Derby Winning Trainer Don Combs Passes Away

[Wandering Eyes]

Don Combs, who, as a 31-year-old trainer, won the 1970 GI Kentucky Derby with Dust Commander, passed away Sunday morning at Sayre Christian Village in Lexington. He was 86. The cause of death was a stroke.

“His first wife called me this morning and said he had a stroke,” said family friend Bobby Penn. “I had been up to see him about a month or two ago. Everything was ok then. He knew me and everything. I told her I would come back and see him. She called me this morning and said he passed away from a stroke.

“I met Don at Keeneland,” said Penn. “My family operated a feed business and he was a customer. We went to New York around the same time and we played golf together and shot pheasants and saw each other socially. He was just a really nice guy.”

As a young trainer with a Kentucky Derby win on his resume, Combs figured to take off and become one of the top trainers in the sport. But the Derby win proved to the pinnacle of his career as he continued to have a small stable that produced few winners before he retired in 2019.

He wound up winning 326 races from 2,918 starters. He won 11 stakes, three of them black-type races.

“Don was always good natured, so I don't know if it bothered him that he didn't have a lot of success,” Penn said. “So it was hard to know what he was thinking. I like to tell trainers don't get to the top because when you do it's a long way down. But he was always a pretty optimistic fellow.”

In a 2010 interview with Marty McGee of the Daily Racing Form, he explained why he thought he was struggling as a trainer: “It's because I haven't had any good horses. Good horses make good trainers.”

Combs was a Lexington native and a 1957 graduate of Lafayette High School.

“Unlike many trainers I've met, Combs is a self-professed animal lover,” wrote Brandon Quick in a 2018 article on Combs in Louisville magazine. “He talks softly to the cat and knowingly violates the cardinal rule in the horse business about getting too emotionally close to the animals.”

Like his trainer, Dust Commander was a bit of an underdog. He ran in claiming races earlier on his career before he won the GI Blue Grass Stakes in his final prep for the Derby. But the handicappers dismissed that as a fluke and sent Dust Commander to the post at odds of15-1. He was the first Illinois-bred to win the Derby.

On May 2, 1970, with Mike Manganello aboard, Dust Commander won the 96th running of the Kentucky Derby in 2:03 4/5 ahead of My Dad George and High Echelon. He then finished ninth as the 3-1 favorite in the GI Preakness.

“Shortly after the Preakness, Combs resigned as Dust Commander's trainer. He said the reason was that owner Robert Lehmann “didn't seem to trust my judgment.”

“Mr. Lehmann knows a lot about the construction business, but I don't think he knows much about horses,” Combs said.

Standing at stud, Dust Commander sired the 1975 GI Preakness Stakes winner, Master Derby.

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