Rider’s life-long dream realized
Bush praised for Always Dreaming prep work that led to Derby win
Nick Bush watched the big race from a spot on the rail. He had helped tame Always Dreaming in the final days preceding the Kentucky Derby, training the spirited colt to run with his head down, but now the reins belonged to jockey John Velazquez.
Exercise riders toil mainly in obscurity, often in darkness, and their greatest victories are usually vicarious. Yet any account of the 143rd Derby would be incomplete without a bow in Bush’s direction, and any chance Always Dreaming has of completing the Triple Crown can be traced to trainer Todd Pletcher’s late switch of riders and equipment in an effort to teach his horse to heed.
“It’s like (Bill) Belichick at halftime, adjusting to what the game scenario is throwing at him,” Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey said Wednesday morning at Pimlico. “I think that was a great adjustment Todd made, changing equipment, changing riders. You don’t get a second chance (at the Derby), and once they go over the line, you can’t get them back.”
Once a 115-pound running back in high school, Nick Bush has since gone over the line of jockey weight limits and is reluctant to “starve myself ” in order to ride in silks. Though his influence on Always Dreaming has brought him a level of recognition rare among exercise riders, Bush is quick to credit a “team effort” and to remember his relatively humble place in racing ’s hierarchy.
“Basically,” he said, “this is a dream come true. This is a dream from (childhood) for me. All my school friends were texting me ’cause they remember me as a kid always talking about the Derby and talking about horses and stuff. For me to actually achieve that is amazing.”
He was standing beside the barn that houses Preakness contenders, conducting a series of impromptu interviews after a strenuous 11⁄ 2- mile gallop aboard Always Dreaming. The son and grandson of racetrack grooms, Bush, 30, wore a belt with an engraved nameplate similar to those attached to horses’ bridles. He sounded like a fisherman who had spent the morning trying to reel in a marlin.
“He made me work this morning,” Bush said. “He pulled me around like, ‘Come on, when’s the Preakness?’ I had to sit there and sit quiet on him. I had to pull him tight, keep his head down, keep him from running off.”
Convinced of the need for a stronger hand in the saddle, Pletcher replaced Always Dreaming ’s regular exercise rider, Adele Bellinger, with Bush on May 1, five days before the Derby. He simultaneously ordered that the colt be outfitted with draw reins, which afford the rider more leverage and are, Bush said, his “specialty.”
“You’ve got a high-headed horse, a horse that just wants to go, and it angles you to put their head down,” Bush said. “It enables you to have a little bit better control because their head is down and it’s right there where you need it to be.”
Whether those specific changes made the difference in the Derby is unknowable, but Pletcher says Bush played a “pivotal role” in this Run for the Roses.
“We needed to make an adjustment,” Pletcher said Wednesday. “He stepped in a high-pressure situation and he delivered. I think that was key.”
Unless Bush is prepared to drop 20 pounds, his role during races is likely to be limited to that of a spectator. Watching Always Dreaming in the Derby, Bush remembers being relieved by the horse’s positioning and appre- hensive about the accelerated pace of the race’s first two quarter-miles.
“Then I saw State of Honor backing up and I saw Irish War Cry coming at him,” Bush recalled. “The jockey, Rajiv (Maragh), was looking around him like he was on Secretariat. So I was like, ‘ Oh, my God.’ But I saw (Always Dreaming) moving away and Johnny (Velazquez) wasn’t riding him. So I was like, ‘We got a lot of horse left.’ ”
To date, Bush said, the best horse he has ridden was Liam’s Map, a colt that did not compete in the 3-year-old classics and retired after winning the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in 2015. Always Dreaming, he said, is “right behind.”
“He’s a light horse; he’s agile,” Bush said. “He’s smart. His personality is very, very good. He wants more. After we do a hard work, he’s just like, ‘Let’s do more. Bring it.’ We haven’t even seen the bottom of him, which is scary.”
If there is more to Always Dreaming than he demonstrated in the Derby, Bush could be a pivotal part of a Triple Crown.