Derby champ made dreams come true
For context of the great career whoosh of Always Dreaming, the latest Kentucky Derby winner, consider that his first win came Jan. 25, later than any horse who ultimately would become draped in roses since Brokers Tip in 1933, who was the only horse to break his maiden in the Derby.
Consider that at the end of March, well after Always Dreaming’s rivals began to accrue points in the Derby’s five-year-old points qualification system, this son of 2012 Derby runner-up Bodemeister still had zero points. That’s partly because Todd Pletcher, his star trainer, opted to run him in an allowance race March 4 at Gulfstream Park on Fountain of Youth day in Florida, instead of in the actual Fountain of Youth.
Yet when the usual throng gathered at the top of the stretch of the 143rd Kentucky Derby on Saturday, there among those in good position bounced Always Dreaming, the colt who didn’t race between last Aug. 20 and this Jan. 25. He made jockey John Velazquez say later, “I was very happy when I started down the lane and I felt the way he was running.”
Further, he had given a second Derby win among 48 starters to Pletcher, the career winner of 4,300 races, 1,000 stakes and US$336 million, US$60 million more than any other trainer, who yet found validation with this second win, following on Super Saver in 2010.
“To me, I felt I really needed that second one, you know?” he said.
Beyond that, there came a first Derby win with a first Derby horse for the ownership team of Anthony Bonomo and Vinnie Viola, childhood friends from Brooklyn.
“Growing up as a kid, we’ve won a lot of Kentucky Derbies,” said Bonomo, a lawyer, “but never in reality.”
Purchased in September 2015 at Keeneland in Kentucky for US$350,000 — Bonomo joked that his son, Anthony Jr., “overspent,” but that he no longer believes so — Always Dreaming had done all of this after his hiatus last summer and fall after Pletcher took him on last early September.
Upon his return in winter from what Pletcher called a “freshening,” the trainer said, “we could see right away as soon as we were breezing him that he had extraspecial talent.”