Camden- trained horses beating odds by making Kentucky Derby

The Daily Racing Form headline – “Ignore Tom’s Ready at your own peril” – is music to trainer Kip Elser’s ears. The story reinforces what he feels, that the colt who learned the ways of thoroughbred racing at his Kirkwood Stables in Camden could be the toast of Louisville after Saturday’s running of the Kentucky Derby.

In truth, the headline might have well read – Ignore Camden colts at your own peril.

If that sounds bold, consider this: three of the 20 horses in the Derby got their start on the track in Camden – Tom’s Ready at Elser’s facility at the Springdale Race Course and both Mohaymen and Shagaf at Shadwell Stable at the adjacent Camden Training Center.

“Having three colts in the Derby from Camden is stunning, a big deal,” Elser said. “Think about the odds. There are about 25,000 thoroughbreds born each year, 20 make in the Derby, and three got their start here.”

If the oddsmakers are correct, Mohaymen, a son of Tapit with a $2.2 million price tag, is the best of the Camden Trio. He won his first five races before a dull fourth-place run in his last start, the Florida Derby, put a damper on his prospects in the eyes of some pundits. Shagaf, also tutored in Camden by Shadwell’s Kevin Kahkola, ran poorly in his last start after three victories.

Although victorious once in nine starts, Tom’s Ready ran second in the Louisiana Derby and sparkled in his final Derby work at Churchill Downs.

“The colt is ready,” Elser said.

Elser understands the unpredictability of racing, but his expectations are based on experience; racing has been his life since the 1970s. A former steeplechase rider, he worked with such training legends as Frank Whiteley and Lucien Lauren, and his Kirkwood Stables’ operation includes horse breaking and training and sales preparation. One writer offers this observation, “He has been turning gawky yearlings into 2-year-olds into sales-toppers and top racers for more than three decades.”

That’s what he did with Tom’s Ready.

Tom and Gayle Benson, owners of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, operate GMB (Gayle Marie Benson) Racing, and they dispatched Elser and race-track trainer Dallas Stewart to Saratoga in search of promising thoroughbreds. They found Tom’s Ready.

“We brought him back (to Camden) late that year (2014), worked with him and sent him to Dallas in the summer of last year,” Elser said. “We liked him a lot from the start, and I liked him more and more in working with him.

“He’s always been well balanced no matter what went on around him, and I felt we never got to the bottom of his potential. He always seemed to have something left in the tank.”

He will go off Saturday at long odds in the field headed by undefeated favorite Nyquist, and the historians point out that since 1991 only Giacomo in 2005 won the Derby with only one prior victory. On the flip side, Stewart-trained longshots have placed second in a Triple Crown race in each of the past three years.

“We’ve had three (Kirkwood alumni) win the Kentucky Oaks (for fillies), and we’ve had quite a few Derby runners with not much success,” Elser said. “Maybe that changes Saturday.”

Shadwell’s Derby horses left Camden to work with different race-track trainers, Mohaymen with Kairan McLaughlin and Shagaf with Chad Brown. (GMB Racing also has two Derby runners; in addition to Tom’s Ready with Stewart, the stable has Mo Tom with trainer Tom Amoss.)

Veteran turf writer Steve Haskin points out in his Blood-Horse column that 16 of the 20 Derby colts finished first, second or third in their last starts. Two of the exceptions are the Shadwell horses.

“If you draw a line through Mohaymen’s race in the Florida Derby and Shagaf’s race in the Wood Memorial and chalk it up to a dislike of the track, a troubled trip, or simply a rare bad day,” Haskin wrote, “what you wind up with in the Derby is a previously undefeated horse and one of the leading Derby contenders who now will be triple or quadruple his expected odds, or even higher.

“If either one of these gifted colts, who have both worked brilliantly at Churchill Downs, bounces back and returns to his previous form and pays some outrageous price, he will prove to be one of the great overlays in Derby history. Having a winning ticket on him would be major coup and give one true bragging rights for the next year.”

But, he acknowledges, who knows? And that’s especially true in the Derby, the longest race in the biggest field that any of the colts have run. Unpredictability is its trademark.

This story was originally published May 4, 2016 at 8:45 PM with the headline "Camden- trained horses beating odds by making Kentucky Derby."