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 49th 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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