Perfect Drift's A Gelding, But Eddie D. Has Won Two Derbys
April 22, 2002
By, William F. Reed

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - If this is, indeed, is the "Doughnut Derby" because every horse has a hole in it, here are the main knocks against the gelding Perfect Drift: Only six career starts, no race since his March 23 victory in the Lane's End Spiral Stakes (GII) at Turfway Park, and, most ominously, none of the 74 geldings who have run in the Kentucky Derby (GI) since Clyde Van Dusen's 1929 victory have set a hoof in the winner's circle at Churchill Downs.

But Murray Johnson, who trains Perfect Drift for Dr. William A. Reed's Stonecrest Farm, only smiles when such misgivings are mentioned. Where others see holes, Johnson sees only the horse of his dreams, the pinnacle of a lifetime spent on tracks in his native Australia and America.

"He has plenty of pedigree," said Johnson. "The way he's training, he's gotten more professional than before the Spiral, so we should be in good shape."

Speaking of professional, Johnson couldn't have gotten a better jockey than Eddie Delahoussaye. The veteran rider, who won the Derby back-to-back with Gato Del Sol in 1982 and Sunny's Halo in 1983, became friends with Johnson years ago in California, so he was perfectly willing to do Johnson a favor when asked to replace Tony D'Amico aboard Perfect Drift for the Spiral.

"Although Tony had done a terrific job," Johnson said, "I wanted to go with someone who could give the horse a new dimension. Someone who could give us another indicator of where we should go with him."

Delahoussaye was the man. In Perfect Drift's previous two races at Turfway, he had come up short to Request For Parole. But Delahoussaye made the difference in the Spiral, moving for the lead at just the right time, then holding off Azillion (Ire) and Request For Parole to earn his ticket to the Derby.

"We thought we would be a big fish in a small pond," said Johnson, "but it turned out there was another shark (Request For Parole) in the waters. In the Spiral, he ran a good last furlong (under 12 seconds) against good horses next to him that weren't stopping."

Now Eddie D. is so excited about Perfect Drift's chances that he chose to ride him in the Derby instead of Ocean Sound (Ire), a promising third in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (GI) at Keeneland. "He (Ocean Sound) ran O.K.," said Delahoussaye. "I'm not sure he wants to go farther than a mile and an eighth." Which isn't good news for Ocean Sound's owners, considering the Derby is a mile and a quarter.

A victory in the Derby would make Delahoussaye, who was born on Sept. 21, 1951, the second oldest jockey to win the roses. Bill Shoemaker was 54 when he won his final Derby aboard Ferdinand in 1986.

Like Shoemaker, Delahoussaye has never ridden a gelding in the Derby. A gelding, for the uninitiated, is a colt that has been castrated, usually because he's too unruly to train. The practice was commonplace in the Derby's early years. Indeed, six geldings won the Derby between Vagrant in 1876 and Clyde Van Dusen in 1929, and three others were second during that period.

How long ago is 1929?

Well, it's the year when Herbert Hoover was elected President, when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began, when Georgia Tech defeated California 8-7 in the Rose Bowl, when Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants threw a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and when Ray Keech drove the Simplex Piston Ring Special to victory in the Indy 500 with an average speed of 97.5 miles per hour.

That's 73 years of futility that Perfect Drift will be bucking.

Clyde Van Dusen, named for the man who trained him, was so small that jockey Linus "Pony" McAtee, who rode him for the first time in the Derby, was shocked when he first saw the son of the great Man o' War in the Churchill Downs paddock.

It was a miserable day at the races. An all-day downpour had dumped 1.2 inches of rain on the track, turning it into a quagmire. That was perfect for Clyde Van Dusen, who loved the slop, but more of an iffy proposition for the favored Blue Larkspur, who was owned by Col. E.R. Bradley and ridden by Mack Garner.

Although Col. Bradley insisted that Blue Larkspur wouldn't be bothered by the rain and slop, a blacksmith refused to replace the colt's regular shoes with mud caulks to give him better traction. That never would have happened if Bradley's trainer, H.J. "Derby Dick" Thompson, had been present, but he was in the hospital with appendicitis.

This was the last Derby to be started with a web barrier instead of a mechanical gate, and it took starter Bill Hamilton 13 minutes to get the 21-horse field properly aligned behind the web. The cagey McAtee used the time to maneuver Clyde Van Dusen from his outside post position into a spot nearer the center of the pack.

With famed track announcer Clem McCarthy calling the race on the Derby's first national radio network, Blue Larkspur was beaten by his shoes as much as Clyde Van Dusen, slipping and sliding to a fourth-place finish behind the gelding, who took the lead soon after the start and splashed to a two-length, front-running victory over Naishapur.

"He is nothing but a mud-runnin' fool," declared jockey McAtee.

"That's the worst Derby winner in 20 years," grumbled an ungracious Col. Bradley.

But in the ensuing years, as championship colts became more valuable as breeding stallions, owners and trainers became more reluctant to geld their stars, even though some of the greatest horses of the last 70 years have been geldings -- Kelso, Forego, John Henry, Armed, Native Diver, Roman Brother, and Fort Marcy, to name a few.

In the Derby, geldings have finished second four times since Clyde Van Dusen - Staretor by eight lengths to Whirlaway in 1941, Best Pal by 1 ¾-lengths to Strike the Gold in 1991, Prairie Bayou by 2 ½-lengths to Sea Hero in 1993, and Cavonnier by a nose to Grindstone in 1996.

Johnson thinks more American horses should be gelded early in their careers.

"And if a colt hasn't won a graded stakes race by the time he's four," Johnson said, "he should be automatically gelded. The reason a lot of colts aren't gelded is that the owners think their horses are extensions of themselves, and they get their feelings hurt at the idea of gelding."

As you may have guessed by now, Johnson is a bit of a maverick. He comes from a prominent racing family in Australia, where he learned to ride and groom horses. "In Australia," he says, horse racing is as popular as baseball is in America." Nevertheless, he left Australia at a young age to study stud management at the Irish National Stud, then left Ireland to come to the U.S. in 1981.

His moved from exercising horses at Keeneland and Crescent Farm to working with horses trained by Shug McGaughey, who's looking for his first Derby victory this year with Saarland, and Carl Nafzger, who won the 1990 Derby with Unbridled. "If Carl can do it," says Johnson with a smile and a wink, "I can, too."

His roundabout odyssey to the Derby took him back to Australia, then to California to work for trainer John Gosden. When Gosden decided to return to England in 1989, Johnson decided to stay in California and begin training on his own.

In 1991, he made his Kentucky Derby debut with Green Alligator, a son of Gate Dancer who was ridden by Delahoussaye in his first six starts. But Johnson replaced Eddie D. with Corey Nakatani for the California Derby. A narrow victory in that race, along with some advice from training immortal Charlie Whittingham, encouraged Johnson to try the Derby, where Nakatani rode Green Alligator to a respectable fourth-place finish.

Since then, Johnson, who moved his family to Kentucky a few years ago, has watched the Derby either in the Churchill Downs stable area or in the infield tunnel. He has wished and waited for another horse good enough to run in the Derby. He's especially glad that Perfect Drift - the term for the ultimate cast in fly fishing - is the one, because he helped produce the mare and breed the foal.

Although Perfect Drift is ranked high on most experts' lists, Johnson has elected to keep him stabled at Trackside, the former harness racing track on Poplar Level Road in Louisville where the Downs' year-round simulcasting operation is based. The gelding also has trained at Trackside, which has a three-quarter-mile track, instead of Churchill Downs.

Is he trying to duck the national media by staying off the beaten path?

"Not at all," said the garrulous Johnson. "Everybody is welcome at our barn. I think if I was an athlete going into the biggest performance of your life, I'd prefer to be in a peaceful surrounding and what you're used to. Hopefully, that will work for him."

Johnson also pointed out that many of the top Derby contenders are lightly raced -- Came Home and Saarland have seven career starts, Proud Citizen five, Easy Grades five, etc. -- and that there's a sound reason for not giving Perfect Drift a start between the Spiral and the Derby.

"It would be too much to ask a horse to give three great performances in six weeks," Johnson said.

Already one of the most popular trainers at Trackside, Johnson will get even more support from Australia. His sister and brother-in-law are making the trip, and he's hearing from old Aussie buddies and doing interviews for a radio station in Sydney.

Down under, obviously, the fun-loving, hell-raising, party-animal Aussie mates either haven't gotten the news that no gelding has won the Derby since 1929, or the smell of a party brewing is powerful enough to bring them to Louisville in search of the perfect draught. Native Kentuckian William F. "Billy" Reed has been a sports writer in various capacities for 42 years and has missed covering the Kentucky Derby a mere two times since 1966. He has been a high-profile sports writer in Kentucky for the Commonwealth's two largest daily newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader and was a national columnist for Sports Illustrated, covering among other sports, Thoroughbred horse racing and college basketball. Reed currently pens a column for the Louisville Sports Report, contrbiutes features to the Keeneland program and will be, among varied other assignments, filing Kentucky Derby installments on www.kentuckyderby.com.

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