Brad Cox grew up just two blocks from the back gate at Churchill Downs, close enough to espy the twin spires with a quick walk, or hear the roar of the crowd in the afternoon when the races were being run. The racing bug bit him early, and never left. He has some vague memories of the 1986 Kentucky Derby won by Ferdinand, much clearer memories of the Derby in 1987, when he was 7, and Alysheba won. “Blue-and-white silks,” Cox recalled in a phone interview earlier this week from Fair Grounds. In 1992, owing to his father knowing people who gave them access to the stable area, he watched the Derby from the backside as Lil E Tee won. The next year, aided by a kindly adult, he bet on Prairie Bayou, who ran second to Sea Hero. By then, all of 13, he was all in – collecting Daily Racing Forms, trying to figure out before the race who would win, revisiting the past performances afterward to glean why a horse had won, poring over pedigrees until the sires and dams were second nature. All he wanted to do was be around horses and eventually train them. And my how that has now worked out a quarter-century later. Cox, now 40, has won the Kentucky Oaks twice in the last three years, and last year earned his first Eclipse Award as champion trainer, culminating a year in which he won four Breeders’ Cup races and had two champions. He’s yet to run a horse in the Derby. But 2 1/2 months out from this year’s Derby on May 1 at Churchill Downs, he’s in as good a position as any trainer, with champion Essential Quality, stakes winner Caddo River, and the promising Mandaloun giving him three of the 3-year-olds on the inaugural Derby Watch top 20 list for the 2021 Derby. “Feel fortunate that we have three legitimate shots,” Cox said. :: KENTUCKY DERBY 2021: Derby Watch, point standings, prep schedule, news, and more Mandaloun is up first. He runs Saturday in the Risen Star at Fair Grounds, and will add blinkers following a third-place finish in last month’s Lecomte. Essential Quality – unbeaten in three starts last year, including the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile – is scheduled to make his first start at 3 in the Southwest at Oaklawn, which on Wednesday was postponed five days from Monday to Feb. 20 owing to a deep freeze forecast to take up residence in Hot Springs in coming days. Caddo River, who romped in last month’s Smarty Jones at Oaklawn, was purposely kept out of the Southwest to await next month’s Rebel. The closest Cox has come to a Derby winner is in both 2014 and 2017, when he walked over with his runners Captain Genius and Visionary Tale, respectively, to win the races immediately following those Derbies and saw California Chrome and Always Dreaming draped in roses in the Derby winner’s circle in the infield. “Winning that race with Captain Genius on the Derby card was special,” Cox said. He got a taste of the road toward the Derby last year with Wells Bayou, who won the Louisiana Derby in March but was sidelined by the time the postponed Derby was run in September. Between that, and what Cox has observed from afar, he’s seen enough over the years to understand that the road can be rough. “The Louisiana series is a mile and an eighth, a mile and three-sixteenths,” he said, referring to the distances of the Risen Star and Louisiana Derby. “It’s demanding for a young horse. You have to take a fit horse over there.” Cox has shown that he can get a horse to a peak level and keep them there. His work with Monomoy Girl has been exemplary. She gave him his first Oaks victory and first champion in 2018, missed all of 2019, and came back last year to win all four of her starts, culminated by a second victory in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff and a second Eclipse Award. That campaign, he said, gives him an even bigger sense of accomplishment than his Oaks victories. “For Monomoy Girl to get back and win the Distaff, just win again at the Grade 1 level, is something me and my whole team takes a lot of pride in,” Cox said. Cox is currently in New Orleans, then is scheduled to head to Oaklawn after the Risen Star. With the Southwest postponed to Feb. 20, Cox said that will preclude him from leaving mid-week for the Saudi Cup, also Feb, 20, to see Breeders’ Cup Mile and Pegasus winner Knicks Go, whose care is being overseen in Riyadh by his son, Blake. Regardless, Cox hopes that two months from now, when he’s back home in Louisville, he’ll be getting set to take a serious shot at the Derby. He now lives about five miles from Churchill Downs, farther than he did as a child, but with his current lineup of 3-year-olds, he’s never been closer to the Derby.