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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Baker’s Patience Paying Off With ‘Spectacular’ Bargain

In the 1979 Belmont Stakes, it was hard not to root for Spectacular Bid as he attempted to become the 12th horse in history to complete the Triple Crown.

Even James “Jimmy” Baker had a ton of respect for the 'Bid,' entering the paddock for the race as the groom of Coastal on behalf of trainer David Whiteley. Racing fans may have been disappointed when Spectacular Bid ran third that day, but Baker found himself smiling when he met Coastal in the Belmont Stakes winner's circle.

Baker has never forgotten that day. Fast forward to 2018, when he and his wife, Candie, were trying to name a handsome colt they'd purchased for $20,000 as a yearling at the previous year's Keeneland September sale.

“I always liked that name, Spectacular Bid,” Baker said. “We were trying to name this horse, and Candie has always liked the name 'Gem,' so she came up with Spectacular Gem.”

The 4-year-old son of Can the Man might not be running in the Triple Crown, but Spectacular Gem has proven himself a perfect purchase for the Bakers. Last Sunday, the colt earned the third stakes victory of his career in Ellis Park's $100,000 Kentucky Downs Preview Tourist Mile in Henderson, Ky., boosting his overall earnings to $307,281.

Spectacular Gem's connections following his win in the Tourist Mile Preview

“He's been a big, big surprise,” Candie Baker said after Sunday's win. “Jimmy has done a great job with him. He's been a really, really nice horse. He's a diamond in the rough, just hope he can keep on going.”

The Preview Tourist Mile is an automatic qualifier for the $750,000 Tourist Mile on Sept. 7 at Kentucky Downs in Franklin, Ky., and Jimmy Baker said that would be the next “logical spot” for Spectacular Gem. He'd like to try for a graded win with the colt as well, but the veteran trainer is primarily grateful to have Spectacular Gem in his barn.

“I had a lot of good years in the 1990s, and we've been piddling the last 12 years buying horses, most of them fillies — a lot cheaper, $5,000, $10,000,” Baker said. “We're just really lucky to get a horse like this. It means a lot to us because we're in the game to run. To have a horse to run in these kinds of races is just a bonus for us.”

The son of New York-based trainer George M. Baker, Jimmy Baker grew up around Thoroughbreds. His father trained a top handicap mare named Politely in mid-to-late 1960s for Allaire duPont; she won 21 of her 49 starts for earnings over $550,000.

When his father got down on horses in the 1970s, the younger Baker decided to go across the street and ask trainer David Whiteley, son of Hall of Famer Frank Whiteley, for a job.

“He looked at me and said, 'You get a haircut come and see me,'” Baker remembered. “You know, I was growing up in New York in the '70s! Well, I went right across the street and got a haircut and came right back, and he hired me.”

During the six years with Whiteley, Baker became friends with co-worker Shug McGaughey. After returning to his father's barn for a short period, Baker went to work for the future Hall of Fame trainer.

Baker was present for the careers of Hall of Fame runners Personal Ensign and Easy Goer, spending a total of five years under McGaughey's employ.

“The coolest thing for me was when Easy Goer won the Gotham,” Baker said. “He came off the van and into the stall, and you just knew he was an unbelievable horse. He wasn't acting up but he just had that demeanor about him. It was unfortunate that he came around during a tough year, with Sunday Silence.”

Baker decided to make his own path in 1989.

“Going on your own after working for people for a long time is a big change,” Baker said. “Shug sent me my first few horses, and he was instrumental in helping me get started.”

Baker's father also went to work for owner/breeder George Steinbrenner, who started to send him horses as well. One of his earliest graded stakes winners was for Steinbrenner: Spinning Round in the G2 Alcibiades at Keeneland in 1991. That filly took Baker to the Breeders' Cup as well.

Owner Robert E. Hoeweler took Baker to the Kentucky Derby a few years later with Mahogany Hall. The Woodman colt ran third in the 1994 Blue Grass Stakes, then finished ninth in the Run for the Roses. As a 5-year-old, however, Mahogany Hall really came into his own, winning the G1 Whitney Stakes at Saratoga.

“You know, when one door closes, another one opens,” said Baker. “I did really well in the '90s, then okay in the early 2000s.

“Nowadays there are a lot of young trainers out there, and everything's about stats. We're so worried about stats all the time; it should be about the horses.”

For the past six years, Baker has averaged just over 75 starts per season with between seven and 13 winners. He keeps a string at Churchill Downs and spends winters in New Orleans, and usually trains one or two of his own at a time.

“I thought about doing something else, just haven't come up with the right idea,” said Baker, laughing good-naturedly. “I tease my wife all the time that I'm gonna quit, but I love the horses. I learned that from my dad. I also have great help, they're a lot of fun to be around. At the end of the day it makes you a better horseman.”

While Candie Baker helped out at the barn every single day in the early years, she has since developed her own successful bookkeeping business with nearly 25 clients that keeps her occupied six days a week.

“We stepped up our spending a little bit and got lucky with Starlight Express ($22,000 filly who earned $104,026), and we used a little bit of that money to shop for a pricier horse,” Baker said.

Baker approached the 2017 Keeneland September sale with a top budget of $30,000, but he kept getting outbid. Candie had instructed her husband to buy a big, ugly colt, as a way of turning around their luck with nicer-looking fillies. Baker couldn't find one that fit the bill.

“I was like, 'Just find me one,'” Candie Baker remembered.

Finally, her husband called back.

“He said, 'Candie, I found you one. It's not probably what you want. It's by nothing out of nothing, but he's a good-looking colt.' I said, 'That's fine.' He really liked him, and we got him.”

Spectacular Gem is sired by Can the Man, a Grade 3-winning son of Into Mischief.

“I'd never even heard of him before that day,” Baker said. “I just knew he was by Into Mischief, who's obviously just an incredible sire.”

Baker started the colt's career in a maiden claiming race for a tag of $30,000, debuting him at Ellis Park in September of his 2-year-old season.

“I just tried to put him in the easiest spot possible first out since we owned him,” Baker explained. “Any day you come into the barn, a horse can have something wrong, you never know, so I try not to go too fast with them. That's what I learned working for Hall of Famers, you have to take your time and pay attention.”

Spectacular Gem won that first race, a six-furlong dirt contest, by 2 1/4 lengths, but he didn't win again until January, when Baker finally switched him to the grass.

With three turf stakes victories and a total of six wins from 16 starts, Spectacular Gem has more than paid his way. In return, all the colt expects is his fair share of the barn's candy stash.

“He just demands those peppermints, he'll stand there and holler for them all day long,” Baker said, admitting, “He's a little spoiled.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘What Kind Of A Person Am I?’

It may have been “just” a West Virginia-bred maiden race at Charles Town on July 16, but there was a time that 54-year-old owner Bill Goodman considered it a win just that Eternal Heart was still alive.

The filly, a 3-year-old daughter of First Samurai, has already endured and overcome more adversity than most horses face in a lifetime. As a yearling, Eternal Heart's nervous system was attacked by a parasite, Sarcocystis neurona, the culprit behind the debilitating and often deadly disease Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis (EPM).

Her recovery is a story about perseverance, about faith, and, above all, about the people who work incredibly hard to do right by the animals with whose lives they are entrusted.

“This business gets a really bad rap, but I've seen some people do some amazing things,” Goodman said, his voice wavering as the emotion overwhelmed him. “They get this horse, this West Virginia-bred with these issues, and just treated her like she was Ruffian or something. That's just the kind of people who are in this business. People like this need to be known. And the little guys don't get the chance for these good horses, and they should, because she would never be where she is if she had been in any other barn.”

Like any good blockbuster film, the journey began with a midlife crisis.

In 2011, Goodman was managing an Irish pub for a friend in Miami, Fla., and had never worked around horses. He loved the races, however, and spent many an afternoon playing the ponies at Gulfstream Park.

“One morning at like six a.m., as I was putting the night deposit in the bank, I just had this thought, 'I don't want to be here, I don't want to do this anymore,'” Goodman explained. “I said to myself, 'I think I'll go to Gulfstream Park, and I'm gonna get a license, and I'm gonna get a job there. So I walked through the back gate, having never walked a horse in my life.”

Goodman was told no at almost every barn, but trainer Peter Gulyas saw him walking the backside and quickly agreed to show Goodman the ropes. That lasted for several months, but when Gulyas got down to just four horses, he had to let Goodman go.

Ever the pragmatist, Goodman called the phone number on trainer Todd Pletcher's website, and got connected with assistant Whit Beckman at Keeneland. Beckman hired him to hot-walk over the phone, and Goodman drove up to Lexington that very night, arriving at Keeneland at three in the morning.

“I worked for Todd for just three weeks, and then I got to go to the Derby at Churchill with Gemologist,” Goodman said. “I was just in heaven. We went from there to Saratoga, and I started asking about learning how to groom. By the time we went to Florida, I had my first four horses.”

Goodman cared for some top horses for Pletcher, attending three Kentucky Derbies and three Breeders' Cups with his charges. Among his favorites were We Miss Artie, My Miss Sophia, Competitive Edge and Ectot.

“I learned a lot from Todd,” said Goodman. “I was very lucky.”

Tragedy struck in 2017 when Goodman's father died. Pletcher told the groom to take as much time off as he needed, that he would always have a job when he was ready to come back.

Goodman had been thinking about shifting into the bloodstock business anyway, and his father's passing allowed him to step back and start working toward that goal. In 2018, he started looking for his first horse, and he finally found her at the October Fasig-Tipton Midlantic yearling sale at Timonium.

Under the banner WJG Legacy Equine (his father's initials), Goodman purchased Eternal Heart for $50,000. He'd gone a bit above his budget, but he just felt there was something special about the compact chestnut filly.

Eternal Heart was sent to Susan Montanye's farm in Florida for her early education, and everything proceeded according to schedule for the first several weeks.

On Oct. 28, Goodman got the call.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Goodman said. “It was 11:31 in the morning, and the phone rang and it was Susan. I knew right away something was wrong. I remember picking up the phone, and I just said, 'Uh oh.' And she said, 'Yeah, Uh-oh.'”

Eternal Heart's right ear was at a 90-degree angle to her head, her right eye wasn't blinking, and the skin was sagging on the right side of her face.

“She looked like she'd had a stroke, basically,” said Goodman.

Veterinarians quickly diagnosed the filly as neurologic, and started treating her intensely right away. She regained the blinking in her right eye after 24 hours, but two weeks later Goodman got another call.

The parasite, which had originally attached to the filly's brain stem, had migrated to her spinal cord after the aggressive treatment. Now, Eternal Heart was losing control of her hind end, and the prognosis wasn't good.

Goodman was told that euthanasia was the best remaining option, and his insurance company called to offer him a full payout for the filly's $50,000 value.

“I couldn't make the decision, and the vet said she wasn't in pain,” Goodman said. “So I put my head in the sand like an ostrich and said, 'Keep treating her.'”

Montanye suggested that it might not be a bad idea to have Nieke Mailfat, an Eastern medicine specialist, take a look at the filly. Goodman agreed.

“Nieke looked at the filly and she told me, 'I can't make her a racehorse, but I think I can make her a horse,'” Goodman remembered. “Right then it was like, what do I do now? If I put her down now, what kind of a person am I? Yeah, I could get my money back, but how am I gonna live with that?

“I thought I was prepared for it, but you're now in charge of this life. I knew right away when they told me, I knew it was going to be a moral decision.”

Prior to treatment, Eternal Heart registered about a 4.5 on the neurologic scale, which runs from 1 to 5 with 5 being the worst. Mailfat told Goodman that if there was no improvement in three weeks, the filly would never get better.

In just four days, though, Eternal Heart was showing marked improvements. She'd moved to about a 3.5 on the neurologic scale, and after two weeks she was able to go out in a little round pen.

“She was wobbly but she never fell, and she was just happy to be out,” Goodman said. “I was down there constantly, and she didn't look like the same filly. She's always been a good keeper, though. She'll eat you out of house and home, so that probably saved her.”

In January 2019, Montanye called to say the filly was doing so much better that she wanted to put a saddle on her and tack walk her. Taking small steps forward, Eternal Heart progressed to walking around with a rider on, lunging in the round pen, then jogging on the track by mid-February. In March, they started to let her gallop a bit.

“She was still a little bit unsteady, but she never tripped or stumbled, she just continued to get better,” Goodman said. “Still, the thought process was, 'She can one day be a horse.'”

By May, Eternal Heart told her caretakers that she was ready to stretch her legs in her first “breeze.” By July, the filly showed off her improvement with a work in company, going a quarter in 25 ½ seconds.

“Now the thought process changes to, 'Wow, maybe she can race,'” said Goodman. “Susan said it was time for her to move on, and I decided to send her to Caio Caramori.”

The son of trainer Eduardo Caramori, Caio operates out of the Thoroughbred Training Center in Lexington. The two met because Goodman had become friends with Pletcher assistant Byron Hughes. Hughes and Caio Caramori were childhood friends, and Hughes brokered the introduction shortly after Goodman started working for Pletcher.

Goodman and Caramori started playing golf together and talking horses. Eventually, their friendship progressed to the point that Goodman would stay on Caramori's parents' farm whenever Pletcher's string was based in Lexington, and Goodman even lived there for a while after his father died.

“Sending her to Caio was unquestionably the best decision I've made, because she would never be where she is today without him and his wife, Emma,” Goodman said. “They're just good people.”

Emma Caramori and baby Cora visit Eternal Heart

Eternal Heart arrived in Lexington on July 17, and Caramori quickly suggested treating her for EPM once again. The trainer warned Goodman that treating the filly might cause her to regress in the short term, but he felt strongly that it was the best thing for her moving forward.

She did regress, but after a week Eternal Heart started going the right way again. Caramori was almost ready to start looking for a race for her in December, but since she'd missed out on so much early training, Eternal Heart just hadn't had the physical preparation to be ready to race at two.

Caramori turned her out for 90 days over the winter in Florida, then started to bring her back again. She'd jog one day, then be turned out the next day for nearly a month before Caramori resumed full training with her in April.

“Caio just treated her like she was his own horse,” Goodman said. “I was in the stall a lot, but when I had to leave Florida to go work for Dermot (Magner), I knew she was in good hands.”

When Eternal Heart was ready, Caramori set up a breeze with company, a filly who had won at first asking. Working from the gate, Eternal Heart was a couple steps slow at the start and got out-breezed.

“Caio called me and said, 'Don't be disappointed,'” remembered Goodman. “It was hard not to be, but the next week he called again and said, 'Eternal Heart told me she wants a rematch.'”

In their next matchup, Eternal Heart blew the doors off her rival. It was time to enter her in a race.

Goodman drove down to West Virginia on July 16 to watch Eternal Heart win at first asking, racing without Lasix and topping her nearest rival by three-quarters of a length to earn $16,125.

“I'll never forget when she turned into the paddock at Charles Town, she had this look on her face like 'I'm not in Kansas anymore,'” said Goodman. “In the race, she split horses and then she just never let anybody get by her. The jockey, J.D. Acosta, told me after the race, 'Man, she is so green but she has so much talent.' His agent called the next day and said he wants to keep riding her!”

Future plans for Eternal Heart call for the filly to stay in West Virginia, where there are multiple conditions she can run through.

“Even if she never wins again, just that she did what she did, it's so impressive,” said Goodman. “She's already paid me back, big-time. … She's just got this something about her, she just doesn't want to lose. It's pretty humbling, actually. For two years, she has consumed every moment of my thoughts.”

Working with horses has filled a place in Goodman's life he hadn't known was empty, and the journey with Eternal Heart has reemphasized just how important it is to find the right people and to never give up.

“Caio and Susan and everybody, they've made her into a racehorse,” Goodman said. “They've protected her and they've protected me, and they've put up with me. I've been fortunate to make good decisions, and those good decisions were a product of how I was raised and the people who raised me. Just hanging around people who are good people, and who are going to do the right thing.”

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: Scaling The Mountain Isn’t For ‘The Faint Of Heart’

The standings at any given track are certainly not the end-all, be-all when it comes to measuring a trainer's performance with racehorses. That said, the current standings at West Virginia's Mountaineer Park present a compelling picture of an up-and-coming young trainer who has finally earned a chance to show what he can do.

Ben Delong has saddled 14 winners from 46 starters at Mountaineer this year, placing him second in the standings behind Jay Bernardini, who has 15 wins from 133 starts. The 34-year-old Delong is in the middle of a career year, despite the pandemic, posting his highest-ever earnings and poised to eclipse his highest number of winners.

“I'm on a hot streak right now, but I'll be honest with you, I'm just feeding faster horses,” Delong said, laughing. “I had some new owners who did well at the end of last year, and they started sending me new horses. I used to have 15 to 20 horses, and now I have 45 to 50. It's just having the quality of horses and going where I think they're going to be live.”

Delong isn't stabled at Mountaineer in New Cumberland, W.Va., but instead bases his operation at the Ashwood Training Center in Lexington, Ky. Being at Ashwood allows Delong to be hands-on with the horses from the first time they wear a saddle all the way to the winner's circle, and everything in between. He even drives the trailer hauling the horses to the races, more often than not.

“I'm just not suited for a nine-to-five (kind of job),” he said. “I guess I'm on the five-to-nine schedule instead.”

Perhaps the biggest win of his career came last fall at Churchill Downs, when Delong saddled A Girl Named Jac to win a maiden special weight event at odds of 17-1. The filly was his first winner beneath the Twin Spires.

A $5,500 yearling purchase at the Keeneland September sale in 2018, the Ontario-bred daughter of Point of Entry was sent to Delong to be started under saddle. He liked the filly from the start, so when the owners approached him in 2019 about training her in exchange for an ownership stake, Delong agreed.

“I took her on a deal because I liked the horse, and because I only had about eight horses at the time, so I was more than willing to jump on it,” he explained. “She turned out to be a pretty decent little horse.”

A Girl Named Jac finished third in her debut at Indiana Grand on Nov. 1, then returned to win the Churchill race in mid-November. In February, Delong and the other partners sold her at OBS for $75,000.

It was a big deal for the long-time gallop hand to prove he could both see and develop a horse's potential, not only to the outside world, but to himself as well. Delong never got the opportunity to be an assistant under a big-name trainer, or to learn the art of training through any of the more traditional methods.

Instead, he was raised around the backside of Fairmount Park in Illinois by his father, a former jockey. Delong wanted to travel as soon as he was able, so he left his home track at 17 to work the circuit between Prairie Meadows in Iowa, Remington Park in Oklahoma, and Oaklawn Park in Arkansas. Delong galloped for different trainers, freelancing early on, and eventually picked up a salary job for Wayne Catalano.

Things changed when he and his fiancée, Cassie Corvin, had a daughter in 2009. Delong knew he needed to stabilize his lifestyle, and in 2011 he made the move to Lexington and got a job galloping for Kellyn Gorder. He kept freelancing on the side as well, and it was one of those freelance mounts, a horse named Compromisin I'mnot, that drew Delong into the training business.

The owner was looking to move the mare and wound up giving her to Delong. He took out his trainer's license, and Compromisin I'mnot gave him his first winner in 2013 at the now-defunct Beulah Park. In all, the mare ran in-the-money 12 out of 14 starts, and Delong knew he wanted to keep training.

Without an assistant position on the horizon, however, Delong started out training a few cheap horses of his own while galloping full-time. He would run them wherever he thought they could do well, often shipping out of town to do so.

“It's easier to ship and know you're going to get a check,” Delong said. “I'll never turn my back on the little small tracks. I'm obviously from one, I never look down on them.”

It took until 2018 for Delong to eclipse $100,000 in earnings; he won 20 races that year.

“I definitely had to learn by trial and error,” said Delong. “I was a very stubborn individual as I got into it, but as I got older, I realized asking for help is not a bad thing. Though, if it wasn't for being so stubborn, I probably would have chosen a different path!

“I guess you could say I worked under dad, because he taught me all I know about horses. He's pretty sharp with horses, since he trained and was a jockey, and he galloped for a lot of years for a lot of people. When I've got a question I don't know the answer to, he's my go-to guy.”

Though his father is now semi-retired at age 65, he still lives at Ashwood and helps out when he can. Delong racing remains a family operation, through-and-through; Delong's fiancée works Saturdays and Sundays at a hospital in Elizabethtown as a radiology technician, and she gets up early Monday mornings to help exercise horses at Ashwood.

“I couldn't do it without her,” Delong said. “We had plans to get married before COVID hit, but we put them on the back burner. We're gonna make a date soon enough, but we both have plans for the future and neither one of us is going anywhere; that piece of paper isn't going to change our life or our commitment.”

Delong also has a trusted assistant, Sherman Mitchell, whose 23-year-old son, Austin “Worm” Mitchell, is learning to be a groom and helps haul horses to the races when Delong has other commitments. (Worm earned his nickname because as a young boy he loved fishing so much that he used to carry worms around in his pockets.)

“He wanted to move forward and do like I did, working side by side with his dad,” Delong said of the younger Mitchell, now his barn foreman. “I can really rely on him. He goes above and beyond anything I could ask him to do, and he definitely wants to make sure the horses are where they need to be.”

Despite the pandemic and its effect on racing this year, things are looking up for Delong in 2020. He remains committed to the game because he loves the horses, but he admits there were times it wasn't easy to keep making his way to the track every morning.

“The racetrack is a very hard game,” Delong said. “It's not for the faint of heart, and you have to be willing to do a lot of going without to get where you want to be. Everybody wants to be able to move to the top of the game, but I'm a day-by-day kind of guy. Obviously I've got to deal with what I've got in front of me, and when I've got that kind of horse to go to that level, I'll be ready for it.”

At the end of the day, he just wants to provide a better life for his daughter, who hopes to be a marine biologist.

“Hopefully I can give her more than I had,” Delong said.

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘I Still Can’t Find The Words’

Tommy Drury is used to standing on the sidelines, watching horses he had a hand in go on to major success on the racetrack. He doesn't mind; the unique niche he's carved out in the Kentucky Thoroughbred industry allows him to stay home with his son and daughter year-round, and to work hand-in-hand with some of the sport's top horsemen.

Last Saturday all of that changed when Art Collector earned the trainer his first graded stakes win in the G2 Toyota Blue Grass at Keeneland. Still, Drury found himself pulling back to watch the post-race celebrations from the rail.

“When the horse came back, they started sponging him off and everybody high-fived and all that,” Drury remembered. “The horse was circling, and I was just lost, I was kinda standing there, off to the side.

“I was just watching, literally I was just taking it in. I was so happy for my assistant Jose Garcia, for (long-time friend and groom) Jerry Dixon; I mean this is the same crew that you're gonna see in the last race at Turfway Park and here we are in the Blue Grass. I just wanted to watch it for a minute. As they started circling the horse, finally (jockey) Brian (Hernandez) kind of hit me in the back and said, 'Hey, you just won the Blue Grass,' and it just hit me, like, 'Yeah, yeah we sure did.'”

With Art Collector established as one of the top three contenders for the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby, Drury can't help but be awestruck at the sudden shift in his career.

“The way we got the horse, the way everything's fallen into place, how do you describe it?” said Drury, who followed his father into racing and has saddled 471 winners since 1991. “It's just, it's unbelievable.”

Neither Drury nor the 3-year-old son of Bernardini would be in this position had the coronavirus pandemic not caused the postponement of this year's Run for the Roses.

Art Collector made his first five starts for trainer Joe Sharp and began his career on the turf, winning a 6 ½-furlong maiden special weight sprint at Kentucky Downs in his second out. The colt made his first attempt at two turns in the G3 Bourbon over 1 1/16 miles on the Keeneland turf, but he leveled off late to finish seventh.

Switched over to the dirt, Art Collector found his stride in his fifth start when he won a six-furlong allowance at Churchill by 7 ½ lengths. Unfortunately, a post-race test found elevated levels of levamisole in Art Collector's system, and the colt was disqualified.

Owner and breeder Bruce Lunsford gave Art Collector a brief break at Kesmarc, then sent him to Drury's barn in January to prepare for a return to the track. He and Drury have a long-standing business relationship, and Lunsford's horses often use Drury's facility as a waystation between races.

“The only thing Bruce said was, 'This is a really, really nice horse,'” said Drury. “The only reason I knew who he was was Brian had sent me a text and asked me if I had Art Collector… At that point I thought, if Brian's trying to figure out where this horse is at, he must be alright.”

Art Collector was intended to move on to the care of trainer Rusty Arnold when he was ready to resume racing, but the virus put everything on hold.

Keeneland canceled its April meet, and Churchill kept delaying the start of the Spring meet, awaiting permission from the Kentucky governor to resume live racing. Meanwhile, Art Collector kept quietly accumulating solid workouts over the Pro-Ride synthetic surface at Skylight.

Hernandez, who is Drury's long-time friend and has been the trainer's go-to rider since his bug-boy days, shipped back to Louisville from his winter home in New Orleans early this year to be nearby after his wife gave birth. The jockey began coming out to Skylight nearly every week to breeze Art Collector, and his reports back to both Drury and Lunsford were extremely optimistic; everyone was just waiting for the chance to get him going.

Finally, Churchill announced that racing would resume in mid-May and released its first condition book.

There was an allowance race that would be perfect for Art Collector on May 17, but Churchill was only allowing trainers to ship in to the backstretch in stages based on where they had spent the winter; Arnold's string from Florida wouldn't be allowed on the track until after the first weekend of racing.

Rather than wait and miss the race, Lunsford allowed Drury to saddle Art Collector for his first start of 2020. The colt won the seven-furlong contest by 2 ¾ lengths, and Lunsford decided Drury had done such a good job that he ought to keep training him.

Arnold also called Drury after that first win, congratulating him.

“It was one of the classiest things anybody's ever done,” Drury said. “Rusty said, 'Tommy, that horse ran fantastic. There's absolutely no reason to change anything, that horse needs to stay exactly where he's at.'”

Lunsford was ready to try Art Collector around two turns again, but Drury wasn't convinced he wanted to go that far. The colt isn't particularly large, Drury explained, and his one previous race around two turns hadn't gone well.

Art Collector is bred for the distance, though. His dam is a two-turn stakes-winning daughter of Distorted Humor named Distorted Legacy, whose half-brother Vision and Verse earned over a million dollars on the track, running second in both the G1 Belmont Stakes and the G1 Travers.

With the colt training exceptionally well, Drury entered him in another allowance race at Churchill, this time over 1 1/16 miles on June 13. Art Collector responded with a dominant 6 ½-length victory, earning a 100 Beyer.

“I was a little nervous before that second race,” Drury admitted. “I was really happy to see him get around the second turn that day, that was pretty exciting.”

The decision was made to enter Art Collector in the Blue Grass. On Wednesday before the race, Shared Sense, whom Art Collector had beaten in the June 13 allowance, came back to win the G3 Indiana Derby.

On the same day, trainer Ken McPeek decided to enter the points-leader for the Kentucky Oaks, Swiss Skydiver, in the Blue Grass. Suddenly, Drury started to wonder if he'd picked the wrong Derby prep to point for.

Lunsford is a staunch supporter of Kentucky racing, though, and Drury knew that if he wanted to even think about the Derby with Art Collector, the colt would have to be tested.

That doesn't mean the trainer wasn't nervous.

“It's funny, I can run a $5,000 claimer at Belterra and get nervous, so that part doesn't change,” Drury said. “The toughest part for me is after you throw the jockey up and you're just waiting. That post parade was the longest six minutes of my life. Actually, Tammy Fox (trainer Dale Romans' partner) yelled at me over the fence, 'You look like you're washing out, are you okay?'”

Standing at the sixteenth pole, Drury watched with his heart in his throat as Mike Smith sat chilly on Swiss Skydiver at the top of the stretch. Art Collector was coming on strong, but from his vantage point it was hard to tell whether the colt would get to the wire in time.

When the pair blew past him, Drury could see Art Collector passing the filly, and the images around him started to blur.

“You know, my program really hasn't been geared toward getting this kind of horse,” Drury explained. “I'm the behind-the-scenes guy. If a guy needs a 2-year-old legged up, he calls me. If a guy runs out of stalls at Churchill and he has three horses coming, he calls me. I'm happy to do it, and I've made a good living doing it, but because I do it, you don't even think about stuff like this.

“You kind of feel like it's never going to happen, you almost know its never going to happen. And now, all of a sudden this thing… I don't know how to describe it. I still can't find the words. People keep asking me what I think and how I'm feeling, and I just don't know.”

Drury sent excited texts to his son and his daughter after the race, but otherwise settled in for a quiet evening at home with a pizza and a cold beer. By the next morning, he had over 312 text messages on his phone, and voice mails from other trainers and friends from all over the country.

“I laughed and told Bill Mott, 'I always wondered what it was like for you guys after you win a big race!'” Drury joked. “I called Rusty and I told him, 'Thank you so much for what you did, because this thing has changed my life.' You know Rusty, he just said, 'Tommy, that was the best thing for that horse.'”

Whether Art Collector makes another start before the Derby has not yet been decided, with Drury deferring the decision but suggesting the Ellis Park Derby on Aug. 9 as the most likely option.

Looking forward to the first Saturday in September, one day before his 49^th birthday, Drury has a hard time imagining what it might look like with the virus protocols Churchill will employ. He hopes to be able to bring his children with him on the walkover, but no matter what happens he's grateful to be along for the ride with his horse of a lifetime.

“You know, the best part of all this is that I'm sharing it with my crew and my friends,” Drury said. “It means so much to be here with Jose, and Jerry, and Brian, and with Bruce as well.”

“The most special thing about it is to be on this trail with Tommy,” Hernandez echoed, speaking to the Ellis Park press office. “I've ridden at every little racetrack in the country, I think, for Tommy. Indiana, River Downs, Beulah, Ellis and now to win the Blue Grass for him is a special moment. Being friends like we are, it's more special to have this good of a horse. We've always talked about 'Man, if we could ever get a really good one like this, the trip it would put us on.' It's meant a lot.”

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