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Drury: Art Collector’s Versatile Style Will Be A Major Advantage In Preakness Stakes

Tommy Drury didn't get much sleep on Monday night of Kentucky Derby week. The trainer of one of the top Derby contenders, Art Collector, had found a decent-sized cut on the back of the colt's right front hoof, apparently suffered during his Monday morning gallop.

Drury and owner/breeder Bruce Lunsford faced a difficult decision. The colt's hoof was sensitive to the touch, and neither man wanted to subject the horse to the stress of the Run for the Roses unless he was 100 percent. Still, it would have been the first starter in the Kentucky Derby for both Drury and Lunsford, and making the decision to walk away from what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was challenging.

“It was certainly difficult,” Drury said on an NTRA teleconference this Monday. “The Derby is a race of a lifetime for a horse trainer. At end of day, the responsibility we have is to put the horse first. It would not have been fair to lead him over there knowing there was an issue going on. It was a no-brainer. We want our horse to be good for the long haul, not just one race.”

Instead, Art Collector will be the 5-2 second choice in this Saturday's Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. He'll face a field of 11, including Kentucky Derby winner Authentic (9-5 favorite) and Kentucky Oaks runner-up Swiss Skydiver (6-1).

Art Collector, a 3-year-old son of Bernardini, won the G2 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland in July. He stalked the pace in that race, then won the Ellis Park Derby with a solid frontrunning display. That versatility in tactics gives Drury a bit of confidence heading into the Preakness Stakes.

“He has a little stop and go to him,” Drury explained, adding that jockey Brian Hernandez, Jr. is very familiar with Art Collector's style. “You can use him and get him going again if you need to. In a race like this, that can be beneficial.”

The post position, three, won't be an issue for Art Collector either, Drury said. The colt is quick enough to get out of the gate and near the lead, and tactical enough for Hernandez to be able to take back off the pace if others decide to go.

No matter what happens this Saturday, Drury is looking forward to the future with Art Collector. This year, the Breeders' Cup Classic is the likely next stop on the colt's schedule, and Drury will also look for Art Collector to return as a 4-year-old.

“Art Collector is a very special horse to us,” summarized Drury. “He has taken my career to places I've never dreamed it would go. I've not had anything like him ever before.”

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‘We’ll Take Our Best Shot’: Art Collector In ‘Stiff’ Work For Preakness

Bruce Lunsford's Art Collector, who would have been co-second choice for the Kentucky Derby (G1) until a minor foot issue forced him out of the race, worked five-eighths of a mile at Churchill Downs in a strong 59.40 seconds – a time for the distance eclipsed Saturday only by Kentucky Derby winner Authentic's 59.20.

“I thought it was good,” said trainer Tommy Drury, who will have his first Preakness starter. “We wanted to make sure we did enough today. They had him in 59-and-change, and I had him three-quarters (of a mile) in 1:12. It was what we were looking for. We went a little longer between races than we'd hoped to be. We just wanted to make sure we're where we want to be. Leading up to the race from here, now you're just kind of back on a maintenance program. You know you've got him where you want him, and hopefully we'll be on the flight the Tuesday before the Preakness (G1) and we'll take our best shot.”

The fractional times for Art Collector's work were 24.20 seconds for the first quarter-mile, and 36 for three-eighths, reflecting a final quarter-mile time in 23.40. He then galloped out six furlongs in 1:11.60, with jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. reporting that the gallop-out extended to a mile.

“He worked a really good five-eighths and then his gallop-out was huge,” Hernandez said. “He galloped out a really, really good mile. We knew going into this work that we needed it to be a pretty stiff one because we're going into the Preakness, and they're not going to give you anything. We needed to make sure our horse was in good shape. What was nice about him was that he came back after the work and it was like he didn't even do anything. We seem to be on the right page…. I had him on my watch in '12s' the whole way, 11-and-2 from the eighth pole to the wire, and then he galloped out the same way, just kind of cruising along.”

Turned over to Drury in January, Art Collector is 4-for-4 as a 3-year-old after breaking his maiden last year on grass at Kentucky Downs and finishing first in an entry-level allowance race, only to be later disqualified for registering over the permitted level for a dewormer. After ripping off a pair of allowance races to start 2020, the son of 2006 Preakness Stakes winner Bernardini powered to victory in Keeneland's rescheduled Toyota Blue Grass (G2) and then in the $200,000 Ellis Park Derby.

The Ellis race on Aug. 9 was meant as a bridge between the July 11 Blue Grass and the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby. But to the chagrin of his team — all from Louisville — Art Collector nicked the bulb of his left front heel in a routine gallop the day before Derby entries were to be taken. While a minor issue, it was bad timing, leaving the foot tender and with strict medication rules limiting how it could be treated.

“He's been good,” Drury said when asked how Art Collector is doing now compared with how he was doing before the foot mishap. “Fortunately he's been good mentally and he's certainly happy enough. He had his ears thrown up galloping out this morning. He's doing all the things you want to see a horse do at this stage of the game. The nice cool morning I think had them all feeling good, and he certainly was one of them.”

Art Collector would have been the first Derby starter for Drury, a lifelong Louisvillian, and the 72-year-old Lunsford, who has lived in the city most of his adult life. Hernandez has made Louisville his home since he began riding full-time in 2004.

While missing the Derby at home was a huge disappointment, Art Collector's team quickly set their sights and enthusiasm on a road trip to Baltimore.

“If you'd asked me in January, 'You've got a shot to go to the Preakness, what do you think about that?' I'd have been doing backflips,” said Drury, whose first graded-stakes victory in 30 years of training came with Art Collector in the Blue Grass. “It's one of the most historic races in the country. We'd have loved to have been in the Derby because this is home for us, but gosh, to be able to run in the Preakness four weeks later. That's the one thing that gave me comfort, knowing that we've got a huge race coming up right around the corner, that we can miss this one and be ready for that one — be on our game and take our best shot. That's really all we've been trying to do: make good decisions, use good judgment and make sure that our horse is taken care of.

“Ever since the morning that we didn't enter for the Derby, the Preakness has been our primary concern. He seems like he's going into it the right way, and now we've just got to stay out of his way a little longer.”

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Art Collector’s Foot Healing Well, Drury Says ‘All Systems Go’ For Preakness Stakes

Bruce Lunsford's Art Collector remains on track for the Oct. 3 Preakness Stakes (G1) after missing the Kentucky Derby (G1) with a minor foot issue.

Art Collector worked a half-mile in 48.10 seconds on Saturday at trainer Tommy Drury's Skylight Training Center base under jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. Drury said the son of 2006 Preakness winner Bernardini likely will ship into Churchill Downs within the next few days and work over that track this weekend.

“He seems good,” Drury said. “He breezed over the weekend, just kind of a maintenance half-mile. Brian felt he was as good as he's ever been. As long as everything is going right, we're going to shoot for Baltimore. But as always, we're going to let him take us along. We're going to get him settled in here (Churchill Downs) and make sure everything is OK, and at some point over the weekend I'd guess he'll go five-eighths. I'd say if everything goes well there, we're on target for the Preakness.”

Art Collector, who would have been the co-second choice behind Tiz the Law, was not entered in the Kentucky Derby after nicking a piece of flesh off his left front heel in training.

“He just grabbed the back of his quarter,” Drury said. “The thing was sensitive and sore to the touch. There was a little flap there that needed to be trimmed away. We knew when we trimmed it away, it was going to be even more sensitive, and the right thing to do was sit that one out and put it behind us.”

Drury said Art Collector missed three days of training.

“We were able to get him right back to the track,” he said. “I jogged him the first day and he was back to galloping. It wasn't that he had some major issue, it was just bad timing. There wasn't much we could do for it Derby Week with the medication rules. To run, it would have just been for ego. If you don't win the Kentucky Derby, then it doesn't matter. Nobody wants to talk to the guy who finishes fifth.

“At least for me, I don't want to just lead one over there just to be leading them over there. I want to take my best shot. Had he been a $10,000 claimer could we have patched him up? Sure we could have. But is that the right thing to do for the horse? Absolutely not. Now we're going to go into the Preakness and we're going to take our best shot. I'm not thinking about a race. I'm thinking about a career. Bruce has already said he's more than willing to run this horse next year. So why would we do something stupid at this stage of the game?”

The lifelong Louisvillian might have missed out on what would have been his first Kentucky Derby starter, but he said trainers make such decisions all the time outside the spotlight.

“Have I thought, 'What if?' Sure I have,” Drury said. “That being said, I slept better that night than I did the entire two weeks leading up to the race. I was very comfortable with the decision I made, and I'm very comfortable where the horse is. We want him to be good for the long haul and not just one race.”

Now the trainer is looking forward to his possible Triple Crown debut in the Preakness.

“The timing of it is good,” he said. “The thing I like is that he doesn't have to take his racetrack with him. I would expect him to do that in Baltimore as well. I'm just looking forward to giving him the opportunity to run against those horses. He may or may not have run well in the Derby had he been there. We're certainly not going to take anything away from the winner. He ran a huge race. But we're looking forward for our opportunity to go after him.”

Drury said he's really glad now that Art Collector ran back in the Aug. 9 Ellis Park Derby at 1 1/8 miles instead of training up to the Derby off of the July 8 Blue Grass.

“Absolutely,” he said. “This didn't really interfere with our schedule a whole lot. We missed a couple of days and we were right back at the track. He's been training very forwardly. He worked good Saturday, so it seems like at this point, it's all systems go.”

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Taking Stock: Nyquist Off the Grade I Mark

Spendthrift purchased the breeding rights to Authentic before the Grade l Santa Anita Derby, and the $9 million kicker it agreed to pay Authentic’s former ownership group for winning the Gl Kentucky Derby is indicative of the premium that’s placed on a stallion prospect with North America’s most prestigious Classic on his resume. A front-running colt, Authentic has the right type of sire behind him as well. He’s by Spendthrift’s flagship stallion Into Mischief (Harlan’s Holiday), who cranks out graded stakes winners like nobody’s business, particularly sprinters and milers that are deadly up to a mile and a sixteenth. The stallion led the North American general sire list in 2019 and stood for $175,000 this year, and one of his first top sons to go to stud, Grade l winner Goldencents, also at Spendthrift, has started his career well enough–he was represented by Gll Alysheba S. winner By My Standards on the Derby undercard– to suggest that even brighter beginnings are in store for Authentic, his sire’s best racing son.

Stud farms want their prized first-crop horses to fly out of the gates early with 2-year-old winners and black-type runners and end their first seasons with a Grade l winner or two atop the freshman sire list. Darley’s Nyquist (Uncle Mo), who won the Derby in 2016, is on his way, currently leading all N.A. first-crop sires by progeny earnings after his daughter Vequist won the Gl Spinaway S. at Saratoga Sunday by 9 1/2 lengths. Another daughter, Lady Lilly, was third in the race. Before them, the Nyquist colt Gretzky the Great had won the Soaring Free S. at Woodbine in late August, putting Nyquist at the top of the list by number of black-type winners, too.

Like Authentic, Nyquist was also a fast colt who was probably better at shorter distances than a mile and a quarter, and he was more precocious than Authentic, who won his lone start last year. Nyquist, in contrast, won each of his five races at two, including three Grade l races: the Del Mar Futurity; FrontRunner S.; and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. At year’s end, he was named the champion 2-year-old colt.

He carried his form into the spring, winning the seven-furlong Gll San Vicente S. at Santa Anita in a rapid 1:20.71 before taking the Gl Florida Derby at Gulfstream, which has turned into a better “sire-making race” than the Kentucky Derby itself. Since 1990, graduates of the race include proven and promising sires Unbridled, Unbridled’s Song, Harlan’s Holiday, Empire Maker, Scat Daddy, Quality Road, Dialed In, Take Charge Indy, and Constitution. In contrast, Street Sense and American Pharoah are the only Kentucky Derby winners who didn’t win the Florida Derby during this span that are comparable, but note that American Pharoah, despite a bunch of graded winners already, is still searching for his first Grade l winner with his first crop now three.

Nyquist won the Kentucky Derby next, and in retrospect, he had some fine horses behind him that day, including subsequent Classic winners Exaggerator (2nd; Preakness) and Creator (13th, Belmont S.), Horse of the Year Gun Runner (3rd; Breeders’ Cup Classic). Also included among Derby also-rans that day, Mohaymen (4th), Brody’s Cause (7th), Mor Spirit (10th), Outwork (14th), and Whitmore (19th), among others.

Note that both Brody’s Cause (Giant’s Causeway), now at Spendthrift, and Outwork (Uncle Mo), at WinStar, were represented by black-type winners over the weekend as well, Brody’s Cause with Glll Iroquois S. winner Sittin On Go at Churchill on the Derby undercard and Outwork with Samborella in the $150,000 Seeking the Ante S. at Saratoga a day earlier.

Arrogate, the colt who would be crowned champion 3-year-old of that year, was notably absent from the Derby field. In fact, on the day Nyquist won the Derby, Arrogate had made only one start, a third-place finish in a maiden special at Los Alamitos, and the careers of these two champions are studies in contrast. One was a fast and early developing colt whose career peaked as an undefeated Kentucky Derby winner of eight races, while the other made his name in 10-furlong races through the second half of his 3-year-old season and as an early 4-year-old before retiring as the leading N. American money earner. His first yearlings are selling now.

The Derby was the apex in Nyquist’s career. He had three more starts, never won again, and retired to Darley for the 2017 breeding season with a record of eight wins from 11 starts and $5,189,200 in earnings, and he brought plenty of cachet to the table for commercial breeders at $40,000 as a champion 2-year-old, early spring 3-year-old, and Kentucky Derby winner–exactly the race form both breeders and buyers look for. And like Authentic, he’s by the right kind of sire.

UNCLE MO

Nyquist was a member of Ashford-based Uncle Mo’s first crop and led a group of seven black-type winners for Uncle Mo that made him the leading freshman sire of 2015. That remarkable crop would eventually yield 25 black-type winners from 157 named foals, an exceptional 16%, and four Grade l winners, including Gomo, Unbridled Mo, and Outwork in addition to Nyquist.

To date, Uncle Mo is represented by eight Grade 1 winners through six crops of racing age (including 2-year-olds of 2020) versus seven for Into Mischief through nine crops, though in fairness to the latter, his first four crops contained only a total of 140 named foals.

Both stallions are clicking in high gear now, and this year Into Mischief is comfortably atop the general sire list, with Uncle Mo in third place. Into Mischief leads all stallions with 24 black-type winners, but Uncle Mo leads by number of graded stakes winners, with 12. Uncle Mo stood for $125,000 this spring.

Like Into Mischief with Goldencents, Uncle Mo’s sons are showing early life as stallions. Aside from Nyquist, with seven winners through Thursday afternoon, Outwork also has seven winners and a black-type winner and is in fifth place on the freshman list, and Uncle Mo’s less-heralded New York-based son at Sequel, Laoban, is in 12th with four winners and a black-type winner as well.

Uncle Mo was an exceptional 2-year-old, a man among boys both in physique and race class. He was a champion at two, winning the Gl Champagne S. by almost five lengths in 1:34.51 and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile by a little over four lengths. Unlike Nyquist, he wasn’t able to make the Derby and had a spotty record at three in an abbreviated campaign, but his subsequent success as a stallion has repaired his reputation as a racehorse and put him among the best stallions in the country.

Nyquist, therefore, has quite a bit going for him, and yearling buyers responded to the Darley stallion at the sales last year, making him the leading first-crop sire with an average price of $225,061–more than five times his stud fee–for 49 sold from 66 offered.

Thirteen of those 66 yearlings, or about 20%, were from A.P. Indy-line mares, and so far Nyquist’s three stakes horses are from this group. Gretzky the Great, a $295,000 RNA, is from a Bernardini mare; Vequist, a $120,000 RNA, is from a Mineshaft mare; and Lady Lilly, a $280,000 sale, is out of a Pulpit mare. Uncle Mo himself has sired seven stakes winners on the cross, including Grade I winner Mo Town and two Grade II winners from Bernardini mares.

Because Darley also stands Bernardini, an exceptional broodmare sire for his age, this is a cross we’re likely to see more of in the future, because, believe it or not, Gretzky the Great is so far the only foal of racing age by Nyquist from a Bernardini mare.

The title for leading freshman sire will probably come down to the Breeders’ Cup races, as I noted in this space discussing Taylor Made’s Not This Time two weeks ago. His daughter Princess Noor also became a Grade l winner Sunday, winning the Del Mar Debutante like an exceptional filly, and the matchup with Vequist will be highly anticipated.

Of course, between now and then a lot can and will happen, but Nyquist couldn’t be in a better spot as the freshmen sires turn into the homestretch. He’s leading.

Sid Fernando is president and CEO of Werk Thoroughbred Consultants, Inc., originator of the Werk Nick Rating and eNicks.

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