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Four of a kind Derby trainer has quantity and quality
Posted: Thursday May 04, 2000 01:09 AM
By Nick Charles, CNNSI.com
LOUISVILLE -- At 5:45 am a trainer leads the horse named Impeachment through total darkness onto the world's most well-known race track. Less than a half hour later the trainer's back at his barn getting his next athlete, Trippi ready for action As the sun rises at Churchill Downs the trainer with the colt Graeme Hall in tow is back on the racetrack Then at a time most people are still fighting morning rush hour the trainer is negotiating his own kind of traffic watching every step More Than Ready takes. For Todd Pletcher it's not just another day at the office because all four of these horses are running in Saturday's Kentucky Derby. "I think there is less pressure on you, when you have one, all your eggs are in one basket and if something goes wrong you go home," says Pletcher. "In this case, I find it to be a little more easy because you have something to do all the time. You don't have to sit around and worry about it."
What's even more remarkable is that Pletcher's only 32 and in his first Kentucky Derby as a lead trainer, less than five years after leaving Wayne Lukas' high-powered stable to strike out on his own. "He is an attention to detail guy," Pletcher says of Lukas. "He runs a great organization. He is very meticulous and I hopefully carried some of those things with me." To hear the owner of Trippi and Impeachment tell it, Pletcher has made quite an impression, and then some. "We have had good results with him and boy I am high on him," said Cot Campbell. "As far as being 32, he has the maturity of someone 62." Exercise rider Cindy Hutter says she has found Pletcher to Be fun to work with and someone who rarely gets upset. "He is a hard worker, he is ambitious, (and) he knows his horses. That is the thing, he knows everything about his horses." Getting a horse to the Derby is like trying to dance down a road filled with land mines. Lukas is back for the 20th straight year. Yet Derby favorite Fusaichi Pegasus' trainer Neil Drysdale is in the Hall of Fame yet he's never run a horse in this race. The question now is when will Todd Pletcher become famous? "Hopefully, about 5:45 Saturday afternoon," he said with a smile. Pletcher knows quantity isn't necessarily quality. But saddling one-fifth of this jam-packed field is still a strong percentage to play. A horse's pedigree, a trainer's preparation and a jockey's strategy all matter. But racing luck can often be the prevailing element that wins the Kentucky Derby.
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