SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – In a career that will soon eclipse 6,000 wins, it could be hard to single out an individual highlight. For Todd Pletcher, not so much.
It is 19 years since the filly Rags to Riches overcame a stumble at the start and outfinished Preakness winner Curlin, a subsequent two-time Horse of the Year, with a 23.83-second final quarter-mile that propelled her to win the 2007 Belmont Stakes by a head. It was the first win in a Triple Crown race for Pletcher, who has since won three more Belmonts and two Kentucky Derbies.
“At that point, we were building up enough stats where people were criticizing our Triple Crown race record,” Pletcher said this week as he prepared Renegade and Powershift for Saturday’s 158th Belmont Stakes at Saratoga. “To not only get that win, but get it in the dramatic fashion that it happened – a filly against the colts – really a historic win. Maybe that’s why it’s always been my favorite win.
“By every metric, it was a fantastic race. It was a deep field with a two-time Horse of the Year she beat after the [stumbling] start. The way they finished, it might have been a sub-24 [final] quarter, which you don’t see very often. That’s why it continues to baffle me why she isn’t in the Hall of Fame. It doesn’t make any sense.”
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That Belmont was one of what, entering this week, was 5,983 career wins for Pletcher, an eight-time Eclipse Award winner, a Hall of Fame inductee, and the all-time leading purse-money earner in North America with $523.8 million. When that 6,000th career win comes – likely this summer at Saratoga – Pletcher, 58, will become only the seventh trainer to reach that mark.
“Like I’ve always said, it’s a difficult business to spend much time reflecting on things,” Pletcher said. “For whatever reason, those milestones do let you do that briefly.”
Pletcher’s first win came with his second starter in January 1996, when Majestic Number won a $75,000 maiden-claiming race at Gulfstream. The first stakes winner came that July, when Stu’s Choice won the McSorley at Monmouth. The first Grade 1 victory came June 7, 1998, when Jersey Girl captured the Acorn.
Fast forward nearly three decades and Pletcher is up to 1,544 stakes wins, 842 of which are graded, 211 of those being Grade 1s. That’s an average of 28 graded stakes wins – and seven Grade 1s – over 30 years.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to stay competitive at a high level over an extended period of time,” Pletcher said. “Staying consistent, I take some pride in that, yeah. Been very blessed to have a great clientele roster, have been able to maintain a good relationship with a lot of them for an extended period of time. I don’t care who you are, you’re only as good as the players you’re coaching.”
Michael McCarthy, who spent 11 years working for Pletcher before going out on his own to have a successful training career, may have summed it up best when he said, “Day in, day out, at the highest level, he is the gold standard.”
A victory Saturday would be Pletcher’s fifth in the Belmont. That would tie him for fourth all-time with Woody Stephens, whose five came in succession (1982-86). Only James Rowe Sr. (8), Sam Hildreth (7), and Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons (6) have won more.
In addition to Rags to Riches, Pletcher has won the Belmont with Palace Malice (2013), Tapwrit (2017), and Mo Donegal (2022). All three came up short in the Kentucky Derby, only to rebound five weeks later.
Palace Malice’s victory in the Belmont was satisfying to Pletcher for many reasons. One, it came for the Dogwood Stable of Cot Campbell and Paul Oreffice, an outfit that was with Pletcher when he first started. Two, it came after Pletcher had equipped Palace Malice with blinkers in the Kentucky Derby and the horse likely went too fast early under Mike Smith and finished 12th.
“I think that was more my fault, poor instructions for Mike,” Pletcher said. “I emphasized the horse had a poor habit of not breaking well. I told him, ‘Make sure you get out of there,’ so he kind of overdid it, and by the time he got him going, he couldn’t get him back, and that might have been the same if he had [blinkers] on or not.
“We took them off for the Belmont. The horse trained incredible for the Belmont, and we thought he was very live. It was a very fulfilling win for me because it was Dogwood Stable and the opportunity they had given me early in my career.”
One of the partners in Dogwood was Aron Wellman, who later formed Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners. It was in 2017 that Pletcher won the Belmont with Tapwrit, a horse owned in part by Eclipse. The fourth Belmont win came with Mo Donegal, co-owned by Donegal Racing and Mike Repole, who finished fifth in the Kentucky Derby after a troubled trip breaking from the rail.
That same scenario exists with Renegade, who figures to go off favored in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes. In the Kentucky Derby, Renegade broke from the rail, got bumped pretty hard in the first several yards, and was 15th down the backside. He came with a wide rally under Irad Ortiz Jr. but was outfinished by Golden Tempo, wider still under Jose Ortiz, and lost by a neck.
Pletcher had two previous Kentucky Derby runners-up, but neither came as close to winning as Renegade did. Pletcher said that was one of his toughest career defeats, as he went from “thinking you have no chance and then, inside the eighth pole, thinking you might win,” he said. “That’s a lot tougher to take than if you were never in contention.”
Pletcher has been well schooled on tough beats, especially in the Belmont Stakes, a race in which he has started 42 horses in 22 runnings. He has finished second in the race a remarkable nine times, including three times in the last four years. In 2022, Pletcher ran one-two with Mo Donegal and Nest.
Pletcher suffered brutal beats in 2014 with Commissioner, who led nearly every step of the way before losing by a head to Tonalist, and in 2016, when Destin made the lead at the eighth pole but lost on the wire by a nose to Creator.
“Those were tough beats – really tough beats,” Pletcher said.
Pletcher, at least outwardly, handles the losses almost as well as he celebrates the wins. Tristan Barry, who has worked with Pletcher since 1999, said Pletcher’s demeanor and “attention to detail” are the foundation for his success.
“He misses nothing, absolutely nothing,” Barry said. “He’s always calm, never loses his patience. He’s got a great way of dealing with people.”
At his zenith, Pletcher had five divisions. He now carries about 160 horses, with most of them in New York and a small division at Churchill.
“The last few years, we’ve scaled back a little bit in numbers and I kind of find that more enjoyable,” Pletcher said. “Ultimately, I’d like to have the same kind of program that [Bob] Baffert does, where you’ve still got a solid volume of horses but really focusing at the highest level.”
Pletcher has been playing at that level for three decades.