SA Derby teaches Pegram to be patient

Mike Pegram once named a horse after himself – Lookin At Lucky – but you wouldn’t know it by checking the man’s record in the Santa Anita Derby.

Five times in the last 20 years Pegram has approached the Santa Anita Derby with a live round in the chamber for trainer Bob Baffert and five times he has fired a blank, most recently this time around when his classy McKinzie came up with an injury less than a week before Saturday’s running of the million-dollar event.

McKinzie’s setback thwarts a highly anticipated rematch with Bolt d’Oro, who lost a close one to Pegram’s colt in the San Felipe but ended up with the win on a stewards’ call.

“There’s a lot of reasons why we were looking forward to running Saturday,” Pegram said. “But if you don’t expect some bad luck in this business you’re in the wrong business.”

Pegram’s adventures in the Santa Anita Derby began with Real Quiet, a $17,000 son of Quiet American who was so physically unimpressive his Baffert inspired nickname became “The Fish.”

Bob would explain, “You know how they look okay from the side, then when you look at them head on they disappear.”

Real Quiet won the 1997 Hollywood Futurity, but as 1998 dawned, the star on the rise in the Baffert barn was Indian Charlie, who defeated Real Quiet and Kent Desormeaux by 2 1/4 lengths in the Santa Anita Derby.

“I remember that race like it was yesterday,” Pegram said. “It looked like Kent dropped his reins on the turn and the horse started dropping back, then he came on again. I don’t know if we were gonna beat Indian Charlie that day, but I knew that extra eighth of a mile was gonna help us in a month.”

One month later, Real Quiet and Desormeaux won the Kentucky Derby, with Indian Charlie third.

Leading up to the 2000 running of the Santa Anita Derby, Pegram’s Fly So Free colt Captain Steve got caught up in the media fuss between Baffert and Jenine Sahadi, trainer of The Deputy. Sahadi had the audacity to consult her jockey, Hall of Famer Chris McCarron, on the handling of their Santa Anita Derby hopeful, and Baffert played it for a laugh line, wondering aloud who was doing the training. But the gag fell flat and Sahadi took offense, assuring attention for the race for all the wrong reasons.

“That was unbelievable,” Pegram said with a laugh. “Bob and Ted Nugent have something in common, don’t they? They don’t know who their audience is.”

Once the horses were allowed to do the talking, The Deputy won and Captain Steve finished third, beaten three lengths.

“He was an honest horse who went out there and ran as hard as he could,” Pegram said. “He danced every dance, and he kept getting better as he got older.”

Lookin At Lucky was the 2-year-old champion of 2009 who won the 2010 Rebel and was odds-on to score back home in California three weeks later in the Santa Anita Derby. As the race unfolded, Lookin At Lucky and Garrett Gomez found themselves between horses early, a few lengths off the pace, then committed to the inside as the final turn approached. Up ahead a phalanx of runners was struggling to keep pace with the front-running Sidney’s Candy. Gomez needed a break to get through cleanly, but the door was shut.

By the time Gomez and his colt regained their momentum, the leader was long gone. Third was the best they could do, six lengths back. Gomez took his frustration out on Victor Espinoza, whose longshot put the worst of the squeeze on Lookin At Lucky on the turn, and fists were thrown at the scale and in the room.

The last time Pegram had a shot to win the Santa Anita Derby, along with his McKinzie partners Karl Watson and Michael Weitman, was in 2014 with Hoppertunity, who also came to the Santa Anita race by way of a win in the Rebel. Though his colt was no match for the winner, California Chrome, Pegram was getting that Real Quiet feeling all over again for the Kentucky Derby. Then, on the day after Derby entries were taken, Hoppertunity came up with a sore foot and was scratched.

“I never felt so good coming up to the Kentucky Derby,” Pegram said.

Hoppertunity is still chugging along at age 7, having earned $4.3 million. Lookin At Lucky bounced back from an even tougher trip in the Kentucky Derby to win the Preakness, a second Eclipse Award, and sell to Coolmore for an undisclosed jackpot. Captain Steve went on win the 2001 Dubai World Cup and $6.8 million before Pegram sold him to Japan for another $5 million. Real Quiet narrowly missed winning the Triple Crown and later sired Midnight Lute, Pegram’s two-time Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner.

Clearly, there has been an upside to Pegram’s Santa Anita Derby blues, which bodes well for McKinzie. And yet, there is a deeper sting to McKinzie’s setback because he was named for Pegram’s close friend Brad McKinzie, the respected racing executive who died last year at age 62.

“Brad would’ve said that was too heavy a load, naming him like that,” Pegram said.

“So we’re off the Derby trail,” he added. “But hopefully McKinzie will be back to experience races this summer. We’re down, but we’re just not out.”