Conditioning for the Triple Crown series

Article by Bill Heller

The only constant in preparing a young horse for a shot in the Triple Crown is its difficulty. That hasn’t changed over the years.

“It’s just as difficult or more difficult now to have horses that come in healthy, and that’s your main goal: try to get them well-prepared and healthy,” trainer Todd Pletcher, a two-time Kentucky Derby winner with Super Saver (2010) and Always Dreaming (2017), said. “That’s always been a challenge, but probably more so now than ever.”

While the road to the Triple Crown was revamped with the Kentucky Derby point system beginning in 2013, the reality of the Triple Crown is the same: a horse is only going to succeed if he has a proper foundation.

“It’s like any athlete,” trainer Barclay Tagg said. “You have to get the bottom into them and bring them along slowly. It takes a while. You can’t go fast miles. They have to be slow miles. You’re building bones; you’re building tendons; you’re building ligaments all at the same time. You have to have a horse that can handle it, too. He’s got to be able to handle the effort of getting fit, just like a human athlete does. You have to have a hell of a horse to begin with. There’s a lot that goes into it.”

Tagg won the 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness with New York-bred Funny Cide. Seventeen years later, his New York-bred Tiz the Law won the Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes and finished second in the Kentucky Derby. “You had to approach them differently,” Tagg said.

Both Funny Cide and Tiz the Law had three races as a two-year-old in much different company. Funny Cide won all three: a New York-bred maiden race and a pair of New York-bred stakes. Tiz the Law won a maiden race and the G. 1 Champagne before finishing third in the G. 2 Kentucky Jockey Clubs Stakes.  

Tagg’s life partner/assistant trainer and exercise rider Robin Smullen, rode both horses: “Funny Cide was impossible to gallop, and by the time I started galloping him, he had holes on both sides of his mouth which bled every day, two holes from trying to run off. The ring bit put holes in the corners of his mouth.”

Tagg originally spotted Funny Cide in a yearling sale and wasn’t impressed: “I didn’t pay attention to him. I took one glance at him and didn’t like him.”

A year later, Tagg was watching Tony Everard train his young two-year-olds: “Then this horse comes barreling by me. It sounds very stupid, but it was the best thing I’d ever seen a horse do. Unbelievably fast. I just fell in love with him right away. I thought this horse ought to be a Derby horse. I know that sounds like a bunch of bull, but it’s the truth.”

It was Funny Cide. “He was so tough to ride,” Tagg said. “Robin had a division for me down at Delaware. I said, `I need you to come ride this horse.’ I got Robin to do everything for him. The rest is history.”

Tiz the Law was much easier to ride. Smullen said, “Tiz the Law was not a Funny Cide. When we were getting him ready for his maiden, we never breezed the horse fast. He had standard breezes of :48 and :49. At Saratoga one day, Mike Welsh (of the Daily Racing Form) called me and asked, `Did you really gallop this horse two miles today?’ I said, `Yeah.’ He said, `Well, there’s not too many people who work a horse two miles.’ And I said, `He likes it. He was very able to do it.’”

Smullen believes strongly in the way she and Tagg develop their young horses: “You have to warm them up well. You should never even think about galloping a horse until you’ve jogged a mile. If he can jog a mile every day, then you turn around and gallop. Even in their yearling year when you’re breaking them. You have to work them up so you don’t mess them up before you get to a race. It’s very important for bones and ligaments and tendons and the whole muscular structure.” 

Once they’re fit, they begin an arduous journey. The road to the Kentucky Derby is full of potholes and detours. “The Derby is the only time when a good horse gets beat 35, 40 lengths,” trainer Bob Baffert said. “I’ve seen great horses and great trainers get beat, not win it. You have to break well, take the kickback and get into rhythm.”

You can’t win it when you’re not in it, and Baffert is returning to the Kentucky Derby after a three-year suspension at Churchill Downs following the disqualification of what would have been his historic seventh Derby winner, Medina Spirit, for a failed drug test in 2021. 

Medina Spirit died in December that year when he collapsed after a workout. That didn’t make the Derby suspension any easier to deal with for Baffert: “I just blocked everything out. I figured I can’t go. I just said, `Hey, it’s not going to happen.’ It was just weird. I just focus on what’s ahead. I don’t look in the past.”

Baffert’s past in California traces back to legendary trainer Charlie Whittingham: “I watched Charlie Whittingham. He’d put a foundation into his horses before he’d run them. I put a pretty good foundation into them. It’s the way you breeze them.”

Baffert’s first Derby starter, Cavonnier, had six starts as a two-year-old and four as a three-year-old before the Derby: “I didn’t have a program then. Cavonnier took me there.”

When Cavonnier got there, he was confronted in deep stretch by D. Wayne Lukas’ colt Grindstone, beginning a rivalry still going on 30 years later between two trainers who have combined to win 10 Kentucky Derbies.

It took several agonizing minutes before Grindstone, who had drifted to the middle of the track, was declared the winner of an incredibly tight photo. “I thought he won,” Baffert said. “How do you run a mile and a quarter and lose by a nose? That was probably my worst defeat ever. I didn’t think I’d ever get back.”

Wrong. He won the next two Kentucky Derbies and Preakness Stakes with Silver Charm and Real Quiet. If Cavonnier had won that photo, Baffert would have won three straight Kentucky Derbies.

Despite Cavonnier’s narrow loss, Baffert changed his outlook on the Triple Crown: “I said that was a lot of fun. I’m going to change my program to be like Wayne Lukas. Cavonnier got me started. And people started sending me horses. Once I got a taste of it, I made my whole program like Lukas and Pletcher.”

When told of Baffert’s comment, Lukas said, “That’s an ultimate compliment from a guy that’s probably won more often than anybody.”

  Baffert won two Triple Crowns with American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify, who did not race as a two-year-old, but is still the only undefeated Triple Crown winner, in 2018. “I usually put a good bottom in them before I run them,” Baffert said. “If you get a horse like Justify, he was a big, strong, heavy horse. I sort of ran him into shape. By the Derby he was at his best.”

Lukas has been at his best for decades, winning his first Triple Crown race- the 1980 Preakness Stakes, with Codex and his latest 44 years later with Seize the Gray. He’s won four Kentucky Derbies with Winning Colors (1988), Thunder Gulch (1995), Grindstone (1996) and Charismatic (1999).

There are many avenues available for trainers to prep for the Kentucky Derby: through California, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky and New York. Each route offers qualifying points mandatory to get into the Kentucky Derby. “You have to get somewhere to get your points,” Tagg said. “Now, you have to be ready for the races that get you there.”

In the 1995 ‘Run for the Roses’, Lukas saddled three horses, with Timber Country and the filly Serena’s Song joining Thunder Gulch. Timber Country, who would win the Preakness Stakes, was one of the favorites and Thunder Gulch, sent off at 24-1. “I thought Timber Country was our best chance,” Lukas said. “We worked them that Monday and Donna Barton Brothers worked all three horses. She was an excellent work rider and was doing work on a lot of horses for me. Thunder Gulch was last, and when I picked her up on Thunder Gulch, I just casually said, `Well, you just had the best seat in the house. Which one’s our best chance?’ She said, `This one.’ I said, `Are you kidding?’ She said, `I like him the best.’”

When asked if he had changed anything about training horses for the Triple Crown, Lukas said, “I haven’t changed my philosophy at all on it, but I’ve noticed that some of my colleagues, the younger people, are a lot more conservative about the approach they’re taking.

“Back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, Calumet, with all their success, always used the Derby Trial, which was one week away, as a prep. I paid attention to that a lot. Remember, the old Blue Grass was two weeks in front of the Derby, and it was one of the major preps. Now they keep moving the stakes back, like the Arkansas Derby. It had always been three weeks, now it’s five weeks. They move it back, I think, to appease the mindset of a lot of the younger trainers now. I particularly have found that most of my horses run better, horses that I have had really good success with, not necessarily winning but were competitive, ran within a month of the Derby. I used the Lexington a couple of times, and they ran well, maybe 10 days before the race.

“One of the things that I find in watching it for 50 years is, if Bob Baffert worked a horse in 1:12, the press would come over and tell everybody. A lot of these younger trainers will think, `Geez, maybe I better work my horse in 1:12.”

Lukas doesn’t: “I just think if you put good, stout gallops into them and build them up to the race, you’re better off. The reality is, if the horse is dead fit, his pedigree will either get them there or not. Strong, solid works and strong morning gallops are more instrumental. I think you put a solid bottom in them and get them into a good work pattern. Reading the horse is the hardest thing for the Derby.”

Deciding which route to get there is challenging. New York has a surprising trend. From 1930 to 2000, 11 winners of the mile-and-an-eighth Wood Memorial, now a Gr.2 stakes, won the Kentucky Derby, the last being Fusaichi Pegasus in 2000. Triple Crown winners Gallant Fox, Count Fleet, Assault, Secretariat (who finished third to his stable-mate Angle Light in 1973), all ventured to Aqueduct to compete in the Wood. From 2001 through 2024, the Wood winners haven’t added the Kentucky Derby to their resumes, though Empire Maker, Vino Rosso, Tacitus and Mo Donegal won other Gr.1 stakes.

However, another New York-bred Derby prep race, the Gr.2 Remsen Stakes for two-year-olds, annually run at Aqueduct in November after the Gr.1 Breeders’ Cup, has become an important stepping stone to future success. 

Catholic Boy, the 2017 Remsen winner in a rout, returned at three to win the 2018 Travers by daylight. Mo Donegal (2021) won the 2022 Belmont Stakes. In the 2023 Remsen, Dornoch nosed Sierra Leone. Dornoch subsequently won the 2024 Belmont Stakes and the Haskell. Sierra Leone won the Blue Grass, finished second by a nose in the 2024 Kentucky Derby and won the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Dornoch’s trainer, Danny Gargan, won the 2022 Remsen with Dubyuhnell, and chose the 2023 Remsen for Dornoch. He relished the Remsen distance of a mile-and-an-eighth: “That’s why we picked it. We always knew the further the distance the better for him. We wanted to get a two-turn race into him. You never knew going in that Sierra Leone was going to be in there. It became a key race. Both of them are multiple Grade 1 winners. One of them won the Breeders’ Cup Classic and the other won the Belmont. So it was a key race.”

Gargan appreciates the Aqueduct surface: “I’ve won the Remsen a couple of times. Aqueduct is a deep, demanding track, and it takes a fit, strong horse to be able to get that distance on that track. I think it’s beneficial if you want to get to the Derby to have a horse that can go that far. That’s the longest two-year-old race of the year. I think it helps them. There’s been some nice horses win the race the last few years. Everybody wants to say it’s not a key race, but it sure has been the last three or four years. People can say what they want, but it brings out the true distance horse. It’s all timing when you train these horses. You have to be lucky enough to have a horse that can go that far at that time.”

Though he trains in California, Eoin Harty thought the Remsen made a lot of sense for his two-year-old Poster last year. He’d won his first two starts on grass, a maiden race at Ellis Park and an allowance race at Keeneland in his first two career starts: “It was a good opportunity to see and find out whether he was capable of running on dirt. He’s a big angular horse. He’s been like that since Day One. That’s why I stretched him to a mile on the turf first time out.”

He said putting a bottom in a horse is important, but doesn’t guarantee success in longer races: “You could get an average horse, and you can put all the bottom in the world into him and he’d barely get a foot over six furlongs. It’s important, but by the time most trainers, myself included, get their hands on these horses, that baseline has been put up there. We all get these horses around the same time, usually May of the two-year-old year. And by then, it’s too late. It’s usually something I just don’t have to worry about.”

He didn’t worry about it in the 2024 Remsen. With Flavian Prat in the saddle for the first time, Poster won the Remsen by a nose. In his three-year-old debut in the mile and a sixteenth Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs, Poster got away last in the field of 10 and rallied wide to finish third by 2 ¾ lengths to John Hancock.

Harty thinks Poster will make the Derby’s mile-and-a-quarter distance if he’s given that opportunity: “I predict that he can make it, but he’s going to have to prove to me that he can make it. I mean, if, by the grace of God, I get into the starting gate on Derby Day, his ability to make a mile and a quarter won’t be a question for me. It’s up to me to have him fit to go a mile and a quarter. At some points, genetics take over. The horse will get home on his own. I think he’s the kind of horse that will go a mile and a quarter for sure.”