Kentucky Derby

Kentucky Derby will have a horse trained by Mike Harrington for the first time: Izenberg

By Jerry Izenberg/Columnist Emeritus 5/4/2012

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — They were killing time at Santa Anita earlier this spring, and the 71-year-old trainer who had knocked around more bush tracks than Bob Baffert could possibly imagine spoke up.
“You know,” Mike Harrington said to the three-time Kentucky Derby winner, “you get 15 good horses every year and I get one good one every 15 years. After the Derby, you and Todd Pletcher go home and look over next year’s crop. I don’t have any crop to look over and I ain’t never been to the Derby.”
But he’s been to a lot of places, from Bend, Ore., to Southern California. His future was the residue of
genetics. Like his grandfather and his father before him, his marriage to the racetrack was a foregone conclusion.
“I trained a lot of quarter horses on bush tracks in the Northwest,” Harrington said yesterday in front of the barn where Creative Cause, his first Derby horse, was being walked around shed row.
“I rodeoed some mostly roping calves, but I did ride a bull once and once was enough. I’m not that brave. I became a blacksmith, then a veterinarian and finally a trainer of thoroughbreds.”
“Well, what would you say your best job description would be?” a man asked.
“Lover,” he replied, then he tilted his big cowboy hat to a rakish angle. “Yes, lover. That’s how I think of myself.”
Clearly, Mike Harrington never lost his perspective on what is really important.
He is a racetrack lifer and his specialty for years was developing overlooked young horses and turning claimers into winners, which, as anyone who knows this business will tell you, is a long way from rich owners and tunes of glory.
He is here at the Derby with a morning line 12-1 shot named Creative Cause, who has never missed the board in eight career starts. He is one of three Derby colts to have collected a triple-digit Beyers speed number this year and came within a nose of stealing the Santa Anita Derby.
And is septuagenarian cowboy Mike Harrington overwhelmed by becoming a Derby trainer for the first time? Does he tremble slightly at the thought of where he is and the company he will keep tomorrow?
Hardly.
“No,” he says, holding back a smile. “I’ve had good horses before. I’ve been in big races before. You know this ain’t exactly my first rodeo.
“Truth is that if they ran this thing as the first race instead of the last that would be fine with me. Somebody recommended a fancy restaurant to me, said I should go there Saturday night. Well, it’s gonna be a long day and when it’s over — win or lose — I’d just as soon go home and go to bed.
“This will be my two Derbies — my first and my last.”
Underneath Harrington’s tongue-in-cheek veneer there is a carefully guarded secret. What he may lack in sophistication, he makes up for in conviction. He likes this lightly regarded grey roan, or as he says:
“I’m under the radar and it’s where I want to be. He’s the best horse I ever had. After he finished third behind Hansen and Union Rags I turned him out for 30 days — just let him be a horse — no pressure just let him do what horses do.
“And then I brought him back in training in January and he never missed a beat ever since.
“Everybody grows up dreaming of going to the Kentucky Derby and most people realize they are probably never going to make it. I know I thought I never would. You got guys like Baffert and Pletcher and they have most of the outstanding horses, so for a little guy like me it’s pretty rewarding.”
He is here as a stranger in Wonderland and in his shucks-and-golly way, he is enjoying the ride for what it is.
When people tell Harrington all kinds of things about what having a Derby horse will mean to him in the future, he doesn’t see it changing his career or his life.
“I doubt that I’ll get a flood of new horses,” he says. “I don’t really want more clients. I obviously would like more horses like this one, but they are really, really hard to come by.”
And then he is back in the role he has adopted as country boy meets a passel of city slickers:
“You think about, you know, what the answer is here. I know the best horse isn’t always the winner here. But I ain’t never been here before so what do you think?”
The only thing missing was a wink.