Derby-Winning Trainer Bill Mott on TDN Writers’ Room

[Wandering Eyes]

After a historic weekend where Godolphin swept the worldwide classics, including a Kentucky Derby win with Sovereignty (Into Mischief), the colt's trainer Bill Mott appeared on the TDN Writers' Room podcast, presented by Keeneland, as the Gainesway Guest of the Week.

For Mott, it was his second Kentucky Derby win, following the promotion of Country House in the 2019 Derby after the disqualification of Maximum Security, and he admitted that this one was a big one.
“It's pretty special, I've got to tell you,” he said. “We really enjoyed Country House's eventual victory in that race, but I always wanted to come back and be able to do it this way. But maybe the fact that we were put up in the other race, it maybe took a little something away from it, I suppose, as far as the full pleasure of getting it done.”

Mott said he has been overwhelmed with the attention since the win.

“It hasn't stopped yet,” he said. “I'm still hearing from people and I guess you realize how many people watch the race on television and the number of people that were at the track. It's a big deal. I'm really proud and I'm glad to be part of the team that made this happen. I'm just a a small part of it because there's so much that goes into it from the, as I've said before, the matings and raising the horse and then eventually getting them to us.”

Mott said that during Derby week, “Everything went perfectly. He didn't have any setbacks, no sickness, no lameness, no filling, no missed training days for one reason or another. And he went into it great. And we knew we were doing it with a very good horse and a horse that was probably capable of pulling it off.”

Of course, the world now knows that Sovereignty will skip the Preakness to go straight to the Belmont.

“Three races in a five-week period, and they're hard races,” said Mott. “There was nothing easy about the race the other day. I think you probably take a little something out of them. If we were only concerned about the Triple Crown, he'd probably be the perfect horse to do it with, because he's a big, tough horse and he came back good and we could go on to the next one, but we decided to focus on the Belmont and perhaps the Travers if the Belmont goes well. And then we've got races later on. You've got the Breeders' Cup Classic, that's going to be a tough division this year. But also, I think if we race the horse next year, you know, the Dubai World Cup would probably be on a schedule if he's doing well.”

Asked if he would have run in the Preakness given more time, Mott said that it was possible.

“We'd certainly be more apt to do it that way,” he said. “I'm not advocating for changing it because I think that's above my pay grade. I think the Triple Crown is a tremendous challenge, the way it's set up, but I think we're probably 40 years beyond what it used to be.”

Elsewhere on the show, the team of Bill Finley, Randy Moss, and Zoe Cadman reviewed the results of the Derby weekend, announced the results of the first annual Derby Fantasy Draft (congratulations to Bill Finley on the win), and discussed the letter to the editor from David Ingordo about changing the process for admission to the Hall of Fame. In the Fastest-Horse-of-the-Week segment, won for a second time within a month by Skelly (Practical Joke) at Oaklawn Park, they discussed the WinStar stallion Constitution, whose Mindframe won the GI Churchill Downs Stakes.

The TDN Writers Room is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, and 1/ST Racing and 1/ST TV.

To watch the show, click here.

For the audio podcast, click here.

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