Super Saver Horse

On the first Saturday in May 2000, Todd Pletcher was a kid trainer graying prematurely and making his Kentucky Derby debut with a quartet of horses culled from what already was a deep and powerful barn. He was the picture of efficiency as he moved from paddock to paddock putting the saddle on his contenders.

When Impeachment rumbled home in third, and More Than Ready held for fourth place, no one could blame Pletcher if he thought this game was easy and someday soon he’d be hoisting a blanket of roses over one of his horses.

It ain’t easy, however, and 10 years later, on another first Saturday in May, the 42-year-old Pletcher was back beneath Churchill’s twin spires checking the bridles of four more Derby horses, hoping one of them might accomplish what 24 of his charges previously had failed to do: Get him to the winners’ circle after America’s greatest horse race.

When the left front leg of Eskendereya, the best horse he believed he ever brought here, swelled up last Sunday and had to be pulled from the race, Pletcher’s face was as ashen gray as the frost on his ever-whitening head. He had grown up following his father, J. J., on his rounds as a trainer in the barns and bush tracks of the grits-and-hard-toast circuits in the Southwest. All the while, he was dreaming about that blanket of roses.

Now it looked as if another opportunity had been snatched from his fingertips. Still, he went on. When Pletcher legged up Calvin Borel on a colt named Super Saver, he had a feeling as fleeting as the sunshine that flickered as the 20 colts took their place in the gate on what had been a rain-soaked day, that this might be his opportunity.

When Borel and Super Saver splashed into the stretch of the sloppy track all alone, Pletcher, who was glued to a television in the horseman’s lounge, scanned the screen. “At the three-sixteenth pole,” he said he thought, “this could happen. At the eighth pole, I was looking to see if anyone coming — are we going to get there.”

When horse and rider crossed the finish line two and a half lengths ahead of the fast-closing Ice Box, Pletcher pumped his fist and beamed a smile that he had waited a lifetime to unloose.

“People said we had one with our name written on it,” said Pletcher, who had tired, frankly, of having those words offered to him after disappointing Derby losses. “The one thing that was important to me. I wanted to do it when my parents were still here to see it.”

While the 136th running of the Kentucky Derby was a thing of beauty for Borel and Pletcher, it was a nightmare for a couple of trainers whose horse had their Derby aspirations crushed by taking the worse of a roughly run race.

Garrett Gomez and Lookin at Lucky were made the 6-1 favorite, but lost all chance when they were crushed twice in the opening eighth of the mile. He had barely broken from the No. 1 post when first Willie Martinez and Noble’s Promise bounced him off the rail, and then Mike Smith and American Lion followed up with a body check.

“I quit watching him after the first bump,” the horse’s trainer, Bob Baffert, said after Lookin at Lucky finished sixth. “He was done. I wish Garrett had pulled him up. That’s horse racing.”

The Nick Zito-trained Ice Box was running fastest of all late, but had his chances for victory compromised in the stretch when the rider Jose Lezcano ran up on a herd of horses, got pinched and had to pull up. He then swung Ice Box, the Florida Derby champion, wide to launch a furious closing kick that came up short.

“He put in a great run,” Zito said. “I couldn’t get lucky enough to beat Calvin.”

Pletcher, meanwhile, gave Borel only one instruction before the race.

“Ride him like you own him,” he told Borel, who knows about perseverance. The jockey captured his first Derby in 2007, 14 years after he first heard “My Old Kentucky Home” from atop a horse.

Borel paid attention. This is his home track and he has become a legend here by staying attached to the rail of this oval like a merry-go-round horse, and letting all the ping-ponging take place ahead of him.

In 2007, he employed the tactic to bring Street Sense home for his Derby victory. Last year, he stuck to his guns and guided a little gelding named Mine That Bird to a 50-1 victory.

This year the results chart will say Super Saver covered the mile and a quarter in 2:04.45, and rewarded his backers $18 for a $2 bet.

But it meant a whole lot more to a gray-haired trainer and his family.

After the race, Pletcher found his father and his mother Jerrie, and gave them bear hugs.

“This is the best day of my life,” his mother told him.

He knew how she felt.