DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – They’ve only conducted one Kentucky Derby this century – and none in the last 21 years – in which Todd Pletcher didn’t have a runner. The Hall of Fame trainer hopes this year won’t be the second.
Despite leading all trainers in 3-year-olds nominated to the Triple Crown (32), Pletcher enters the final round of Kentucky Derby qualifying races without a horse among the top 20 in points.
Pletcher has three horses who could possibly make the Kentucky Derby on May 3. Disruptor and Grande are two lightly raced 3-year-olds who would need a top-two finish in their upcoming stakes debuts to qualify for the race. River Thames, second in the Fountain of Youth last month, is Pletcher’s leading points-earner with 25, and he’ll likely have to gather more in the Grade 1, $1.25 million Blue Grass on April 5.
The Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park has typically been Pletcher’s get-out race – or perhaps, more accurately, get-in race. He has won the Florida Derby a record eight times, and seven of the last 11, including the last two. In 2024, Fierceness set a Florida Derby record for his 13 1/2-length margin of victory.
Disruptor will be Pletcher’s starter in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Florida Derby, a race that offers its top five finishers qualifying points (100-50-25-15-10) to the Kentucky Derby. In 2017, Pletcher won the Florida Derby with Always Dreaming, who was making his stakes debut and who would go on to win the Kentucky Derby.
:: KENTUCKY DERBY 2025: Top contenders, point standings, prep schedule, news, and more
Of Pletcher’s eight Florida Derby winners, only Constitution (2014) and Materiality (2015) came into the race with just two starts, both horses having gone 2 for 2. Unlike Disruptor, who has yet to race beyond seven furlongs, Constitution and Materiality both had a two-turn race under their belt.
Disruptor, like many of Pletcher’s Triple Crown nominees, was late to get to the races. He worked three times at Saratoga last spring before having to be sent to the farm.
“I thought Disruptor was the most precocious that we had, and had we been able to move forward would have been looking at races like the Hopeful,” Pletcher said, referring to the Grade 1 race held on Labor Day at Saratoga.
Disruptor, a son of Gun Runner who brought $1.15 million at the Keeneland yearling sale in September 2023, debuted on the Jan. 25 Pegasus Day card at Gulfstream. He showed good speed and had a 1 1/2-length lead at the eighth pole but finished third, beaten two lengths by Jimmy’s Dailys.
Disruptor came back on March 1, again at seven furlongs, and whistled home a dominant 9 1/4-length winner.
“In retrospect, we probably didn’t have him as tight as we thought we did,” Pletcher said about Disruptor’s debut. “He did everything so effortlessly leading up to it. What he did his second start was kind of what we were expecting him to do in his debut.”
Pletcher had the option of running Disruptor or Grande in the Florida Derby. Grande has won both of his starts at Gulfstream this winter, including an allowance at the Florida Derby distance of 1 1/8 miles. Pletcher is sending Grande to the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 5. Pletcher has won the Wood seven times.
Pletcher felt the deeper Aqueduct track might suit Grande better than it would Disruptor. Mike Repole has an ownership interest in both Disruptor and Grande.
“With Mike having ownership interest in both horses, Aqueduct made a little more sense for Grande, being he’s already got a mile-and-an-eighth race under his belt and acts like the farther the better,” Pletcher said.
Pletcher said Grande wasn’t quite as far along in his training as Disruptor and River Thames were when he had to stop on him last summer.
River Thames showed enough talent last spring that Pletcher thought he could win the first 2-year-old maiden race for New York-breds at Saratoga before he had to be stopped on. River Thames, owned by China Horse Club and WinStar Farm, won his debut on the same Jan. 11 card as Grande. He ran back three weeks later and won an allowance and four weeks after that was narrowly beaten by Sovereignty in the Fountain of Youth.
Pletcher felt the extra week to the Blue Grass made sense for River Thames, who, despite being by Maclean’s Music, gives Pletcher the feeling he can be effective going longer distances.
“He almost ran a mile and an eighth the other day,” Pletcher said about the Fountain of Youth, acknowledging the added run-up and wide trip River Thames had. “I thought he got the distance fine. I thought he got a little distracted late and it cost him a little momentum.”
Pletcher has started a record 62 horses in the Kentucky Derby over 24 runnings. He won the race in 2010 with Super Saver and in 2017 with Always Dreaming. In 20 of the 24 Derbies he’s participated, Pletcher has had at least two runners. Twice, he’s started five horses in the race.
Should Disruptor and Grande do enough to qualify for the Kentucky Derby, they would be going into the 1 1/4-mile race with only three starts on their résumé. From 1990-2007, only six horses with that little experience competed in the Derby, and none of them won. Since then, however, Big Brown (2008), Justify (2018), and Mage (2023) each won the Derby in their fourth career start.
“The trend has changed. Twenty years ago these kinds of horses seemed like they were never making the Derby,” Pletcher said. “Now, it’s commonplace for horses to have three or four starts.”
Should Pletcher’s horses not qualify for this year’s Derby, it would be the first time since 2003 he won’t have a starter in the race.
“The disappointment for me would be not getting the owners there,” Pletcher said. “I think it’s a big part of the reason why they’re in the game. I’d be disappointed more for them than myself.”
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.