Always Dreaming of a Derby win
Classy trainer Pletcher would love to put another notch on his impressive resume
By Dick Jerardi
STAFF WRITER
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Todd Pletcher was born into horse racing, working as a child with his father Jake, a trainer in the southwest. He went to the D. Wayne Lukas finishing school where he learned the business of the sport.
In 22 years as a trainer, Pletcher, 49, has, like Lukas, changed the game. He has hundreds of horses in his stable. He wins races everywhere. Just a month shy of his 50th birthday, Pletcher's horses have already won a record $336 million. He has won 4,293 races, including 1,170 stakes. It is all there on his sleek website, a testament to the trainer's media savvy and attention to detail.
One of the nicest people in the sport, Pletcher is unfailingly polite and, like Lukas, always impeccably dressed when he saddles a horse for a race. He exudes confidence and class. He is insightful and analytical. He has won the Eclipse Award as the nation's leading trainer seven times.
Pletcher is 1-for-45 in the Kentucky Derby. It is one of the more bizarre statistics in the sport. The trainer knows the numbers, but is never defensive about them. His clients want to be in the Derby so he gets them there, sometimes three, four and five at a time. Even with all those horses, Pletcher has never had the Derby favorite, which is certainly one of the reasons for his record. That, and perhaps his training methods, slow and easy, rarely the fast and hard his mentor Lukas employed to such great success in the Derby and a record 14 Triple Crown race wins.
This year, Pletcher has three in the Derby - Florida Derby winner Always Dreaming, Tampa Bay Derby winner Tapwrit and the appropriately named, one-eyed Patch.
In a rare moment alone after training hours on Wednesday morning at Churchill Downs, I asked Pletcher if he had changed anything from previous years when he brought some pretty solid contenders to the Derby.
"We've made some adjustments,'' Pletcher said. "If you take Always Dreaming, for example, this year, we took a calculated, I don't know if you'd call it a risk necessarily, but we kind of put all of our qualifying points based on one race and we were comfortable doing that. I think you have to have an ownership group that's comfortable doing that. If you finish fourth, you're not going to make it."
Always Dreaming dominated the April 1 Florida Derby, winning by 5 lengths, not only ensuring a spot in the Derby field, but clearly becoming one of the horses to beat.
Pletcher took an easy route to the Florida Derby, opting for soft spots on the other side of Florida at Tampa Bay Downs rather than subjecting Always Dreaming to harder races until absolutely necessary.
"It was all about thinking about peaking on this day," Pletcher said.
He was talking about the first Saturday in May, the Kentucky Derby. Pletcher's horses have won just about all the major Derby preps, some many times over. But only Super Saver in 2010 has won the Derby. So this year, with the best of his three Derby horses, Pletcher resisted the temptation of the preps.
The trainer never boasts about anything. He is the ultimate realist about horse racing's vagaries. But you can tell he thinks Always Dreaming may be the most talented horse he has ever brought to the Derby.
"Some things you can't adjust,'' he said. "I tried to emphasize the Florida Derby with him and the five weeks out."
Pletcher not only understands the modern game, he also knows its history. And he understands why the Derby is so difficult to win.
"There's all the obvious stuff,'' he said. "It's run on one day. To me, I don't think you can emphasize enough how many horses don't love this surface. And you can see it sometimes when they work, sometimes you'll see a different track on race day. The weather can potentially influence some things. For us, Super Saver, we were blessed. It rained. He loved the sloppy track. He got a great trip. We have other ones, Verrazano and Dunkirk that hated it.
"There's those variables, but aside from all that, the obvious is you've got a 20-horse field. The pace scenario is key for some horses . . . It's a race that it takes a really unique situation and a really good horse to win it."
So does 1-for-45 bother him?
"I was telling someone this year, I felt like I spent my first 30 starts defending my record and now I'm reading everyone's defending it for me this year," Pletcher said. "Of course, it bothers me, but the numbers are a little bit skewed because we have multiple starters a lot of years."
This actually will be Pletcher's 17th Derby so you could say he is 1-for-16.
"The one thing I felt like is I don't think we've ever come here and not won with the best horse," Pletcher said. "In Always Dreaming's case, he's certainly one of the best chances we've brought here."
How good a chance? We will all know just before 7 p.m. on Saturday.