LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Two years ago, Elliott Walden and WinStar Farm raced the horse of a lifetime, the kind of spectacular runner they believed could win the Kentucky Derby.
Justify won the Kentucky Derby.
The colt also won the Preakness. And the Belmont Stakes, joining Seattle Slew as racing’s only undefeated Triple Crowns winners.
Ask Walden which WinStar horse is the farm’s finest Derby candidate this year, and he will ask for time to explain.
WinStar has two formidable runners. One is Gouverneur Morris, who is named for a founding father who wrote the preamble to the Constitution. He would be the pick if the Derby was contested when the Derby is always contested — the first Saturday in May.
Gouverneur Morris will run Saturday in the Arkansas Derby. The race, set at 1 1/8-mile, will be contested in a pair of 11-horse divisions, with a $500,000 purse for each division.
Trained by Todd Pletcher, Gouverneur Morris is likely to be the second or third choice. Normally, Walden would be in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Not this Saturday. The novel coronavirus will keep him home, watching on TV from Kentucky.
“Right in my living room,” he said. “It’s tough.”
The other colt is Extraordinary, trained by Rodolphe Brisset. That colt has only raced twice. He might be the pick if the Derby goes off as currently rescheduled on Sept. 5.
“I think the field (in September) will look 50 percent different,” Walden said. “I think half of your starters would not be there in September that would have been there in May.
“There are certain horses that come to hand early and other horses come to hand later. You might be thinking about a different group of horses.
“There are a very small amount of trainers who understand how to start, stop and regroup with a horse.”
Walden is a third-generation horseman, the trainer of a Belmont Stakes winner, the president, CEO and racing manager at WinStar, where he has worked for 15 years. He sets his clock by events on the horse racing and University of Kentucky football and basketball schedules.
Not this year.
“You think about all the ways that are so natural,” Walden said. “The first Saturday in April you’re at Keeneland. The last Saturday in April you start Churchill Downs.
“The (NFL) draft was this weekend, which always coincides with the opening of Churchill. The (Race Track) Chaplaincy Fund raiser, the Race for Grace, was supposed to be Monday night.
“You set your clock by it. You set your calendar by it.
“You think about the fact that the whole schedule is interrupted. It’s going to be interesting to see what shape the Derby takes as far as the crowd and excitement.”
That, of course, is naturally the next question:
If the Derby goes off the first weekend of September, how will the paying customers react?
In this town and state, the Derby is a family heirloom, something that will be embraced and wildly celebrated if it is run the first Saturday in May, the first Saturday in September or the first Saturday in December.
But September is the start of football season. College students hope to be heading to campus, not wrapping up their semesters. Families have traditional getaways. Celebrities have other plans.
Will the buildup be the same?
“Who knows?” Walden said. “It might even be bigger.
“I don’t think so because when you change the calendar like that it’s going to be hard to dictate that same (excitement), especially around Labor Day.
“So many people are used to doing other things. The pattern of life is so different to slide the Derby in and have the same impact.
“It will be a great experiment.”
Until then, life continues on horse farms like WinStar, which rolls across 450 spectacular acres outside Versailles, Kentucky.
There have already been 1,500 breeding sessions. Walden said that 150 foals have been born at WinStar — with another 50 expected.
A dozen foals on the WinStar grounds were sired by a horse that I mentioned when I opened this column — Justify, who stands for a stud fee of $150,000 at nearby Coolmore Farm.
“They look good, really good,” Walden said. “It’s really exciting seeing them.”
And, it’s a reminder of the joy created by the Kentucky Derby.
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