Super Saver wins Kentucky Derby for Todd Pletcher
After nine years of trying, and having lost his best horse at the start of the week, Todd Pletcher finally broke his losing streak in the Kentucky Derby when Super Saver won at Churchill Downs.
Pletcher’s chances of improving upon his 0-24 record in the race Americans call “the Run for the Roses” appeared to have taken a serious hit when ante-post favourite Eskendereya was scratched on Sunday. Undeterred, Pletcher saddled four runners in the race, of which Super Saver was the best backed of the quartet on the day.
Heavy rain did not deter a crowd of over 150,000 but it left the dirt track officially described as "sloppy", which made the 10 furlongs of the Derby more of a test of stamina than usual as the field of 20 ploughed their way through the muddy morass, for which Super Saver was one of the few with previous form on such a surface.
Calvin Borel has proved to be a master of Churchill Downs in recent seasons and he had Super Saver smartly out of the gates and then took a rail position as Conveyance led the field into the first turn. Borel did not chase the early pace and was happy to sit in sixth place down the back stretch.
With a half-mile to run Conveyance still led from Sidney’s Candy but Noble’s Promise made a move on outside of Conveyance off the home turn. It was the one moment that Borel left the sanctuary of the rail. He switched wide of the floundering Conveyance but then took the rail once more as powered upsides Noble’s Promise. In the desperate conditions it was far from pretty, but Super Saver was very effective as he came home two-and-a-half lengths clear of the fast finishing Ice Box, with Paddy O’Prado third.
The favourite, Looking At Lucky, could not recover from early trouble in running and was never a factor in seventh as was Jeremy Noseda’s Awesome Act, who finished 19th. The best European performance in the Derby is still Bold Arrangement’s second behind Ferdinand in 1986.
For Pletcher, a four-time winner of the Eclipse Award as America’s top trainer, this was the moment to savour. "It feels awfully good," Pletcher said. “Everyone kept saying there was one out there with our name on it, but we didn't take anything for granted. The one thing that was important to me was that I wanted to do it while my parents were still here to see it. It'll soak in, in a day or two. I've dreamed of winning the Kentucky Derby my whole life. Now that it has happened I don't know what to feel or say. I wish I could wax poetic. It's all still soaking in."
The victory in the Derby may be a new experience for Pletcher – the closest that the trainer had got previously was when he was assistant to Wayne Lukas in the days when Thunder Gulch won in 1995 – but it has become something of a habit for Borel who was winning the race for the third time in four years, following on from Street Sense in 2007 and Mine That Bird last year.
Next up is the Preakness Stakes, at Pimlico in a fortnight, as Super Saver becomes the latest colt to take on the task of trying to win the Triple Crown. Only 11 horses have won the Triple Crown and none since Affirmed did so in 1978, which is the longest period without a Triple Crown winner in the history of American racing. In that time 11 horses have won both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes but not completed the treble. Of those, Real Quiet came closest to winning the Triple Crown, losing the Belmont Stakes by a nose to Victory Gallop in 1998.
As Pletcher finally got used to the idea of training the Kentucky Derby winner, Steve Asmussen was still contemplating the latest defeat for Rachel Alexandra. The reigning Horse of the Year had her crown knocked askew for the second time in as many runs when she was beaten by Unrivaled Belle in the Grade Two La Troienne on Friday.
However, Asmussen was retaining an air of calm, even if others are not doing the same. "Naturally I'm disappointed she ran second, but I thought she ran fine, although perhaps not quite as good as we'd hoped," he told the Daily Racing Form. "She ran into two mares who ran great races in both her starts. The important thing is that she came out of the race good and is doing fine this morning. Like I said yesterday, she's just a bigger, heavier mare now and at the moment not as explosive as she was last summer."
Rachel Alexandra’s owner, Jess Jackson, had seemed to apportion some of the loss on the tactics of Borel, but Asmussen was not ready to discuss that aspect of the race in any depth. "She finished second and the excuses are obvious when you go to searching," was all he said.
The plan now is that Rachel Alexandra will be back in work in the next few days but there is no specific race in mind for her as yet.
The plan for Super Saver is Baltimore in two weeks’ time.
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