world as well ordered as the one Pletcher has created at the racetrack, one of them would win this. But that’s not how these things work, and no one knows it better than Pletcher.
Forty-eight starters, two wins, two seconds, three thirds – that is the Pletcher ledger entering the 2018 Derby. He has tinkered and fiddled, attended to all the trends, but Pletcher has concluded there’s no secret code to unlock success in this race.
“The unique thing about the Kentucky Derby from a trainer’s perspective is you can come here year after year, but you’re always bringing a new team, new players,” he said. “The dos and don’ts might work in a wider capacity, but these are new horses. What didn’t work for Dunkirk doesn’t mean it’s not going to work for a different horse.”
Dunkirk – that was 2009. He came into the Derby off two wins and a second in the Florida Derby and was 5-1 in the big race. He finished 11th, beaten 19 lengths. That was a sloppy-track Derby, and since Dunkirk returned with a fine second in the Belmont Stakes, it’s fair to guess he failed to handle the Churchill racing surface.
In fact, Pletcher has concluded that the Churchill surface might be the most powerful variable in the Derby equation.
“You get all these general ideas, and then, to me, the single most important aspect of wining the Derby is you need a horse that likes the surface,” Pletcher said. “It’s a tricky surface.”
“These general ideas” – Pletcher has heard them all, tried many.
A Derby horse must work over the track to win. A race five weeks from the Derby is best – or was it four weeks, or three? Take the Florida route, or the Arkansas route, or New York.
“Rather than try and think about all that constantly, do what you do and it’s going to work or not,” Pletcher said. “You can’t overthink it.”
Dunkirk was among the few Pletcher horses accorded a strong chance of Derby success by the betting public, and his record in the race takes on a different appearance when you go back through the 48 starters.
Thirteen of them – Vinceremos, Wild Horses, Coin Silver, Sam P, Cowtown Cat, Cowboy Cal, Monba, Join in the Dance, Advice, Charming Kitten, Overanalyze, We Miss Artie, and Patch – you probably barely remember, and that’s because they were simply too slow to win the Kentucky Derby. Another four – More Than Ready, Trippi, Keyed Entry, and Discreetly Mine – might have been fast enough but were obviously unable to race as far as 1 1/4 miles.
Pletcher’s success getting horses to the Derby attracts owners who want to go to the Derby.
“Not every one of those was thinking we were going to win,” Pletcher said. “We gave them the opportunity to surprise us. I’ll say that every owner was overjoyed to give it a try. There are owners who want to take a shot, and this is a race that’s hard to tell them no.”
Pletcher points out he also lost with five more Derby starters the two years he won the race, with Super Saver in 2010 and with Always Dreaming last year. Always Dreaming was the most tepid of favorites in the 2017 Derby, the first time Pletcher has sent out the chalk in the race.
“We’ve never got a favorite beat, anyways,” he said.
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It is a vexing race for a man of order like Pletcher. Just look at his first Derby. More Than Ready, a truly top-class horse who would go on to an excellent career in one-turn races, finished fourth in 2000. Impeachment, coming off a third-place finish in the Arkansas Derby, where he was 35-1, finished third, and ended his career with one measly maiden win from 11 starts.
Invisible Ink finished a very quiet fourth in the 2001 Blue Grass, then was second in the Derby at 56-1. Balto Star, an 8-1 chance off an Arkansas Derby romp, hooked into a pace the speed of light and was beaten 32 lengths.
Super Saver and Always Dreaming skipped over wet tracks. The slop undid Verrazano, 14th at 8-1 in 2013. Verrazano already had given Pletcher a bad feeling, swimming around the Churchill surface during morning training. But that is no reliable guide, either. Gemologist, Pletcher recalled, galloped like a god in the days leading into the 2012 Derby.
“He was done at the half-mile pole,” Pletcher said. Asked what went wrong, the trainer shrugged his shoulders, shook his head.
Pletcher is the Gulfstream kingpin, but through the years, Tampa Bay Downs has served him reliably. As far back as 2000, Impeachment stopped at Tampa along the Derby trail. Super Saver was third in the Tampa Bay Derby, and Always Dreaming won a maiden race there to start his 3-year-old campaign. Among this year’s group, Vino Rosso raced three times at Tampa; Magnum Moon got a taste of two-turn racing winning a first-level allowance there.
“Tampa has been a successful route for us,” Pletcher said.
But Pletcher isn’t seeking to reinvent the wheel. He’s following the blueprint this year that won him two previous derbies.
“Our two winners both came to Churchill around the same time, Super Saver from [Oaklawn] 18 or 19 days out, Always Dreaming 12 days before, and they both had one breeze over the track,” Pletcher said.
The 2018 quartet arrived in similar fashion, and to their trainer’s satisfaction appeared to be getting over the Churchill surface without issue when all of them breezed Friday, April 27. Paddock schooling and gate schooling, feeding and grooming and bathing – all will take place in the days and hours leading to the race with the clockwork regularity that runs this outfit. And for all the order, all the planning, Todd Pletcher has no firmer idea than anyone else what will go down early Saturday evening at Churchill Downs, and all that he knows he knows is that you must be in the race to win the race.
“The one thing I can tell you with 100 percent certainty,” said Pletcher, “is that I’ve never left the Derby winner in the barn to wait for another race.”