One trainer left to catch for Asmussen

Steve Asmussen didn’t need the enormity of a Belmont Park, the splendor of a Saratoga or the history of a Churchill Downs to mark his latest racing milestone.

Oklahoma’s Remington Park, where racing dates to 1988, served nicely as the site of the Hall of Fame trainer’s 9,000th career victory. It came Friday under the lights and, predictably, with a favorite, Troy Ounce

($3.60). Jockey Stewart Elliott, a recent member of racing’s

5,000-win club, had the mount. For all we know, the feat could have come at Ellis Park in Kentucky, Retama Park in the trainer’s native Texas or Zia Park in New Mexico. Much less at Oaklawn Park, where the Texan counts three Arkansas Derby victories and 10 training championships.

Troy Ounce gets the door prize that could have gone to any of the 10 runners Asmussen sent out at three tracks on Friday. His 8,999th victory came in the seventh race at Churchill Downs with first-time starter starter Stayin’ Out Late, a son of leading sire Tapit. Troy Ounce is a $7,500 claimer who sings for his supper, scoring his third career victory from 18 starts.

Asmussen’s first victory came at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico as a 20-year-old. He would not have been the first trainer from a family with a racing background not to make the grade, something he well knew and which drives him.

“Back then I was just worried about getting win number two,” he said. “That didn’t come until the next year at Birmingham in Alabama.” (Earlier this year, Asmussen’s son scored his first career victory in the saddle.)

Reaching win No. 9,000 leaves him only one man to catch on the all-time list. The late Dale Baird went to the winner’s circle 9,445 times in his career. Baird’s name isn’t as familiar to the everyday racing fan as some guys Asmussen has passed. Jerry Hollendorfer

(7,666) is third, the late Jack Van Berg (6,523) fourth and King Leatherbury, who like Hollendorfer is still active, fifth (6,503).

With more than $338 million, Asmussen is second to Todd Pletcher ($398 million) in career earnings while comfortably ahead of Bob Baffert in third. And with a 21-percent winning percentage in a sport that 20 percent is considered the equivalent of batting .300 in baseball.

Asmussen has won just about everything in the sport of value — the Kentucky Derby being a notable exception. At

54, he is a relative babe among the likes of Wayne Lukas (85) and Barclay Tagg (82). In that sense, an 0-for-21 Kentucky Derby slate serves to motivate Asmussen, who has two Preakness victories and one in the Belmont Stakes.

Like Bill Mott, another South Dakota-born trainer (67), Asmussen is likely to have a horse in any major race. He is more

diverse than Chad Brown, the recognized master of turf racing, or Wesley Ward, whose youngsters win at an astounding rate. What amazes his peers is that he is just as likely to pop up — and win with — an $8,000 claimer he obtained at Aqueduct if for only that specific race.

About catching Baird, Asmussen said he’s “been thinking about that ever since they started keeping track of wins. That’s why you send them out, to win. If it wasn’t important, they wouldn’t keep stats.”

The Kentucky Derby, in which his horses twice have finished second, is the missing link in his resume, like the U.S. Open golf tournament was for Sam Snead and remains for Phil Mickelson. Told that a Hall of Fame trainer — say, Richard Mandella — could consider a career complete without collecting Derby roses, Asmussen is likely to look at you and say, smiling, “Tell him to quit lying.”

Steve learned the sport from the ground up at father Keith’s ranch in Laredo, Texas. Asmussen has eclipsed the achievements of brother Cash, once a prominent jockey on these shores and in Europe. Steve took up training when, after 63 wins in 2 1/2 years as a rider, he saw that he would not have a riding career like Bill Shoemaker or all-time wins leader Russell Baze.

Arkansas handicapper Paul Skelton had the early insight on Asmussen, saying one day to a group in the Oaklawn press box, “He’ll be the leading trainer in the country some day.” In nine different years, Asmussen has fulfilled that prediction. He has won more than 400 times in a year 10 times, topping out with

650 winners in 2009.

The 2008 and 2009 seasons were especially good, Asmussen winning the Eclipse Award as champion trainer and topping the earnings list both years. In both years he trained the Horse of the Year, Curlin repeating as a 4-year-old in 2008 while in

2009 Rachel Alexandra enjoyed the greatest season by a 3-yearold filly since Ruffian almost a quarter century before.

“It’s just been very rewarding to have such an amazing run,” Asmussen said after the

2009 season. “It doesn’t feel like proving anything — it’s just fun to win.”

Asmussen also trained 2017 Horse of the Year Gun Runner, a winner that season at Oaklawn (Razorback Handicap) and third in Nyquist’s Kentucky Derby.

A 2016 Hall of Fame inductee, Asmussen in 2019 had two champions, sprinter Mitole and racemare Midnight Bisou both winning important stakes at Oaklawn (the former taking the Breeders’ Cup Sprint and the latter just missing).

That horse racing is a sport of extreme highs and lows is borne out by the retirement this week of the Asmussen-trained Volatile, whose Grade 1 victory this summer at Saratoga made him an early favorite in the BC Sprint.

Whatever his reasons, Asmussen is cool to the press. He has been battered enough in the racing media to be wary of anyone on the backstretch carrying a notebook or tape recorder. Any trainer who wins races in bunches is subject to such criticism. Case in point, Bob Baffert Look at the car.eer record of any major horseman and you’re apt to see a rap sheet as long as Al Capone’s with violations for everything from positive drug tests to one’s failure to get a horse to the paddock on time.

Asmussen, on the other hand, can dissect the sport as well as anyone in the business. One is advised not to ask him an impertinent question, but then the same was true of Pat Day.

One that I’d like to ask is how many races Asmussen has won with long hair and what moved a man in his 50s to adopt a John Lennon look. But every lady I’ve asked seems to like it.