Last year at this time, trainer Mark Casse was in the eye of the storm with enigmatic 2-year-old champion Classic Empire, who attracted intense attention Kentucky Derby week before ultimately finishing fourth with a troubled trip.

This year, Casse has a consistent Derby entrant in Flameaway, a multiple graded stakes winner and the Blue Grass runner-up. But in a deep field, he’ll be dismissed at double-digit odds.

That’s just fine with Casse.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Few would compare Kentucky Derby longshot Combatant to any of the leading contenders for Saturday’s race, although the colt reminds his trainer, Steve Asmussen, of another prominent horse – 2017 Derby runner-up Lookin At Lee. Like him, Combatant is an Asmussen-trained closer that heads into the Kentucky Derby after competitive but losing efforts in preps in Arkansas.

When John Velazquez guided Always Dreaming to victory in last year’s Kentucky Derby at 45 years old, he became the second-oldest rider to win the world’s most famous horse race. Velazquez doesn’t have designs on chasing the record set by Bill Shoemaker, who won the Derby at age 54 aboard Ferdinand in 1986.

“I’m definitely not going to be 54 and riding, that’s for sure,” Velazquez said in a recent interview.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mick Ruis has spent his life beating the odds by betting on himself.

A high-school dropout raised near San Diego in the blue-collar town of El Cajon, Ruis is a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold a pair of scaffolding companies, the proceeds of which allowed him to expand his horizons and develop property in his adopted home state of Montana, and pursue a decades-long fascination with horse racing, owning and training his own expanding stable of runners.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Separately, trainer Bill Mott and Prince Khalid’s Juddmonte Farms have won many of the world’s most important races.

Each has won the Dubai World Cup, a Breeders’ Cup Classic, and a Belmont Stakes.

Together, Mott and Juddmonte have teamed to win 13 Grade 1 races with horses such as Close Hatches, Proviso, and Emollient.

There is one race – the race – that has eluded them: The Kentucky Derby.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – This being 2018, Hall of Fame jockey Kent Desormeaux can celebrate several Kentucky Derby anniversaries.

It was 30 years ago (1988) that Desormeaux, then a teenaged phenom from Louisiana by way of Maryland, rode in his first Derby and finished 16th on longshot Purdue King.

It was 20 years ago (1998), aboard Real Quiet, Desormeaux notched his first of three Derby victories.

And it was 10 years ago (2008) that Desormeaux got his third and most recent Derby triumph when Big Brown wore the roses.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – He rode back on his pony after overseeing the training of his horses, just as he’s done for decades, the only concession to age being that he used a stepstool to help him dismount when he reached his barn at Churchill Downs.

His wit is still sharp, and while the bite it once had has softened with age, trainer D. Wayne Lukas still wants things done his way. The straw in the stalls just so, the shed row raked and cleaned as though a state dinner will be served. It’s all black and white. The only gray area is Winning Colors.

CHURCHILL DOWNS
SUNDAY, APRIL 29
WEATHER: SUNNY    
TEMPERATURE: 40    
TRACK: FAST 
TURF: FIRM

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It was the calm after the storm on a crisp and clear Sunday morning at Churchill Downs. The racetrack was nearly deserted during the special session reserved for Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks contenders following two whirlwind days during which the majority of the horses stabled locally turned in their final preps for those races.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Trainer Bill Mott found himself in an unusual position Sunday morning on the backside of Churchill Downs. He was the center of attention in a media scrum, talking about his participation in Saturday’s 144th Kentucky Derby after the 3-year-old Hofburg worked a half-mile in 48.03 seconds over the main track.

“It’s nice to be here, we’re glad to be here and we’re glad to be here with a good horse,” Mott, who hasn’t run a horse in the Derby since Hold Me Back in 2009, told the assembled media outside barn 19, where he has kept a string at Churchill Downs since 1980.