PREAKNESS: Drury gets a shot at the big time,
Lifetime racetracker Tommy Drury is living a richly deserved dream It was a $5,000 maiden-claiming sprint on a forlorn Friday afternoon at Beulah Park in March 1998, and Tommy Drury was rooting for a horse as if there was no tomorrow.
“A friend of mine drove up with me that day,” Drury can recall, “and we screamed like crazy people from the sixteenth pole home.”
Saddle Me Up Clint, an 18-1 shot, was up in the last jump to become Drury’s first winner as a trainer in nearly 2 1/2 years. His most recent prior win had come in November 1995.
“Those were some tough times,” Drury said. “Real tough.”
Today, however, the 48-year-old Drury is living the dream, one that can be rightly assumed is richly deserved. He’ll be in the international racing spotlight Saturday at Pimlico Race Course, saddling by far the best horse he has ever trained, Art Collector, the second wagering choice to Kentucky Derby winner Authentic in the 145th Preakness Stakes.
Art Collector, a Bernardini colt bred and owned by Louisville, Ky., health-care magnate Bruce Lunsford, is unbeaten in Drury’s care, having won all four starts this year by open lengths. Eyecatching victories in the July 11 Blue
Grass Stakes at Keeneland and the Aug. 9 Ellis Park Derby had made him the likely second choice behind Tiz the Law in the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby, but the colt was declared from consideration four days beforehand because of a minor hoof injury that healed in such quick fashion that it is now strictly a non-issue toward the Preakness.
For the untold number of friends and colleagues who have come to admire Drury for his dedication to his craft, Art Collector missing his date with Derby destiny was absolutely sickening. A compelling question of whether the ultimate underdog could slay the giants of the game on racing’s biggest stage would never be answered.
Still, Drury took it like the pro he is. “It was disappointing,” he said, “but as a trainer, you almost become desensitized to it. Things like that happen on such a regular basis. Obviously, this situation was a little different, being the Derby and all, and it did sting more than normal. But knowing that the Preakness was right behind it and the horse was going to be OK, we immediately turned the page and started looking ahead.”
Although nothing can match the Derby — especially for someone born and raised in Louisville, as Drury was — there remains an unmistakable allure to the Drury story as the final leg of the 2020 Triple Crown draws near.
His late father, Thomas Drury Sr., was a racetracker who went by the name Gerald, better known as Jerry. The son, Thomas Drury Jr., was Tommy, which is what most everyone still calls him. Jerry worked mostly as an exercise rider and well-rounded stablehand for trainers Blackie and Neil Huffman. His son took a keen interest in horses at a very early age, walking hots and rubbing horses well before he could drive. He dropped out of Moore High School as a junior (although he eventually got a GED), intent on a lifetime in horse racing.
His meanderings into the distant past
dredge up names such as Eddie Reynolds, Carl Bowman, J.D. Crescini, Angel Montano, Forrest Kaelin, and “Old Man” Mahoney. He was 15 when he began grooming for Vickie Foley, with his dad having to drive him to and from work.
“I'd put a bandage on a horse, and Vickie would shake her head,” he said, “so I'd take it off, then put it back on, and she'd say, `Nah, do it again.' That's how I learned to run bandages.”
In 1991, at age 18, he took out his license, but he had such meager business that he made ends meet by galloping for successful trainers such as Brian Mayberry, Bill Mott, and Frank Brothers, occasionally “taking a horse off their hands that just wouldn't do in their barns,” Drury said. Over time, he became typecast as a trainer of lay-ups and rehab projects, taking in the reject and doing his level best to make lemonade out of lemons. A multitude of successful owners and breeders, including Claiborne Farm, long have turned to Drury for the type of foundational work that others wouldn't or couldn't do.
Based primarily at the Skylight training center, a semi-private facility some 20 miles east of Louisville, Drury would get his hands on an eventual racetrack star — only to have the horse go to a different trainer after his assignment was complete. Madcap Escapade, a Grade 1 winner for Lunsford and Brothers in 2004, was among those, as were Hansen, Lea, and more recently, Tom's d'etat, a major contender for trainer Al Stall Jr. for the Breeders' Cup Classic next month.
“Tommy is a hardworking, lifelong horseman who deserves everything good that comes his way,” Stall said. “I can't say enough good things about him. I don't know that anybody can.”
Even when carving out a unique niche, his career as a racetrack trainer limped along for years. His first eight years (1991-98) produced a grand total of 10 winners and included that excruciating drought ending with a bottom-level winner at now-defunct Beulah.
“I think if I had to do it all over again, I maybe should've worked for a D. Wayne Lukas or another big name, try to take a different approach,” Drury said. “I pretty much cut my teeth with horses that didn't need to be racehorses, and a lot of times it was everything we could do just to pay our bills. But you can't change the past, and here we are now.”
Lunsford, 72, is largely responsible for the enviable position Drury will find himself in Saturday at Pimlico. Unhappy that Art Collector was disqualified from an allowance victory last fall at Churchill Downs for a medication violation, Lunsford took the colt from trainer Joe Sharp and sent him to Drury at Skylight for a winter regrouping; the spring classics weren't so much as a blip on anybody's radar. The original plan called for Drury to run the colt once, then have him sent to Rusty Arnold, but after Art Collector won his 3-year-old debut May 17 at Churchill in such an impressive way, the decision was made to keep him with Drury.
“Bruce has been unbelievably good to me,” said Drury, who began this week with 476 career wins, “and I think quite a few influential people in the business were in his ear about Art Collector, so I also have them to thank. And Rusty was incredibly gracious about the whole thing. This opportunity with this great horse is the result of a lot of other people's efforts and good will.”
Drury, a divorced father of two, was scheduled to arrive Thursday in Baltimore alongside his 16-year-old daughter, Emma, traveling on Lunsford's private jet. His son Matt, 19, will watch from home. The trip will help make up — at least in part — for Emma not getting to wear her new dress to the Derby.
“A couple weeks before the Derby, Bruce had me and Emma and my assistant” — Jose Garcia — “go get new outfits,” Drury said. “When I saw my daughter walk out of that dressing room, tears came to my eyes.
“Her getting to go to Maryland on a private plane and everything, hopefully this will make us forget all about missing the Derby. Winning this race would be icing on the cake for all of us.”
If Art Collector is to win — and give the trainer just his second career win in a graded race, with the Blue Grass still his only one — Drury will savor it like no other. As an avid racing fan who recalls watching on TV the 1989 Sunday SilenceEasy Goer showdown and many other renewals of the Preakness, he harbors an uncommon appreciation for what it takes to reach such heights.
“It's one of the most historic races in this country,” he said. “I've never run anything in Maryland, so this is all really new and exciting.”
When all this is over, and Drury is back to vanning a couple of horses up Interstate 71 to run on a cold winter's night at Turfway Park, he's sure he'll look back in wonderment at all that has transpired in recent months. On the night of the Blue Grass, he turned off his phone at a certain point and awoke the next morning to 312 new text messages, many of them from big names in the industry.
“Bruce keeps saying, `Make sure you enjoy every second of this,' and I tell you, I am,” he said. “It really is amazing.”
The people who've stuck with him for years, regardless of circumstances or statistics, are those who matter most to Drury. Lunsford, Brothers, and Seth Hancock of Claiborne rank among those most instrumental, but through the years there also have been numerous clients he has prized deeply, including Dr. David Richardson, Judy Miller, Brett Bresser, and Jack Bary.
Drury's first stakes win came with Model's Memo in the $50,000 First Lady at Indiana Grand in June 2008. The filly was owned by Bary and his wife, Barbara, who are still in mourning over Bary's son (and Barbara's stepson) Dale, an avid racegoer who died suddenly in January at age 59.
“Dale would've been so proud and happy about this,” Drury said. “I'd love to win this race if only for him. People like Dale is what's making this such a great experience.”
Art Collector may or may not win the Preakness, but no matter. Just getting Tommy Drury to it has been a triumph unto itself.