LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — For more than 23 minutes, the replay of Sovereignty’s rousing, splash through the mud romp to win Kentucky Derby 151 replayed on the TV monitors to Bill Mott’s left in the Churchill Downs interview room Saturday.
When you train the Derby winner, the questions come at you fast and furious.
How long has it been your dream to win this race?
Since I sat in a GMC pickup truck in Fort Pierce, S.D. and listened to an AM radio call of Proud Clarion winning the Derby in 1967, Mott said.
Where you concerned when it appeared that another colt appeared to jostle Sovereignty out of the starting gate Saturday?
Not really, Mott said. No big deal.
Were you convinced that your colt had the closing burst to outrun Journalism, the solid Derby favorite, in the final three-eighths of a mile after your jockey, Junior Alvarado, had to swing the colt at least five horses wide off the rail on the final turn?
No, Mott said. For weeks, Mott believed he had the best 3-year-old colt on the grounds.
But in between questions Mott, 71, kept turning his head to his left to watch a replay of the most delightful 2:02.31 of his life. Over and over and over.
And over.
Same wonderful ground-saving ride. Same strong stretch run. Same glide across the finish line.
“I’ll never get enough of it,” Mott said. “It’s really great to watch. I’m fascinated by the trip that he got.”
Better than the trip that Mott’s last Derby winner, Country House, got in 2019?
That’s a loaded question. But a necessary question.
Country House posted one of the slowest Derby winning times. When an interviewer from NBC Sports reminded Mott that the trainer had to wait 22 minutes for Country House to be declared the winner of that Derby, following the disqualification of Maximum Security, Mott quickly offered a correction.
“It was 23 minutes,” he said.
This time the exhilaration was immediate. The victory will never be questioned. The emotion was overpowering.
“This was better,” Mott said, a smile exploding over his face.
“I was silent until he got to the finish line. Then it all came out.”
It deserved to come out. This was a victory that deserved to be celebrated. Mott started training horses out of Barn 19 at Churchill Downs in 1980.
He won spring meet titles. He won fall meet titles. He set the record for the most training victories at Churchill Downs. He earned his spot in the Racing Hall of Fame in 1998.
As his success and reputation grew as a trainer who did everything the right way, Mott also established a base in New York.
But Mott never forgot Kentucky. He wanted to win the Kentucky Derby. But he was never, ever, going to push a 2-year-old colt too hard too quickly simply to have the horse ready for the classic races. Mott wanted horses who would still be running at 4 or 5.
If he was going to get his Derby,, he was going to get it his way — with patience and a horse that was comfortable running the classic distances early in his career.
In first 38 years training at Churchill, Mott started eight horses in the Derby. He never finished better than seventh. He finished 11th or worse six times. He was high on the list of Best Trainer to Never Win a Derby.
As D. Wayne Lukas, Bob Baffert, Nick Zito and others dominated the Derby, Mott was out of the picture, even though racing insiders always argued that Mott could train a horse as superbly as any of them.
His Derby win finally came in 2019. But it was a Derby win without the Derby winning experience.
Nice. But not the real thing.
Sovereignty was the fourth colt Mott has brought to the Derby since 2019. And if you were handicapping trainers during Derby Week it was easy to recognize that Mott was touting his colt as loudly as Bill Mott ever touts one of his runners.
Yes, Journalism had better speed figures. Yes, Journalism had a better racing record. Yes, Journalism was a deserving favorite.
But the mood around Mott’s barn for the 10 days before the Derby had the vibe of a barn that absolutely knew that Sovereignty was going to run like a beast in the Kentucky Derby.
He had the long, powerful, perfect stride of a horse who can quickly cover long distances. He was happy around the barn. There were no questions about his appetite or the soundness of his legs.
That’s what Sovereignty showed a soggy crowd of 147,406 late on a charcoal Kentucky afternoon. Moving from the 17th post position, Alvarado took him to the rail to save ground before the field crackled into the first turn.
That’s where he stayed, in seventh or eighth place along the backside, before the serious running began as the frontrunners began to predictably tire.
Journalism moved first, four wide on the final turn. Sovereignty moved with him, one horse wider.
The extra distance didn’t matter. The best horse overtook the favored horse with more than an eighth of a mile to run. Sovereignty ran like a colt who understood how much this victory mattered to Mott, defeating Journalism by a solid 1 1/2 lengths.
Baeza finished third, with Final Gambit fourth.
Bill Mott had his Kentucky Derby victory precisely the way he wanted a Kentucky Derby victory, by crossing the wire first.
“This was the icing on the cake,” Mott said. “But I still want to win more.”
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