For those who have become overwhelmed by the political and cultural upheaval of 2018, I have a soothing remedy. Take a look at 1968 – and count your blessings.
If there was a more traumatic year in the past half-century, no one noticed. But don’t take my word for it. The Smithsonian has referred to it as, “The year that shattered America.” The grim highlights from just the first half of 1968 included:
Mick Ruis, owner and trainer of Bolt d’Oro, will be running a horse in the Kentucky Derby for the first time Saturday. For many owners, it’s not only a dream to have a horse in the Derby, but a point of pride to see their silks carried in the race.
But for Ruis, he has used this occasion instead to provide a gift to B. Wayne Hughes of Spendthrift Farm, having told Hughes at Christmas that if Bolt d’Oro made the Derby, he’d carry Spendthrift’s colors.
Jockey Javier Castellano chose to ride Audible over Bolt d’Oro in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday at Churchill Downs, in large part because he has a long association with Audible’s trainer, Todd Pletcher, but he said he greatly admires Mick Ruis, the trainer and owner of Bolt d’Oro, for putting up his own money and seeing his dream through.
LOUISVILLE, Ky – Trainer Todd Pletcher was in his junior year at the University of Arizona when Winning Colors captured the Kentucky Derby 30 years ago. A little more than a year later, Pletcher began working full time for Winning Colors’s trainer, D. Wayne Lukas. Between the two of them, they have won the Derby six times, and they will have five of the 20 runners in this year’s Derby on Saturday.
Few have logged more miles this year in pursuit of the Kentucky Derby than My Boy Jack.
With two or three Kentucky Derby preps now the norm for top contenders, My Boy Jack had a busy spring in pursuit of enough points to make the field, with four preps in four states. He finished third in the Sham Stakes on Jan. 6 at Santa Anita, then won the Southwest Stakes on Feb. 19 at Oaklawn. He finished third, beaten less than a length, in the Louisiana Derby on March 24, necessitating a trip to Keeneland for the Lexington Stakes on April 14, which he rallied to win.
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.
