Her Derby Dream

Capsized pranced nervously but entered the gate calmly, fourth from the rail for the 62nd running of the Santa Anita Derby.

Sitting lightly upon Capsized, 113-pound Alex Solis felt his adrenaline pumping. Just before the gate burst open, there was a split second of stillness that exploded into the cacophony of charging horses and shouting jockeys. Hooves pounded. Dirt flew.

Eight horses surged forward, with High Wire Act and Honest Lady pressing to the front. Capsized, a bay colt whose coat shone with a copper hue, was shuffled back. His head was up and loam pelted his face. Solis yelled, not words, just sounds, urging the colt on.

*

Capsized’s trainer, Lisa Lynn Lewis, had been pursuing a chance like this ever since she’d selected her racing colors at age 6, ever since she’d dropped out of the 10th grade, ever since she’d gotten her trainer’s license nine years ago.

The 1 1/8-mile race, held April 3, would determine which California contenders would run in today’s Kentucky Derby, the Holy Grail of racing. Capsized didn’t need to win; he merely had to compete boldly, to run with enough heart to show he belonged among the nation’s best.

Lewis would have her answer in less than two minutes. Her stomach was tight, her face taut. Instead of her usual jeans and sweatshirt, she’d donned a new navy blue Ann Taylor pantsuit, put on makeup, painted her nails a subtle pink and pulled her normally loose brown, shoulder-length hair tightly from her face. After 13 months of spinning strategies for readying the colt, after clocking dawn workouts, after coordinating his groom and his exercise rider and his blacksmith and his veterinarian, she was now merely one of 35,000 spectators.

The odds were 8 to 1 against Capsized--and probably far higher against her. A woman trainer had never won the Santa Anita Derby. Her horse was pitted against seven expensive, impeccably pedigreed thoroughbreds.

Odds be damned, Lewis thought. Sometimes the little guy wins. “The thing about this business is,” she said, “it only takes one horse.”

Lewis, 29, was competing with the biggest trainers in horse racing, D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert, who each boasted stables of more than 70 talented, gleaming thoroughbreds. Last year, horses in both those barns earned more than $10 million in purse money for their owners. Lukas had won three Kentucky Derbies and Baffert’s horses had won the past two. Lewis had only five horses in her barn, two of them “babies,” 2-year-olds not ready to race. Her horses’ winnings last year: about $250,000 on New York and Louisiana tracks.

Trainers like Lewis determine a conditioning schedule for an athlete who cannot talk. They decide when the horse will race, how far, who rides, whether to gallop or walk, whether to soak the legs in ice water or put Scarlet oil on a cut. They pull together a team that tends the animal. Usually, trainers don’t own the horse; they’re paid by a client--an investor--who might visit the barn a few times yearly.

Convinced Capsized was special, Lewis gave up 10 of the 15 horses she trained and relocated to the West Coast from Louisiana last December to launch Capsized on a Kentucky Derby campaign. Now, as she scanned the track below, she admired him. He carried himself proudly. His black mane accentuated a muscular neck, and his black tail streamed behind powerful haunches. The four white leg bandages that Lewis routinely put on all her horses drew attention to his springy gait.

*

As Capsized approached the first turn, his head was up. He hadn’t shifted into his fluid, long stride. General Challenge was driving on the outside, galloping effortlessly. Jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. thought his mount, Charismatic, was giving everything he had.

Solis figured when the horses broke from the starting gate, Capsized would be about four lengths from the leader. He planned to let the early speed horses burn out, then kick into gear and zip to the front. Capsized liked to come from behind. But now Solis fretted: The front horses weren’t running that fast.

*

Lewis, sitting with her mother, her boyfriend and representatives of the two stables that own Capsized, groaned inwardly before the first turn. It seemed to her that Solis checked the colt hard. Capsized was unhappy, she worried.

In recent months, Lewis had caught herself wondering: If this colt failed, should she think about another career? Was this any way to live? Up before dawn seven days a week, moving from track to track, suffering one disappointment after another. Horses were as much a part of her as breathing--both her parents are former trainers. But she’d missed out on stuff like proms, high school graduation and college. She’d never dated a guy who didn’t know the difference between a pastern and a cannon bone--her current boyfriend, Alan Quartucci, owns a share of Capsized. Vacation? Three years ago. As her exercise rider Martin Weir said, you only get time off from a racing barn when you’re dead.

Now, watching her horse fall behind, Lewis began to chant, first slowly and quietly, then louder and urgently.

“Com’on Cap! Com’on Cap! Com’on Cap!”

She was not like some trainers, who spent more time with a cell phone at the track than in the barn with the horses. She enjoyed being shin-deep in golden straw in her horses’ stalls, wrapping their leg bandages with immaculate care. She’d help out at feeding time, using her bare hand to mix the warm mash of oats and molasses. In the privacy of the barn, Capsized was “Baby” or “Big Guy” when she stroked his neck or scratched behind his ears. She was reserved and honest. When she talked with reporters, she laid out her thoughts. It made Quartucci roll his eyes. It was like a golfer revealing his weaknesses before a tournament.

The knock against women trainers is they baby their horses. Lewis cried retelling how a colt broke his leg two years ago and had to be euthanized. But she prided herself on slicing through tough decisions. With a higher-profile horse, pressure grew. If Capsized didn’t race well on this day, a number of trainers would phone the horse’s owners, offering to take over, promising they could do better. Since only about 9% of trainers are women, gender was never forgotten. She’d been called “little girl” by a starting gate attendant and mistaken for a spectator by a security guard who cautioned her to avoid getting too close to the big horses.

*

At the half-mile pole, Capsized passed Walk That Walk. But Solis worried. The colt didn’t feel powerful.

Solis bided his time, angling out after sticking close to the rail to save ground. He wanted to conserve Capsized’s final burst of speed. The horses were running harder but they were still about two seconds slower than during the previous two Santa Anita Derbies.

*

Solis, who had yet to win a Kentucky Derby, believed Capsized would be his ticket. This colt had a stride that seemed endless. He had enough raw talent to remind Solis of Captain Bodgit, whom he rode in the 1997 Kentucky Derby, finishing second.

In February, Capsized had run impressively with Solis aboard in the 1-mile San Rafael Stakes, placing third, beaten by less than half a length by a then-obscure horse named Desert Hero. Baffert’s Prime Timber was second, ahead of Capsized by only a nose.

Capsized won a 1 1/16-mile race at Belmont in October against a solid field and a shorter race at Santa Anita in January. Racing writers and handicappers figured he had potential. The Daily Racing Form and Blood Horse magazine included Capsized among their select list of Kentucky Derby contenders.

Solis had ridden thousands of horses. But occasionally, he rode one that had class--not just physical strength but will, poise, a warrior instinct. Only the best had it. You could feel it when you were on their backs.

In 1996, the year Capsized was born, 32,212 thoroughbred foals were born in North America. Two-thirds of them would race, but only a fraction of a percent would finish first in a graded stake race like the Santa Anita Derby.

This year, 407 horses were nominated as candidates for the 125th running of the 1 1/4-mile Kentucky Derby. After a series of increasingly difficult preparatory races, some horses dropped out because of injuries. In March, Bob Baffert retired Exploit, the Las Vegas oddsmakers’ favorite, after the colt broke his knee. Others, like Aristotle, trained by Randy Bradshaw, were eliminated as it became clear they were not distance runners.

Luck matters. “Sometimes you can’t fight the Derby gods,” said Steve Haskins, national correspondent for Blood Horse magazine.

Everyone on Santa Anita’s backside--where the barns are located--knew it. Most could tick off ill-boding signs: shoes or hats on a bed, a single magpie, walking under a ladder or opening an umbrella indoors. Baffert wears a “lucky” tie for big races; his assistant trainer Eoin Harty has a silver crucifix, blessed by the pope when Harty was 14.

In the days before the Santa Anita Derby, Lewis asked her sister to search boxes for her lucky charm: a necklace with a small replica of the Kentucky Derby winner’s trophy.

Solis had studied a video of the first race he’d ridden with Capsized, the San Rafael Stakes. He’d been late in asking Capsized for his final burst of speed. Plus, he’d swung wide on the homestretch. This time, he promised, he’d ride better. Eight times, Solis, a boyish-faced Panama native and father of four, had ridden in the Kentucky Derby. Maybe this, he thought, God willing, would be his year.

Prime Timber stayed on the inside. His jockey David Flores was surprised by the sluggish pace. General Challenge galloped easily, stalking the leader. He was racing for the first time in blinkers and jockey Gary Stevens thought this helped the colt stay focused.

Dirt bit into Capsized’s face as he tailed the closely knit pack.

Up in the owners’ box, Lewis’ face seemed drawn. “C’mon, Cap!” she called again. The race was not unfolding to plan.

Lisa Lynn Lewis was born in Maryland, deep in horse country. Her mother, Penny Lewis, selected her middle daughter’s name thinking the initials would look good on the boards, the trainer’s sign that hangs by a racehorse stall. As a 4-year-old, Lisa accompanied her mother to the track and helped put poultice on horses’ legs. She cried when they left the barn. She cannot remember not knowing how to ride. By 5, she was fearless on a wicked Shetland named Tony the Pony. Punishment was being told she couldn’t ride. She trained her own set of 8-inch plastic horses and slept with her favorite toy, Sam, a golden palomino.

By 12, she’d begun to gallop racehorses. Inevitably, she’d get sick on school days with ailments that cleared before midmorning so she could spend the day with the horses. Even then, her mother remembers, she had one dream: winning the Kentucky Derby.

After her parents divorced, she quit school at 16. Her father, then a board member of Mount Holyoke College, was crushed. He wanted her to finish her education. Instead she moved to Florida to work in her mother’s barn. At 20, she got her trainer’s license.

The racing community noticed her early when she ran a turf horse named Buchman, her first stakes winner, who set two turf records. Her next big hit: a filly named American Royale who set a track record as a 2-year-old and won six of her eight starts.

By then, Lewis had befriended veteran trainer Nick Zito, 22 years her senior. One day, Zito showed her a little chestnut standing with his feet in water and announced that this was his Derby horse. Yeah, sure, she thought. Several months later, the little chestnut, Strike The Gold, won the Kentucky Derby.

It was not always the best or fastest horse that won at Churchill Downs, she decided. It was the horse that reached his peak on that particular day. A successful Derby campaign meant a horse kept getting stronger and better with each prep race--not necessarily winning. Zito’s horses weren’t flashy, spectacular horses. But he believed in them.

That was Zito’s first Derby triumph. Months later they became romantically involved. A couple years later another of his horses won the Derby. Next time, he told her, it’ll be your horse. However, not until Capsized came along did it seem even remotely possible, and by then her four-year relationship with Zito was finished.

Capsized arrived a week after one of Lewis’ favorite horses broke his leg. She liked this 2-year-old colt the moment she saw him at a Florida sale, shopping on behalf of her clients. He had a beautiful face and strode forward with self-assurance. He had balance and a great shoulder. He’d run slowly in workouts; she chalked it up to immaturity. He had a shin splint on one leg and a hock showed wear--enough potential problems to scare off most buyers and drive down his price.

But the pedigree was strong: his sire was Summer Squall, who’d won the Preakness. Two-year-olds with solid pedigrees could sell for half a million or more--a price outside the range of her client, Gold Spur Stables. She would risk it.

Gold Spur, a partnership of Japanese owners, purchased the colt for about $75,000. The previous owner sold at a loss, having bought him as a yearling for about $125,000.

Capsized gazed with large brown eyes at visitors in the barn as though they’d arrived to pay homage--and possibly a carrot--to him.

*

Capsized sped around High Wire Act, who lost steam after maintaining the early lead.

General Challenge’s jockey, Gary Stevens, felt confident. His horse had energy to burn. Prime Timber’s jockey, David Flores, wondered where his best opening would be. Like Solis, he would have preferred a faster pace.

*

In the weeks before the Santa Anita Derby, Lewis realized the precariousness of her situation. Her world rested on the physical and mental capacities of an 1,100-pound animal with a walnut-sized brain. Hazards were endless: Capsized might step on a nail, injure himself kicking the stall wall, pull a muscle or develop a sore tendon. If one contender got hurt in Baffert’s or Zito’s shed row, they had others.

At night, she dreamed that the colt got sick and didn’t eat his dinner, or that he threw exercise rider Weir and hurt himself cavorting. “Every day you half hold your breath, horses are so fragile.”

She would catch herself musing about Kentucky. She tried not to get too excited. She’d say a silent prayer, “Please Lord, keep this horse sound.” She ought to attend church more often, she’d tell herself.

She had the same morning ritual: She arrived with a cup of coffee and a doughnut at barn No. 36, by 6 a.m. The coffee would grow cold on her desk as she walked her horses one by one to the track. She climbed the concrete steps beneath the empty grandstand to view each horse gallop. She squinted as she studied the horse’s stride, speed and demeanor because she’d forgot her sunglasses when she moved and kept forgetting to ask her sister to mail them. Then she accompanied the horse to the barn, talking to Weir about the horse’s performance.

Fifteen days before the Santa Anita Derby, Lewis sharply drew her breath: As soon as Weir was boosted onto the saddle, the colt started to limp.

On his front left hoof, the ball of the heel was hot, tender and swollen. His hoof had a vertical crack, a problem that could take from two days to several weeks to fix. Capsized had this once before and missed 14 days of training.

“If it was any other horse or any other time, it’s a hassle but not the end of the world,” Lewis sighed.

Capsized’s foot was soaked in hot water and ascorbic acid. Lewis agonized over scenarios. How many days of missed training would put him out of the race? She finally had a quality horse and might never know whether he was truly a contender. She couldn’t eat or sleep; only soap operas distracted her.

“It just hits you,” she said wearily. “You realize how much you’ve got wrapped up in this one horse.”

After 24 hours, Capsized stopped limping. Other horses had competed, and won, with quarter cracks. Would he be able to give 100%?

Three days after the problem was discovered, Capsized galloped. He cooled out, walking jauntily. Twelve days remained before the race. Time enough, she believed, to heal the cuts, drain infection beneath the crack and try a half-dollar sized fiberglass patch to hold together the hoof.

The real test would be Capsized’s final workout, a week before the race. Reporters gathered that morning to watch. Lewis clutched her stopwatch. Her stomach knotted. Just as Capsized began, an older chestnut, a couple of lengths ahead, started his workout. Capsized would have company. The rider steadied Capsized, reserving him for a final rally. As the two horses flew down the homestretch, Capsized caught the chestnut and struggled to pull ahead. He couldn’t.

A good workout, Lewis assured the writers after Capsized galloped strongly past the finish line. Although his foot had bled slightly, he was sound. Privately, it disturbed her that Capsized had not passed the other horse.

Three days before the race, after conferring with the vet, Lewis directed the blacksmith to replace the patch on Capsized’s hoof with a bigger, stronger one.

The afternoon before the race, she bandaged his legs, added more straw to his stall, stroked his neck and scratched behind his ears, telling him, “You need a good night’s sleep tonight, Big Guy.” She thought about what she would say to his owners if he didn’t run well.

*

Turning for home, Solis started whipping Capsized, urging him on. The colt didn’t respond. He had no kick. Solis was pushing with his back and arms. He yelled at Capsized. Capsized flattened. He seemed sullen and unhappy. This did not feel like the same colt Solis had ridden before. It was like slamming your foot down on a car accelerator and finding no power. With a quarter-mile left, the horse was giving out.

General Challenge took the lead coming into the stretch. He ran effortlessly. Prime Timber, one of the bettors’ favorites, scrambled into second, relentlessly chasing his stablemate.

Another favorite, Desert Hero, eased into third. His jockey, Corey Nakatani, kept thinking he’d catch the leader but General Challenge kept speeding ahead.

At the finish line, Capsized was in sixth place, 11 1/2 lengths behind the winner, ahead of only Honest Lady and High Wire Act.

*

Worried that Capsized was hurt, Lewis sprinted to the track where the jockeys jumped off their mounts. Back in the barn, she discovered that his front left shoe had twisted loose. The shoe nails punched into his foot with every step. The back of his foot was sliced and bleeding. He would have done better if he’d thrown the shoe.

Capsized would recover. Lewis would move back to New York with him. Her other clients didn’t want their horses to travel. She would start over.

She knew she’d relive her disappointment again and again as the focus on the Kentucky Derby built in the weeks to come. She’d been so close. Would she get another chance?

The evening before the race, the representative of Capsized’s part-owner, Stonerside, had spoken of giving her more horses. Stonerside had purchased a half-interest in Capsized before the San Rafael Stakes. In previous years, it had bought part-interests in other Derby contenders. Would the offer still hold?

She thought of the telephone call she’d received telling her that a client’s mare had been successfully impregnated. Soon there would be a foal with promising bloodlines. She thought about her father’s recent glowing description of a horse he’d bred. Perhaps he would be the stakes winner. She thought about buying more 2-year-olds. Last year, she’d selected three horses for clients and one was Capsized. If she chose three more, perhaps one would be the star she so coveted.

“As long as you have a horse,” she sighed, “you have hope.”

Epilogue

Alex Solis will ride K One King in today’s Kentucky Derby.

Three of Bob Baffert’s horses, Prime Timber, General Challenge and Excellent Meeting, are entered in today’s race. D. Wayne Lukas has two entries, Charismatic and Cat Thief. So does Nick Zito, who’s running Stephen Got Even and Adonis.

Capsized is in a stall at Belmont Racetrack in New York; he has not galloped since his injury. His next race is tentatively scheduled for July 17.

Lisa Lewis now trains five horses, including one $275,000 horse that she selected in a sale for Stonerside Stables. Later this month she expects to take on five more. Eight of her 10 horses will be 2-year-olds, a year away from big-time racing. She will watch the Kentucky Derby on television.

* DERBY DAY: The 125th Kentucky Derby has something for everyone, but it has no clear favorite. D1