There's nothing by the numbers about Mendelssohn
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – This guy named Aidan O’Brien has run horses in 61 American races that weren’t on turf and come away with two lousy wins. Some trainer, hey? And his jockey, Ryan Moore? Goose eggs across the win, place, and show columns in 18 American starts that weren’t on turf.
Who do these people think they are, bringing this grandiosely named colt Mendelssohn from Ireland to race in the Kentucky Derby?
Here’s a good place to invoke a useful phrase introduced into the American lexicon by Mark Twain: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
So, throw those stats out the window. O’Brien is widely considered the best trainer in the world, Moore often lauded as the world’s best Thoroughbred jockey, and in Mendelssohn, there’s a chance they have come to Kentucky with the best 3-year-old dirt horse in the world.
Another stat perhaps best swept aside this year: The 13 United Arab Emirates Derby winners preceding Mendelssohn that went on to lose – and lose definitively – in the Kentucky Derby. Important caveat: None of those horses was Mendelssohn.
Mendelssohn won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf last year after finishing second in the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes, one of Europe’s top 2-year-old races. It was not until March 31, in the $2 million UAE Derby, that Mendelssohn even started on dirt. But do not forget O’Brien first publicly mentioned the Kentucky Derby as Mendelssohn’s goal minutes after his Juvenile Turf win at Del Mar last November.
That was the public mention. Dirt racing generally and the Derby particularly has been the target since O’Brien’s client, the international powerhouse Coolmore, plunked down $3 million for Mendelssohn at the Keeneland September yearling sale in 2016.
“I suppose the lads always had it in their head,” O’Brien said in a phone interview last week. “We would have been training him with that on our minds.”
“The lads” is what O’Brien calls the Coolmore principals. What they and a bunch of other people call O’Brien is a genius.
O’Brien is 48 now but still looks like he could be something like 28 – the number of Group 1 or Grade 1 races he won in 2017, the most by any trainer ever in a single year.
O’Brien’s five previous Derby runners finished no better than fifth. Again, none of those horses was Mendelssohn, and in England, France, and Ireland, O’Brien has won 65 3-year-old classic races – 65! – including five victories in the Epsom Derby.
Mendelssohn is by Scat Daddy, who died young just as he caught fire as a Coolmore stallion, and out of the Tricky Creek mare Leslie’s Lady, making him a brother to the great dirt racemare Beholder and the very successful sire and dirt runner Into Mischief. He was purchased as a dirt prospect, and to Moore – who has ridden him on turf, the synthetic surface over which he won at Dundalk in his 3-year-old debut, and in the UAE Derby – he feels like a dirt horse.
“I’d say he felt the best he ever has on dirt,” Moore said earlier this week. “He was just more comfortable on it – really grabbing hold of the surface and getting over it. It’s a credit to the horse he’s run as well as he has on other surfaces. The only thing he didn’t care for was soft ground.”
O’Brien’s only American dirt winner came in the 2001 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with Johannesburg, but most of the losers were turf horses merely taking a shot on dirt to try and maximize stud value. Still, O’Brien acknowledges that preparing for an American dirt race at his Ballydoyle stables in Ireland presents challenges.
“America is an entirely different racing culture than what we’re used to,” O’Brien said. “You train at the track on dirt, we train on a wood chip surface. That was why we wanted to get him onto different surfaces this year.”
While Mendelssohn was winning the BC Juvenile Turf, the O’Brien-trained U S Navy Flag was running up the track on dirt in the BC Juvenile. It wasn’t that O’Brien believed U S Navy Flag to be the superior dirt prospect; rather, he didn’t want to throw too much, too soon at Mendelssohn, a May foal who was not early to mature.
“We could’ve tried dirt in the Juvenile, but we took him very gently last year and prepared him gently,” O’Brien said. “We introduced him first to grass, then onto Polytrack, and then from Polytrack onto dirt. Our training obviously is different here, but he knows all about straights, turning left-handed, and all that.”
Mendelssohn’s Polytrack experience came March 9 in a minor stakes at Dundalk, where he rallied inside horses to beat stablemate Threeandfourpence by three-quarters of a length in a start designed strictly to get him two races before the Kentucky Derby. But to qualify for the Derby under the points system Churchill Downs uses to determine the 20 participants, Mendelssohn had to finish first or second in Dubai, which is why Moore rode him from the gate more like a Quarter Horse than a European turf horse.
The dirt track at Meydan, which hosts the UAE Derby, generally favors inside speed, and aside from Mind Your Biscuits’s last-to-first win in the Golden Shaheen, that appeared to be the case March 31. Mendelssohn responded to Moore’s urging, settled on the front end while setting a moderate tempo, and then flew away from his pursuers when Moore asked for run about three furlongs from home. The race was over at the top of the stretch but Mendelssohn kept pouring it on, winning by a epic 18 1/2 lengths.
“Seeing how the track was riding and had been on previous days, it seemed foolish not to try and take advantage of that,” Moore said. “He’s sat in behind and come from of the pace, too. I think he’s shown that he can race effectively under different conditions.”
Moore, seeking to ensure Mendelssohn got proper conditioning, rode his mount through the homestretch even when victory was assured, and Mendelssohn’s time, 1:55.18 for about 1 3/16 miles, not only was a track record, but a legitimately fast time for Meydan. The question is how much of Mendelssohn’s brilliance on the night was related to the circumstances of the race, how much to his own ability.
“I suppose that track can tell you lies,” Moore said. “We don’t fully know what to expect yet.”
Expect Moore to make the right moves Saturday. This is his second Derby, with his ride on the O’Brien-trained Lines of Battle having yielded a seventh-place finish in 2013, but no active jockey has won more major races around the world than Moore, who has dirt-racing background more extensive than his limited American rides.
“I have a lot more experience on turf than on dirt, there’s no question, but I’ve ridden quite a bit on dirt in Dubai and in Japan,” he said. “In Japan, I’ve done fairly well on it. I think I know what to expect.”
Mendelssohn had two easy weeks back in Ireland following his trip to Dubai before O’Brien began tightening the screws. He shipped here Monday and was to train for the first time Thursday, and Churchill observers might hear the colt before they see him. Mendelssohn, who is well made but not especially tall or broad, has the unusual habit of calling out, nearly incessantly at times, when he comes out to train.
“He’s obviously a strong-minded horse, an independent thinker,” O’Brien said. “He can be a bit babyish in his canters. I’d say he’s just saying hello when he does that. He’s not coltish, really, he’s just a good-natured horse. We would never stop him from doing that, and when he gets into racing mode, he focuses very quickly.”
O’Brien has two of the principal contenders for the English 2000 Guineas on Saturday, and Moore would’ve been on the most likely winner had he stayed back in England this weekend. But for all the big races these two have won, there was no question they’d both be at Churchill Downs the first Saturday in May.
“Look, this is probably the hardest race to win in the world,” Moore said, “and we know we’re coming into it with not the most conventional preparation, that there are some things against us with the way he’s had to get there. But we think we have a horse with the talent, who has the pace and can stay, and we just want him to give a good account of himself.”
And when O’Brien and Moore travel with a horse who seems this good, he usually does.