LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The horse came out of nowhere.
The trainer might as well have, too.
Maybe the reason no one saw Mine That Bird and Bennie Woolley Jr. coming is because they started one of the most improbable journeys in Kentucky Derby history some 21 hours and 1,700 miles away.
The one-time bareback rider turned trainer hitched a horse van to the back of a pickup at his home base in New Mexico, loaded Mine That Bird, then pointed it toward the finish line at Churchill Downs. A tick past 4:30 p.m., MDT, they arrived.
“They’ll know me now,” Woolley said, “won’t they?”
He was leaning on crutches and drinking in the scene behind dark glasses, a broad- brimmed black cowboy hat adding the finishing touch. His horse got squeezed coming out of the gate, and Woolley had no problem admitting he lost sight of the small bay gelding soon after that.
But he had enough confidence in jockey Calvin Borel, who already had one Derby win under his belt, that he wasn’t the least bit worried — not even when Mine That Bird was dead last heading into the first turn.
“I never gave him instructions,” Woolley said. “All I asked him was to lay back and pick his spots.”
Fittingly, he missed the two breathtaking moves that locked up the race: the first, when Borel took Mine That Bird off the rail at the far turn and around Atomic Rain; the second, in midstretch, when the jockey squeezed past two more challengers along the rail just before pulling away.
“I looked up at the eighth pole,” Woolley said through a widening grin, “and he was already in the lead. I was just blown away.”
Truth be told, Woolley already felt like he was in the Derby on a free pass.
Mine That Bird won four of five starts at Woodbine in Toronto and was Canada’s 2-year-old champion. The plan was to race him at Sunland Park and if the gelding did well there, start talking about the Kentucky Derby. But Mine That Bird ran a disappointing fourth and the target became the Lone Star Derby in Texas instead. Then Woolley broke his right leg in a motorcycle accident and had to turn most of the training duties over to his older brother, Bill.
“In the meantime, horses started dropping out of the Derby and we kicked up another notch, another notch,” he said. “We finally reached the point, we were 17th (in graded stakes earnings) and this is an opportunity you might never get again.”
Colorado connection.
Dr. Leonard Blach, one of two owners of Mine That Bird, is originally from Yuma.
According to KUSA-Ch. 9, he graduated vet school from Colorado State and his three children, who all grew up in Roswell, N.M., also graduated from CSU.
Drought drags on.
Make it 0-for-24 for Todd Pletcher in the Kentucky Derby.
The Eclipse Award-winning trainer’s drought continued when his three horses — Join in the Dance, Dunkirk and Advice — finished well behind the winner.
Smaller field.
I Want Revenge became the first morning line favorite to scratch the day of the race in at least the last 60 years when he was pulled with an ankle injury.
Denver Post staff & wire reports
