Kentucky Derby: Three Technique on offense for Parcells in Rebel Stakes

Trainer Jeremiah Englehart grew up a fan of the New York Giants football team, which won Super Bowls titles following the 1986 and 1990 seasons, when he was 10 and 14 years old. So imagine Englehart’s excitement when he first met the coach of those teams, Bill Parcells, at Saratoga. Then imagine his excitement when Parcells eventually asked him to train horses for him.

“It’s like training for your boyhood idol,” Englehart said Wednesday.

Now imagine Englehart and Parcells teaming to win racing’s Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby. It’s not a far-fetched scenario.

They are pinning their hopes on Three Technique, who will try to enhance his credentials for the May 2 Derby when he runs in the Grade 2, $1 million Rebel Stakes on Saturday at Oaklawn Park. Three Technique comes off a second-place finish in the Smarty Jones on Jan. 24, earning four points toward a berth in the Derby. After skipping last month’s Southwest Stakes, he will try to use the Rebel and then next month’s Arkansas Derby to propel him to the Kentucky Derby.

“It’s very exciting. This is the first horse I’ve had with Derby points,” Englehart said in a telephone conversation from Oaklawn, where he is wintering for the first time. “This is pretty much the main reason we’re here. We wanted to give it our best shot. It’s a good program, and we’ve been lucky with the weather.”

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Oaklawn’s two-turn point-scoring races for 3-year-olds are ideally spaced, with one each the first four months of the year. Englehart and Parcells – who races under the name August Dawn Farm – thought going in three of those was plenty, hence skipping the Southwest with Three Technique.

“Obviously we want to get him to the Derby in the best shape possible, and we thought if we were lucky enough to make it that if we ran in all four he might be spent by the time we got to the Derby,” Englehart said. “We thought we’d give him a little break after the Smarty Jones.”

Three Technique – named for a pre-snap position of a defensive lineman – is a son of Mr Speaker who was purchased as a yearling in July 2018 at Fasig-Tipton for $180,000. Englehart and Travis Durr, who with his wife, Amy, owns the Webb Carroll training center in South Carolina, purchased the colt for Parcells.

“He had a certain look,” Englehart said. “He was one of those where every time you went back to look at him, you liked him more. Sometimes you go back and look and think, ‘What was I looking at?’”

During the auction, “We didn’t know we had bought him at first,” Englehart said.

“We had a budget of $175,000, and I thought I hit on $175,000, but I hit on $180,000,” he said of the bidding. “Coach was on the phone during it all. When I told him we had hit on $180,000, he said, ‘Fine.’ We got lucky.”

Three Technique was second in his first two starts – including behind Basin, the subsequent Hopeful winner and one of his Rebel rivals – before graduating from the maiden ranks at Saratoga in his third start. After missing the Champagne, Englehart considered running him in the Remsen, but Parcells thought a first-level allowance was a more suitable spot at the time, and Englehart ended up agreeing.

“He’s close with Shug,” Englehart said of Parcells’s relationship with Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey. “Going in a 1x is what Shug would do. I’m glad I listened to Coach.”

Three Technique won that Aqueduct allowance on Nov. 20, then headed to Oaklawn.

Englehart, 43, races most of the year in New York, but split his stable for the winter, taking a bit more than two dozen horses to Oaklawn, from where he also has been able to van down to Fair Grounds for suitable races for his horses.

Three Technique turned in a promising effort in the Smarty Jones, his lone start at Oaklawn, finishing second behind a front-running winner on a muddy, sealed track after going wide.

“I had people like Wayne Lukas telling me, ‘You don’t know how good he ran,’” Englehart said. “Lukas has given me some advice. He’s got a lot of experience with this. When he speaks, you listen.”

The Smarty Jones was at one mile, a distance where the finish at Oaklawn is the sixteenth pole. The Rebel is at 1 1/16 miles, the Arkansas Derby 1 1/8 miles, and the Kentucky Derby 1 1/4 miles, distances that should be more suitable for Three Technique.

Three Technique has a name gleaned from defense, but now it’s time to go on offense and test his ground game.