A day in the life of Todd Pletcher | Trainer Magazine | European Trainer Article Index

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Jun 26 A day in the life of Todd Pletcher

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In utter darkness on a Thursday morning in early February, Todd Pletcher rolls down the window of his car and punches in an access code that raises the gate at Palm Beach Downs, the private South Florida training center housing 102 of his Thoroughbreds, including his, recently retired, champion filly Rags to Riches. It's 4:40 a.m. That's late for Pletcher, who'd been scouting sales prospects in Ocala the night before. "I was dragging,"  he confessed. His only fuel for the frenetic hours ahead is a cup of coffee. "I'll grab a snack later on," he said. "I' not a breakfast person." He is the person who had just won a fourth consecutive Eclipse Award for training, a remarkable accomplishment which, as does his premature gray hair, belies his youth. He is 40. He' only been training his own stable since December of 1995. Last year, he spotted his contemporaries a six-week head start while sitting out a disputed suspension, then endured – for him – a disappointing Saratoga and Belmont fall meet. Yet he still led the nation in earnings for a fourth consecutive season, with a record $28.1 million, and produced three champions: English Channel (Turf), Lawyer Ron (Older Male) and Rags to Riches (Three-Year-Old Filly), who became the first filly in 102 years to win the Belmont Stakes when she out-gamed subsequent Horse of the Year Curlin by a desperate head. Injured last summer, she has been back in training for a month and will gallop later this morning at Palm Beach Downs.* Pletcher, his wife Tracy, and their three children, Payton, Kyle and Hannah, live just seven miles away. When Pletcher reaches his office in Barn 4, he begins his work-day on his computer."Believe it or not, I usually come in and get on the websites,"he said."I sort of have my routine down. I go to the Daily Racing Form website, The Blood-Horse website, Equibase, Thoroughbred Daily News and Thoroughbred Times. I look at all the periodicals and see what's going on. Then I go through all the overnights at Gulfstream, Aqueduct and Santa Anita, anywhere I've planned to enter. I'm sort of getting organized so that later on, I can make entries."The work day has already been organized the day before. Separate lists on a bulletin board specify all horses requiring bandages, ice and poultices; any horse running a temperature; which horses are shipping south to Gulfstream Park 40 miles away; and any horses shipping in. The set list details the activities of the entire stable this morning, matching the two-to-four horses each of the 27 grooms is responsible for and documenting which horses will be galloping or working out, as well as the riding assignments for the 14 exercise riders for six sets. Horses who will be working out after the break are highlighted in yellow; horses who will be jogging are in blue. A cordial, friendly atmosphere pervades this entire operation of nearly 100 employees. Outside, two horses are being walked as daylight begins to invade starlight. Tristan Barry, an assistant trainer from Limerick, Ireland, walks into the office. Asked how long he's been working for Todd, Barry says, "Nine years." Pletcher quickly interjects, "The best nine years of his life." Barry laughs. He is four days shy of his 33rd birthday. He splits his year, staying in Florida from the end of November through March, in Kentucky for a month, and then at Belmont Park through the summer and fall.  Two others walk in. Ginny Depasquale, a traveling assistant trainer, has a deteriorating set of reins in her hands. Pletcher examines them and tells her to have new ones shipped overnight. She is sporting a beautiful watch presented to her by Pletcher last year commemorating her 10th anniversary with his stable. Pletcher's blacksmith, Ray Amato, says hello. About to turn 75, Amato has been with Pletcher since Day One. Pletcher introduces him as "the world's best blacksmith," and he may be right. After learning the business from his dad, Amato worked for Hall of Famers Hirsch Jacobs, Bobby Frankel, Laz Barrera, Frank "Pancho" Martin, Phil "P.G." Johnson and LeRoy Jolley. It's already warm and it's not yet 6 a.m.  The first set of 11 horses is ready to go to the track. Among them are Pleasant Strike, Twilight Meteor, Jade Queen and Fairbanks, all stakes winners or stakes-placed. Another member of the first set is Charming, an unraced filly who was a $3 million yearling and is working towards her debut. All stand quietly with their grooms in a row as if they're an equine drill team. "For the most part, they get into a routine," Pletcher explained. "They come out here and they're comfortable standing there. Sometimes, it'll take a little while to settle into that routine. Anyone or any horse that's going into a new place, it might take them a little while to settle in. Then we have some that are bad actors that we might leave inside the shedrow because they come out here, and if one of them misbehaves, it scares all the other ones. But they pretty much settle into a routine." Pletcher inspects each one's legs, conferring with his blacksmith and/or Barry whenever necessary. "The ones that aren't going to the track, we look at all four legs and we jog them," Pletcher said. "The ones that are going to the track, the foreman put bandages on behind before they come out. If there's something on a hind leg they want me to see, they'll leave the bandages off and we come out and check their front legs, and then we watch them jog before they go to the track to make sure they're okay. The riders are going to get on them. We're going to give them instructions for when they go to the track." When Pletcher has finished inspecting the last horse, each horse walks quietly in a circular dirt walking ring just as they would before a race. Is it any wonder that most of Pletcher's horses are well-behaved when they race? Pletcher gives each rider specific instructions as they head for the track: Let's jog one, Nick.Jog one, gallop to six.Wire to six. Give me his best gallop.Jog five to wire.Jog one, gallop one They reach the track in darkness. "We found that some horses go better in the dark actually," Pletcher said. "Sometimes you'll find a real aggressive horse be less aggressive in the dark. Every once in a while, you have a rider come back and say the horse really is seeing a lot of shadows. We won't train those in the dark, but it's very rare that we have a horse that just doesn't go very well. I suspect their night vision might be better than ours." That takes us to the other side of the equation. How much can Pletcher see in the dark? "The negative is you can't see as much, but from the time management standpoint, you've got to get started," he said. "The advantage is it's cooler. That's good for most of them. We can see, for the most part, what's going on, especially down the stretch here. Even though it's dark you can pretty much see them from the top of the stretch." Standing at the rail of the one-mile training track with Barry, Pletcher watches his horses go by as if his life depended on not missing a single detail. While the first set finishes up, Amato talks about his young client. By the time Pletcher was born, Amato had carved out his niche on the backstretch with Hirsch Jacobs. "I loved him," Amato said. "I worked for him until he passed away. Hirsch Jacobs worked the same way as Todd does. He's really a great guy, this guy." [pointing to Pletcher] Asked to explain Pletcher's success, Amato said, "First of all, he's a very, very well-educated man. His dad was in the business for years. He goes over every horse every day. Last year we had almost 200 horses here. At Belmont Park, I get to the barn usually around 4:30, a quarter to 5, and Todd is right there with me. This poor fellow here doesn't go home sometimes until 7, 8 o'clock at night, especially if he has horses running. He's just an amazing guy. And his phone rings 100 times a day. He answers the last call with the same demeanor as the first one. He's unbelievable. He remembers everything. Hirsch was the same way." Before the second set begins, Pletcher has a couple minutes to discuss his plans for the day. He has three horses entered at Gulfstream Park that afternoon. His stable of 170 horses – "Hopefully it'll pick up," he said – are spread throughout divisions in Florida, New York and California. "For the most part, I know what's going on the rest of the day, but some of that depends on what happens here in the morning," he said. "I don't always go to Gulfstream. Sometimes, I'll stay here all day and do stuff with horses here. I never miss a race. We have HRTV. We have the dish. I can watch TVG." Asked how he manages his huge, coast-to-coast stable, Pletcher said, "I don't think it's as hard as everybody makes it out to be. During the course of the morning, maybe during the break, I'll talk to Seth [assistant trainer Benzel] in New York. I'll call Gulfstream and see how everything is with Anthony [assistant trainer Sciametta]. Then Tristan and I will go over the horses here. I'll talk to the business office in Saratoga. They keep track of the business side of it; where the horses are. And I'm keeping track of what they're doing in training."Of course, I'm relying on Anthony and Seth and Michael McCarthy [in California] in their locations. They're my eyes and ears when I'm not there. I think the process of what we do, where we go over things every day, keeps them sharp, keeps them on the top of what each horse is doing every day. They can inform me and then I know what's going on and we're mapping out schedules and race plans and stuff like that from there." He is asked if it's possible that any horse in his vast stable could have a problem without him knowing about it. "I get well aware of it, all the bad news every day," he said, laughing. "My wife calls me every once in a while in the morning. She'll say, ‘Is everything okay?' And I say, ‘No.'" He laughs again. "It's never everything okay when you train horses." The second set is ready to go. The last of the 12 horses in a row is Rags to Riches. Do the other 11 know they are standing with royalty? Last summer at Belmont Park, Rags to Riches made history by holding on to a slim lead to defeat Curlin by a head as the normally stoic Pletcher, watching from his box seat, jumped up and down screaming, "Come on Mama! Come on Mama!" She gave Pletcher his first Triple Crown victory, also delivering what was chosen as the National Thoroughbred Racing Association Moment of the Year. Then she became ill and, when she recovered, she finished second to Lear's Princess in the $250,000 Grade 1 Gazelle Handicap at Belmont Park. X-rays afterwards revealed she had suffered a hairline fracture of her right front pastern.* Eight months after last year's Belmont Stakes, was Pletcher still enjoying that moment? "I think it's still pretty exciting," he said. "I mean, it couldn't have been any more exciting than it was when it happened, or how it happened. But then when you add on the race that Curlin comes back and does what he does after that, it sort of legitimizes how great an achievement it was for her. And we were at the Eclipse Awards and they had the NTRA Moment of the Year. They had the replay and all that. It still gives me Goosebumps, even now. "She's been back in training for month and is making progress for her four-year-old debut, the goal, of course, being the Breeders' Cup Lady's Classic (formerly known as the Distaff). "It looks like she's coming back well," Pletcher said. "So far so good. This is her third week of galloping after she jogged for a week." Of the horses in the second set, only Rags to Riches gets a caress on the neck from Pletcher. "She's really a sweetheart to train," Pletcher said. "She's not difficult at all, except in her stall. She's bossy. She'll let you know that that's her stall. You've got to watch her a little bit that way. She's not a house pet by any means. I wouldn't describe her as a mean filly, but she can get that way." The second set heads to the track, as does Pletcher, in dim daylight. During the second set's works, someone delivers Pletcher an advance copy of the next day's Daily Racing Form so he can check out his horses' chances tomorrow.  Then someone points to the track's infield lake noting that the alligator living there has been sighted above water. When asked if he is concerned about his horses' safety, Pletcher laughs. "If we've got a horse slow enough for him to catch …" Pletcher laughs again loudly at the mere thought. The horses in the second set finish. Pletcher orders twice-a-day ice for two of the horses. Rags to Riches heads back to, where she's walked around shed row by Homero. If he has another name, no one seems to know it. Rags to Riches is bathed right outside her stall, while her groom, Martin Estrada, prepares her bedding of wood shavings. She is walked after her bath by Homero, who then goes into her stall with her. He undoes her halter and she attacks her breakfast – a bale of hay hanging outside her stall. Homero gives her a handful of peppermints. A girl walking by on a horse says, "She's dreamy, isn't she?" While she's eating, Rags to Riches gets her feet picked and has her two front feet placed in a black washtub. Estrada then puts thick blue bandages around her front feet. She doesn't miss a bite of her breakfast. Pletcher heads back to the track to watch the third set. Back at the barns, people are singing, joking. This is a happy place. Pletcher's morning unfolds into an afternoon of catching up, going over entries, coordinating shipping for a couple of horses and watching a lot of races on TV. He goes home, has dinner with his family and then takes Payton to soccer practice. "I enjoyed it," Pletcher said. "I took a book with me." They go home and Pletcher goes to sleep at 9:30. That afternoon in the fourth race at Gulfstream, Pletcher's Tale of a Lady finishes second in a maiden grass race while first-time starter Morgans Run finishes out of the money from the disadvantageous 10 post. In the seventh race, a maiden special weight, Pletcher unveils a three-year-old first-time starter named Understatement, a colt who was purchased by WinStar Farm. L.L.C., for $1.05 million as a yearling. He showed two bullet works at Palm Beach Downs and was made the 7-5 favorite under Pletcher's go-to guy, John Velazquez. Breaking alertly from the seven post, Understatement races extremely professionally and wins by three lengths in a snappy 1:09.28. "That was what we were hoping to see," Pletcher said afterwards. "That's how he was training." Success in the afternoon, though, couldn't happen without those long mornings beginning in darkness. Never Could. Never will.

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This article first appeared in North American Trainer - May 2008 - issue 8

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