Drury glad to work with contender
Like somany of us, Tommy Drury had allowed the grand visions of his youth to settle into acceptance of amore practical reality.
He enjoyed his work at the Skylight Training Center in Goshen, Kentucky, helping young racehorses achieve maturity and rehabilitating those who’d fallen off track. He valued the long-term bonds he’d formed with horsemen around his native Louisville. So what if he’d never train the next Secretariat? That was the fantasy of a kid reared in the shadow of Churchill Downs. Hewas nowliving the reality of a man approaching age 50 in an
unforgiving industry.
Then Bruce Lunsford, one of those horse owners with whom Drury maintained a bond, had a problem. Lunsford wanted to move a 3-year-old named Art Collector away fromthe barn of trainer Joe Sharp. But he wasn’t sure what to do with the promising colt, a dilemma that would only grow more vexing when the coronavirus pandemic threw the racing world into chaos. Could Drury help him out, at least temporarily?
“Bruce was really high on this horse,” Drury recalled. “And after the first couple breezes, I think we all agreed. I don’t know if I was thinking Kentucky Derby at the time or Preakness, butwe certainly thought a lot of him.”
The arrangement led to one victory, then another, then another, in the $600,000 Blue Grass Stakes. Now, Drury is on his way to Baltimore for the Preakness, a race he’s only ever watched on television. He’s in it with the 5-2 second choice in the morning line. And he’s going up against the most famous man in his profession, seven-time Preakness winner Bob Baffert, who will saddle the race favorite, Authentic.
Drury is living out the fantasy he thought belonged only to that 18-year-old version of himself who obtained a training license way back in 1991.
He believed he would know what to do with a horse as talented as Art Collector. But he did not knowif he’d ever get to showit.
“I always joked that eventually, one of these horses was going to fall through the cracks and get to me,” he said.
“He’s the guy who’s asked to get horses ready before they’re sent to other trainers for races like this,” said NBC analyst Randy Moss. “Now, because of COVID-19, he was given the opportunity to hang onto this horse. It’s become such a great story.”
Of course, this is horse racing, so there’s some shattering bad luck weaved into the tale aswell. Drury thought hewould saddle Art Collector for the Derby, a race he naturally prized above all others. As a kid, he waited hungrily for the first Saturday in May, anticipating that special week when horse racing seemed to be on television every evening. Hewas set to play local hero in a town where leading horsemen still loom large. Until, less than a week before post time, Art Collector showed discomfort in his left front foot.
“There wasn’t a lot to it,” Drury recalled. “He grabbed himself, andwe sawit as soon as he got back to the barn.”
Drury gave it a day, but the colt’s nicked heel still seemed awfully sensitive. The trainer could probably have thrown a bar shoe on it and soldiered forth, but that did not fit the ethic he’d developed over 29 years in the game.
“At that point, itwould not have been fair to walk him over there and ask him to run in the biggest race of his career,” Drury said. “The biggest responsibility I have as Art Collector’s trainer is, Ihave to be his voice in these situations. So it wasn’t a big conversation. I told Bruce what I thought and he said, ‘We need to sit this one out and shoot for the next one.’”
Even as sympathetic texts flooded in from other horsemen who’d experienced crushing disappointments — haven’t they all?— Drury put the injury in perspective.
“I can’t think of another word, but you almost become de-sensitized to it,” he said. “You’re let down so much— horses don’t get into races or you don’t get the trip youwant. I don’t think people understand howhard it is to win a horse race or just to get a horse into a race and have him healthy.”
With amonth to go before the Preakness, he would still have time to prepare Art Collector for a Triple Crown race, a possibility he never could have fathomed at this time last year.
He thinks back to his youth, tagging along with his father, Tom Sr., who galloped horses for other trainers and sometimes worked with one or two of his own, usually rehabilitation cases. Theworld of the Triple Crown is so far from those knock-around days. Heck, he waited 29 years just to win his first graded stakes, the July 11 Blue Grass, which Art Collector took by3½ lengths.