John Pricci

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - It was a day like any other that winter in South Florida a decade ago: balmy, with only the slightest hint of a breeze to push the humidity away. Eibar Coa had the 10-pound bug then but was showing signs by getting run from, and hitting the board with, some impossible longshots. He was a jockey to watch.

The horses entered the Gulfstream Park paddock for the second race, a non-descript sprint for high-class maiden claimers. A 29-year-old trainer was a about to make his entrance into the big time, starting his first runner ever on a major circuit and attracting no less a partner than Jerry Bailey. The works on the maiden were good, it made a good appearance and the tote was saying a definite maybe.

I first met the trainer when he worked as a No. 1 assistant to an American training legend. He impressed with his command, understanding, and breadth of knowledge on everything from physical conditioning to training schedules to bad trips that forgive tough beats.

What I didn’t know was that when Majestic Number crossed the finish line first at odds of 9-2, it would launch the career of a young horseman who would take his Hall of Fame mentor’s ground-breaking game to another level. Since that first career win, Todd Pletcher never has looked back.

What Pletcher learned from Darrel Wayne Lukas and his father, the Midwest-based trainer Jake Pletcher, must have been extraordinary. That, combined with an ability to assemble a staff and build an organization that might be the furthermost ever in the history of thoroughbred racing.

Having access to, give or take, 200 of the finest horses money can buy or shipped into his shed seemingly every day by some of the most deep-pocketed owners in the sport, he has taken the trail first blazed by Hall of Famer Jack Van Berg and used his seven years with Lukas to grow the accomplishments of both exponentially.

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As horsemen look forward to the 23rd renewal of racing’s biggest day on November 4 at Churchill Downs, a successful day for the Pletcher operation, while certainly much coveted, would be only so much icing on the cake. Such has been the unparalleled success enjoyed by this far-flung operation in 2006. Some horsemen reach their zenith with quantity; others with quality. Pletcher does it with both.

When this season began, it was difficult to envision what Pletcher would do for an encore. He already had won 17 different training titles over the course of four years, four championships with three different horses, a single-season earnings record and consecutive Eclipse Awards as champion trainer the last two years. He had saddled more winners than any other trainer in the history of the prestigious Belmont Spring and Saratoga summer race meets.

No matter what happens the rest of the year, expect a three-peat. His 2006 earnings presently stand at a record $23.2 million and counting. And when Scat Daddy won the recent Champagne Stakes--making him eligible to join Circular Quay and King of the Roxy and surround the upcoming Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Lukas style -- it was his 93rd stakes victory of the season, surpassing the Lukas standard set in 1987.

“That record seemed untouchable,” said Pletcher via phone from Belmont Park Wednesday morning, “so I never really thought about it. As I have said before, it’s bittersweet because I hold Wayne’s records in the highest regard. To be honest, it didn’t think it was attainable.”

Never does one get the sense that the polished Pletcher is playing to his audience, even if in Lukas he had the best teacher possible. Even-keeled and ever professional, he rarely shows emotion except on the day his first true “big horse,” Breeders’ Cup winner and dual champion, Ashado, was retired The organization that has made record-setting assaults possible seems to flow from his humility and the respect he shows others.

With more than two months remaining in 2006 and with as many as a dozen horses set for a possible Breeders’ Cup run, another record is sure to fall, Lukas’s 53 graded stakes wins in a single year. Pletcher has 52. “I think we have a good chance at that one and I think it would be more significant than the earnings record. Graded wins generate the value for the horse. It can be real important to a breeder that might own the mare or an owner that has two half-sisters in the barn.”

The one significant record that seems unattainable this season is Bobby Frankel’s 25 Grade 1 victories in a single year set in 2003, one that included a then-record $19.1 million in earnings, subsequently topped by Pletcher until he broke his own mark last week.

“We have 17 and there just aren’t that many opportunities left. That’s the kind of record you set when you have that one horse that can win six or seven of them. Actually we’re sort of proud we had the kind of year where we did it with everything, our two-year-olds, older mares, our turf horses…”

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Beyond Breeders’ Cup, Pletcher is looking for new worlds to conquer. To achieve this he will send a division West for the first time, stabling at Hollywood Park when that track opens it’s fall/winter meet, November 1.

“The bottom line is that [owner] Michael Tabor and [veterinarian and bloodstock agent] Demi O’Byrne believe that the polytrack surface minimizes injury. We have a few two-year-olds that may be candidates to run in the Triple Crown races, so this winter we’re going to explore the options [that stabling in Southern California affords].”

And what of this brave new synthetic world? “Polytrack is a learning curve for all of us. Because of the way these tracks have been playing (favoring stamina over speed), it affects your strategy. We may be the main speed, or there might be others we’d like to sit off, but everybody wants to take back.

“We need to see that [the lower breakdown rate] lasts over an extended period. I hear from some horsemen that there are more soft tissue injuries. In a perfect world, polytrack would be used for training only. That could really be good in minimizing injuries and you wouldn’t lose any sleep over training because rain wouldn’t be an issue. I just wish tracks weren’t in such a hurry to make the change.

Indeed, those changes keep coming. Bet that when it does the Pletcher operation will adapt. Past performances, attention to detail, and record-setting accomplishment prove as much.

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