A long journey back to New Orleans for Keith Desormeaux

The first and only starter trainer Keith Desormeaux will have at this Fair Grounds meet comes in the most important race of the meet.

My Boy Jack is the 5-2 morning-line favorite in Saturday’s $1 million Louisiana Derby. The colt was to ship Tuesday morning from California. His trainer has made a much deeper journey since he called New Orleans home every winter.

Desormeaux, who was born and raised in central Louisiana, stabled at Fair Grounds every season (save the one lost to Hurricane Katrina) from 1999 to 2015. But when Texas Red won the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, it set Desormeaux on a path to the larger racing world. He eventually transferred his entire operation to Southern California, far from an obvious play, but it has worked. Desormeaux won the 2016 Preakness with Exaggerator, the Kentucky Derby runner-up, and got back to the Derby again last year with Sonneteer.

“It was very simple, really,” Desormeaux said, reached Monday by phone. “All it took was a little fuel, a little investor money.”

Don’t get the wrong idea when Desormeaux talks about investor money. He is not at the boutique sales buying seven-figure yearlings and 2-year-olds in training. Exaggerator cost $110,000, but that’s the upper limit of the price range within which Desormeaux’s “investors” work. Texas Red cost $17,000, and My Boy Jack, who won the Grade 3 Southwest in his last start and already has banked $425,145, was purchased by Don’t Tell My Wife Stables as a yearling for $20,000.

:: ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays

“Believe it or not, even $20,000 was a blessing compared to what I was getting five years ago,” Desormeaux said. “I was scratching and clawing, claiming anything I could pay the bills with. Making the move out to California was a big thing. All my life I’ve been trying to buy horses to take me up the ladder.”

The winner’s share of the Louisiana Derby is $600,000, which is roughly the same amount Desmormeaux’s entire stable earned during his best Fair Grounds season, in 2012 and 2013. Desormeaux has one graded stakes win from 12 graded stakes attempts at Fair Grounds, but that one was a doozy: Ive Struck a Nerve won the 2013 Risen Star Stakes at ridiculous odds of 135-1.The colt was injured shortly after that race, but prefigured Desmormeaux’s move into the upper levels of the sport.

My Boy Jack’s odds will be nearly 100 times lower than Ive Struck a Nerve’s on Saturday. Desormeaux is confident he has a horse that can stay the Kentucky Derby’s 1 1/4 miles, but concedes the jury still is out regarding My Boy Jack’s true quality. My Boy Jack, by Creative Cause, had a solid enough 3-year-old debut, switching from turf racing as a 2-year-old to dirt in the Jan. 6 Sham Stakes, where he was third, beaten about seven lengths, by elite Derby prospect McKinzie. My Boy Jack made an eye-catching run up the rail under regular rider Kent Desormeaux to win the Southwest, a race that was contested over a wet track that appeared to favor horses racing along the rail.

“His subsequent three works have all been exceptional, especially the last two,” Desormeaux said. “The last quarter he really sprinted home. Still, we have to wonder how much did that mud move him up at Oaklawn? He’s showing quality, but is he that good? We don’t know.”

It’s a good bet an emotional wave will roll over Desormeaux if he comes home to win the biggest race in Louisiana, where he spent so much of his life, but that will be a feeling for then. For now, Desormeaux is just sending a talented horse off to a rich, important race.

“A Grade 1 for a million dollars, it doesn’t really matter if it’s Louisiana or Alaska – especially where I’ve come from,” he said.