Pletcher relying on Fierceness to win

LOUISVILLE — While riding in a golf cart Thursday morning toward another phalanx of Kentucky Derby TV interviews, Todd Pletcher committed an obvious act of inner strength. He told of feeling pressure. He sounded like a human being.

It long since went established in American culture that sports figures of Pletcher’s stature, particularly male ones, refrain from acknowledging or confessing the existence of pressure. But as people learn ever so slowly about the value of getting things out of the head and into the air, the 56-year-old trainer rolled along and fielded a question about the difference between having one Derby horse instead of his more common two or three or four or five.

“Actually,” he said, “I find it stressful to have one, and it’s because all the pressure’s on the one horse. That makes it a little more intense for me, for whatever reason.”

As Pletcher approaches Saturday with runaway favorite Fierceness, whom track intellectuals deem superior to each of the trainer’s other 64 Derby entries since 2000, surely no one can compare scenarios as can he. He has entered five horses twice, four horses five times, three horses five times, two horses eight times, one horse thrice and zero horses just once. He has finished first twice, second twice and third four times. The other 56 times he was out of the money.

The Derby might find its very definition through his prism: It’s that race so unforgiving that you can go 2 for 64 and everyone nods in understanding without a dent in the fact that you’re a great horseman.

As the crowds gather at Pletcher’s barn again this week and as the masses photograph Fierceness getting bathed and as the tour groups go by and a guide says, “This is your favorite here,” Pletcher’s Derby lore has grown so protractneddand voluminous that it contains ample intricate chapters with certain owners.

Mike Repole, the 55-year-old New York mogul who became a mogul via creative forms of hydration such as Vitamin Water, has joined Pletcher on trips to Derby hell and back, such that he says: “I always said, if he did lose every race, he’s [still] going to have all my horses cause he’s my friend now. So I think he treats me like s--- for that reason, to be honest with you. But that’s another story. Save that for another day.”

He adds: “No. He’s family. So when I see him more stressed and have anxiety, it makes me sad: I need to be a better friend. I need to be a cool guy.”

They sat together at a news conference the Derby Saturday morning of 2011, another example of how it’s lousy to have to have news conferences on Derby Saturday mornings. “It’s very, very, very, very disappointing,” Pletcher said that day, having scratched favorite Uncle Mo for some indecipherable gastrointestinal unkindness, soon adding, “I feel extremely bad for Mike.” They had a further turn of Saturday morning big bummer last year when a state veterinarian, operating at the tail end of a week laden with Churchill Downs horse tragedies, requested the scratch of Forte, another favorite.

That past plus the one-horse dynamic equal anxiety.

As the loquacious Repole and the measured Pletcher coexist as “a great balance,” Repole said, they “read each other,” as Repole put it. “I can tell, he’ll tell you, this Derby, he’s a lot more stressed and having a lot more anxiety.”

Because …

“He might have, on [Fierceness’s] best day, probably the most talented 3-year-old colt that he’s ever had coming into this race. He’s had a favorite before. This one’s probably a heavier favorite. Everybody knows he’s the most talented horse. He’s doing great. That’s one [reason]. And honestly, this is the point that I kind of feel a little bad about, but I understand: I think because it’s me and the adversity I’ve gone through. And I think he’s put some pressure on him, not just for the horse, but also wants to win one for a friend.

“And I’ve been clear: I’m okay, man. I’m okay. In other years, sometimes he has three or four horses, [and] I’m like, if I don’t win, I hope one of your other three win. I always have. Here, if I don’t win, he’s not winning. Which I think is actually kind of interesting.”

Always Dreaming, who won in 2017, remains Pletcher’s lone favorite among his 64, a count that excludes his three horses that scratched during Derby weeks, including the two on Derby mornings. But he trained Always Dreaming in 2017 alongside Tapwrit, who finished sixth, and Patch, who ran 14th. Having a trio parceled out the pressure.

By May 2024, the golf cart rolled along.

“Well, I think, you know, it’s kind of spread out [with multiple entries],” Pletcher said, “so I think sometimes people look at it and they think, ‘Oh, they’re training five horses for the Derby.’ We have 36 horses in training here [among well more than 100 all told], and whether one of them is running in the Derby or five’s running in the Derby, we’re still training those horses for whatever races they’re running for, so the workload is the same. It’s just when you have five in the Derby, obviously they’re getting prepared for what I would consider to be the biggest race in the world.”

So there’s a misconception … “Correct,” Pletcher said.

Yet there’s no salving muddle for the Derby, because there’s just Fierceness, and he’s something to behold and to decode. He broke his maiden in August by 11¼ lengths at Saratoga. He ran seventh in October in the Champagne. He won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and here’s a reminder that both Uncle Mo and Forte did likewise and that only two colts to do so at 2 have won the Kentucky Derby at 3 (Nyquist in 2016 and Street Sense in 2007). He reached the Holy Bull at Gulfstream on Feb. 3 as an obvious winner, then ran third while getting “pinballed” according to track dialect.