Nearing his 5,000th victory, Mott savors a brilliant career

The Equibase statistics that indicate trainer Bill Mott is closing in on career victory 5,000 show his first win coming in 1973. Mott is fine with that starting date, though he remembers winning races before then at smaller tracks in Nebraska and South Dakota.

“There were winners, but it’s fair enough if they didn’t count that till ’73,” Mott said. “That just gave me a little practice, that’s all.”

As a practical matter, few horsemen have done it better than Mott over the last five decades. With 4,997 official victories entering Wednesday’s opening-day program at Belmont Park, Mott should soon become the seventh trainer to reach the 5,000-win plateau. The list includes Dale Baird, Steve Asmussen, Jerry Hollendorfer, Jack Van Berg, King Leatherbury, and Scott Lake.

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“It’s a milestone and I’m proud to be in the club that did it,” Mott said Tuesday from Payson Park in Florida, where he was preparing horses to ship up to New York. “All those guys, every one of them has been important to our business, that’s for sure. They’re all recognizable names.”

That Mott is joining a select group that includes Van Berg is especially meaningful, as Mott worked for Van Berg before fully going out on his own.

“There were a lot of great points with Jack; one I think was his passion for racing and the people,” Mott said. “I mean he always loved the characters, he loved the atmosphere, he just liked the whole thing, and I’m kind of the same way. I like the entire thing.”

Mott has been among the most successful and respected horsemen for decades. He is a three-time Eclipse Award winner and in 1998, at the age of 45, he became the youngest trainer inducted into the Hall of Fame. He has won or shared nine training titles at Saratoga.

Mott will always be associated with Cigar, who from the fall of 1994 through the summer of 1996 won 16 consecutive races. In 1995, Cigar capped off a perfect 10-for-10 campaign with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Belmont Park on a raw, rainy fall afternoon.

“When I think about that and I think about that race and about the completion of that year with Cigar and the end of that day it nearly brings tears to my eyes every time,” Mott said. “I watched him take off that day leaving the half-mile pole, it was just unbelievable, and listening to Tom Durkin, I mean, he made it all the more exciting for me with that call. It had to be probably be one of the most sentimental moments I’ve had in racing.”

Before Cigar, stakes horses such as Heatherten, Taylor’s Special, and Mrs. Revere were among those who got Mott going. Mott said Theatrical, the champion turf male of 1987, was “a very special horse for me” and probably led him to getting Cigar. Allen Paulson was co-owner of Theatrical and he also owned Cigar.

Mott said he also has a soft spot for those lower-level claiming horses he had when he first got started.

“When you’re grooming them yourself and riding them yourself and getting up early in the morning and feeding them, you remember those things,” Mott said. “As you get older, the horses from your early days are more memorable than what you ate for dinner last night.”

Trainer Shug McGaughey has been competing against Mott for several decades and has the utmost respect for his skill.

“He puts his time in, he’s a good horseman, he learned from the bottom up out West,” McGaughey said. “He knows how to place his horses, always has. A long time ago he wasn’t afraid to take a shot; he might run a horse for $50,000 [claiming] today and win a stake with him in two weeks.”

Mott certainly took a shot in last year’s Kentucky Derby, running 65-1 longshot Country House. It paid off when, after finishing second, Country House was elevated to first by the stewards who disqualified Maximum Security.

“That was another very memorable moment as well, very special,” Mott said. “I’ve had so many good days and it’s really remarkable the highs are so high sometimes but the next day you can have a very low day. You internalize a lot of it, both the winning and the losing and try to not get too far away one way or the other from the middle. You try to learn to handle it all because you know you’re going to get both.”

Mott will turn 67 next month, but he has no plans on giving up training anytime soon.

“There’s nothing else that I want to do,” Mott said.