Three Churchill Records Broken Before Derby

The Churchill Downs track was so fast Saturday that track records were broken in three of the first four races.

The Bob Baffert-trained and Gary Stevens-ridden Love At Noon broke the track record for 6 1/2 furlongs by four-tenths of a second, winning the first race in 1:14 1/5, bettering Bet On Sunshine’s mark set in July of last year.

Alannan, ridden by Edgar Prado, won the seven-furlong Grade II $179,550 Churchill Downs Handicap in 1:20 2/5, bettering the mark of 1:21 1/5 set by Distorted Humor.

A dead-heat between Open Story, ridden by Pat Day, and City Street, with Robby Albarado aboard, produced a record time of :57 1/5 for five furlongs in the $116,000 Three Chimneys Juvenile. The old record of :57 3/5 was set by Western Dreamer in 1995.

In the Derby, the race had the sixth-fastest quarter mile (:22 1/5); the fastest half-mile (:44 4/5, previous record of :45 1/5 set by Groovy in 1986 and Top Avenger in 1981); the fastest three-quarters of a mile (1:09 1/5, previous record set by Spend A Buck in 1985), and second-fastest mile (1:35, record set by Kauai King in 1966 and Unbridled’s Song in 1996).

Monarchos’ victory was the third time in six years that the eventual winner had broken from post position 16. That was the same gate Thunder Gulch won from in 1995 and Charismatic in 1999. Monarchos’ margin of victory--4 3/4 lengths--was the biggest in the Derby since Spend A Buck’s 5 3/4-length win in 1985.

As he had promised earlier if he won the Derby, owner John Oxley donated one percent of the winning purse of $812,000 to Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation, which conducts research projects into the health and safety of horses.

Oxley’s percentage was matched by the syndicate that owns Monarchos’ sire, Maria’s Mon.

John Ward, the trainer of Monarchos, has now picked out the last two winners of the Kentucky Derby.

Last year’s winner, Fusaichi Pegaus, was selected by Ward at a yearling sale for his client, Fusao Sekiguchi, who paid $4 million for the colt. Sekiguchi then turned the horse over to trainer Neil Drysdale.

Oxley took Ward’s advice and bought Monarchos at auction for $170,000 as an unraced 2-year-old.

As a yearling, Monarchos was sold privately by his breeder, Jim Squires, to Murray Smith for $100,000. Squires is the former editor of the Chicago Tribune, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes during his watch. After leaving the Tribune in 1990, Squires bought a 132-acre farm near Versailles, Ky.

“In 1994,” Squires said, “my wife and I decided that we’d better go to work. We’d been living off my golden parachute money [from the Tribune]. I was teaching and writing books, but not generating much income.”

At that time, the Squireses had nothing but paint horses on their farm, and they decided to start raising thoroughbreds. He took some of his parachute money and bought a mare. Her first foal brought $150,000 at a sale, and Squires had a foundation. Monarchos is the result of a mating between Maria’s Mon, the champion 1995 juvenile male, and Regal Band, a mare Squires had bought for a reported $14,000.

Squires, 58, didn’t want to sell the colt that became Monarchos.

“I priced him at twice what I thought anyone would pay,” Squires said. “I know that all of this is luck, and that this is a rich man’s game. But I did tell [his wife] Mary Anne when we started that we are the kind of lucky people who could raise a Derby horse.”

Oxley, owner of an oil and gas exploration company in his native Tulsa, Okla., named Monarchos after the Greek ruler, Georgios Monarchos.

Somewhere in Louisville, there might be a shot-glass with Bob Baffert inside it.

When Monarchos flashed across the finish line first in the Derby, Baffert was supposed to dissolve into a puddle of emotions.

The trainer of favorite Point Given and second-favorite Congaree, who finished fifth and third, respectively, had warned beforehand that it might happen.

“If this horse--one of these horses--doesn’t win, you can pour me into a shot-glass Saturday night,” Baffert told the Daily Racing Form.

A record $71,100,036 was wagered on the Kentucky Derby, including an on-track total of $8,360,273. The on-track figure marked a 4 percent decline over last year’s record, but the overall total showed an 11 percent increase.