On muddy track, Always Dreaming separates from pack to win Kentucky Derby

Amid a crowd with no standouts and no clear frontrunners and despite a sloppy track, it was Always Dreaming who came out on top at the 143rd Kentucky Derby, making a winner (yet again) of trainer Todd Pletcher and jockey John Velazquez.

Author:
Tim Layden
Publish date:
May 6, 2017

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LOUISVILLE — There is a frozen moment, right before the start of the Kentucky Derby. It is a moment of infinite possibility, where every bet is cashed, every wish comes true and every horse runs with wings. On Saturday, it looked like this: 20 horses rocking in the starting gate, a hulking piece of green iron, far down beyond the top of the home stretch, almost to the brick wall that separates Churchill Downs from the street beyond. Late afternoon sunshine slanting across a racetrack slick from two days of rain, like a sheet of brown ice. It sounded like this: A buzz, a gasp and then a roar from nearly 160,000 desperate throats. They had waited a year for this again. And it felt like this: a question, answered at last.

It had been an empty winter and early spring. Young horses had run fast and then they had run slowly. They had been healthy, and then injured. They had won, and then they had lost. There was no frontrunner. On the day before the Derby, trainer Bob Baffert won the Kentucky Oaks, a race for three-year-old fillies that is famous inside racing but largely unknown outside it. Baffert’s colt, Mastery, might have been the Derby favorite, but he was injured in March, a symbol of the season. Baffert promised that clarity would come in the Run for the Roses. "There hasn’t been a horse that separated himself from the pack," said the white-haired man who is the most familiar face in racing, but would spend Derby Day at home in California. "The Kentucky Derby will do that."

Yes, the Kentucky Derby did that. It was a bay colt named Always Dreaming—such a racing name, emblematic of the blind faith that comes with every yearling purchased and every wager—who circled the famous Downs oval and flashed beneath the iconic twin spires, nearly clean despite the mud beneath his hooves, winner of the 143rd running by 2 3/4 lengths over longshot Lookin At Lee. The victory was the second in the Derby for trainer Todd Pletcher and also the second for jockey John Velazquez, but the first together for two men who are as close in their profession as Belichick and Brady are in theirs, winners of hundreds of races together, worth millions of dollars. When it was over, Pletcher stood in the ankle-deep mud near the finish line. His teenaged kids, daughter Hannah, 14, and son Payton, 18, (while middle child Kyle took the SAT back home in New York) came running into his arms. "So special to win one with Johnny," Pletcher said. "So fitting."

It was a victory measured by the bonds of family and friendship. Not only are Pletcher and Velazquez among the closest of trainer-jockey combinations in the sport, but principal owners Vinnie Viola and Anthony Bonomo (there are other minority owners) are also close friends dating back more than five decades to their shared neighborhood in Brooklyn. Both men were introduced to racing by their working-class fathers—Viola’s a truck driver and Bonomo’s a bricklayer. On April 30, Velazquez won a race at New York’s Belmont Park on a horse named Army Mule. (Viola is a West Point graduate who was asked by President Trump to be Secretary of the Army, but his business holdings would have created ethics problems; he is also owner of the Florida Panthers of the NHL). Viola and Bonomo took Velazquez to their favorite restaurant, Bamonte’s on Withers Street in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, and there he presented Velazquez with a Catholic scapular necklace, which was then blessed by Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, who is known for the reality series Breaking Bread. Velazquez wore the scapular in the Derby. "I told my wife, Johnny rode that race with my dad and Anthony’s dad on his shoulders," Viola said.

That dinner was the beginning of a tumultuous week for Always Dreaming. Bonomo, 59, had bought the colt for $350,000 at the Keeneland yearling sales in September 2015. Sort of. In truth, Bonomo’s son, also named Anthony, did the buying. "My father told me, 'Stay within the budget,'" Anthony recalled as he sloshed across the track after Saturday’s victory ceremony. "The budget was $200,000. I called my father afterward and said, 'I went a little over.’ He said, 'How little?' I said, 'You’re gonna be happy with this horse.'"

Always Dreaming ran twice last summer for trainer Dominick Schettino, finishing third at Belmont Park and then second in a maiden race at Saratoga. Viola and Bonomo watched the latter race together from box C-19, which they share. At the time, Bonomo was the sole owner of the horse. "We decided to get together on it," says Viola. "We didn’t really have to say anything; that’s the kind of relationship we have." Viola bought a piece of the horse, and they transferred training responsibilities to Pletcher, 49, who decided that Always Dreaming needed a rest. He sent the colt to Florida and didn’t resume training until December. He won his first race back, at Tampa Bay Downs in January, and an allowance race at Gulfstream Park in March. But then Pletcher opted to skip the Fountain of Youth Stakes and go all-in on the Florida Derby, where Always Dreaming would need a strong performance to earn enough qualifying points just to get into the Derby. It was a bold play, and Always Dreaming won the mile and an eighth race by five lengths in one minute, 47 2/5 seconds, an outstanding time.

Always Dreaming arrived in Kentucky almost two weeks before the Derby and immediately got too excited in his morning gallops. Ten days before the Derby, Pletcher sat in his Churchill Downs office on a cold, clear morning and said, "He’s trying to run the Kentucky Derby at 5:45 on Wednesday morning." Pletcher is the IBM of trainers, a practical, taciturn man for whom the addition of a very modest white goatee is considered a radical play. He worked on the problem, training Always Dreaming in draw reins, which allow the rider to better control an aggressive horse. "I was nervous watching him gallop because he was ready to go," said Pletcher. "The most important thing was to bring the best horse to the Derby."

A Retrospective of the Kentucky Derby by Bill Frakes

2004 Kentucky Derby

Stewart Elliott aboard Smarty Jones (Blue) races against Lion Heart (orange) in the 2004 Kentucky Derby.

2013 Kentucky Derby

2009 Kentucky Derby

Jockey Calvin Borel celebrates winning the Kentucky Derby atop Mine That Bird.

Kentucky Derby 2003

Horses and jockeys take the final turn in the 2003 Kentucky Derby.

2014 Kentucky Derby.

2015 Kentucky Derby