Gaines tries to make history with Bolo in Kentucky Derby

ARCADIA, Calif. – Walk through the main stable gate at Santa Anita, and the first barn on the left quickly catches the eye.

Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert is based there, the exterior walls of the barn adorned with the names of his Breeders’ Cup and Triple Crown race winners. Two runners from that stable – American Pharoah and Dortmund – are top contenders for Saturday’s $2 million Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.

The trainer next door has a horse in the race, too.

Carla Gaines has had a stable based across from Baffert for 10 years. This year, Gaines will have her first Kentucky Derby runner with Bolo, who was third to Dortmund in the Santa Anita Derby on April 4.

Gaines has a chance to make racing history. An upset win by Bolo would make Gaines the first woman trainer to win the Kentucky Derby.

“Wouldn’t that be exciting?” she said on a recent morning at the barn. “It’s a tough year to do it, but I’ll give it a whirl. It would be a dream come true.”

Women trainers have run 16 horses in the Kentucky Derby. Shelley Riley has been the closest to winning, finishing second with Casual Lies in 1992. Patti Johnson saddled Fast Account to a fourth-place finish in 1985. Johnson is Gaines’s bookkeeper.

Gaines’s dream has been three decades in the making.

Gaines has been training since 1989 and spent several years prior to that working her way through the ranks of California racing – at sales, as an exercise rider, and later as an assistant trainer. On one occasion in the 1980s, her father, Cecil, traveled from the family home in Alabama to see Gaines toiling in a racing stable. The job was quite a change for Carla Gaines, a college graduate who briefly worked as a juvenile counselor.

“I was meant to be anything but a horse trainer,” she said. “My father said, ‘I don’t get it. Why do you do this?’ I was an assistant at the time. I said, ‘I want to be the first woman to win the Kentucky Derby.’ He said, ‘I can’t blame you for that.’ ”

Bolo will be Gaines’s first Kentucky Derby starter.

Initially, Bolo raced on turf, winning a maiden race at Del Mar in November in his second start and his stakes debut in the minor Eddie Logan Stakes on Dec. 27.

By Temple City, whom Gaines trained, Bolo was switched to dirt earlier this year, finishing third to Dortmund by 1 3/4 lengths in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on March 7. In the Santa Anita Derby, Bolo was beaten 6 1/2 lengths by Dortmund.

Temple City won stakes at 1 1/2 miles, leaving Gaines hopeful that stamina will help Bolo on Saturday.

“It will be a tough step,” Gaines said. “We think the distance won’t be an issue for him. All the good horses in there are a concern.”

Gaines, 62, began the week with 600 career wins. After going out on her own, her stable grew in the 1990s. She relocated her stable to Southern California in 1996.

In the 1990s, the stable was led by the stakes-winning turf mare Blending Element before expanding in the 2000s with a wider list of clients. Gaines had her first Grade 1 winner with Nashoba’s Key, a finalist for the Eclipse Award as the nation’s outstanding turf female of 2007. Two years later, Gaines saddled Dancing in Silks to an upset win in the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita.

Sadly, Nashoba’s Key was lost in 2008 after sustaining a leg injury in a stall accident at Hollywood Park.

Bolo was a relatively late addition to the Kentucky Derby field. A few weeks ago, the partners who own the colt – Golden Pegasus Racing and Earle Mack – were contemplating a start in the $250,000 American Turf Stakes for 3-year-olds on the Kentucky Derby undercard.

“We kept mulling the race over until really late,” Gaines said. “Maybe he’s better on the grass, I don’t know. Let’s see what he can do.”

Gaines has been to Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day, saddling Mildly Offensive to a fourth-place finish in the Grade 1 Humana Distaff in 2012. She remembers that week for different reasons, having lost her Black Labrador Retriever, Coal, to age-related infirmities days before traveling.

“I was crying and crying when I was packing to go to Kentucky,” she said.

The Southern girl in Gaines is going back to that region this week – and the journey will be a homecoming of sorts. Even though Cecil Gaines is no longer living, Carla Gaines’s elderly mother is making the trip.

“She’s determined,” Gaines said. “My family in Alabama, they’re all coming.”

In the years growing up in Alabama, the horse enthusiast in Gaines never made the road trip to the Kentucky Derby. This year will be different. This year, the journey is led by a horse.