Idaho Days Were Catalyst for Stevens, Mullins

The summer of 1980 brought a couple of teenagers together at Les Bois Park, a bullring of a racetrack in western Idaho. Gary Stevens and Jeff Mullins were both 17, and to racing born.

Stevens’ father was a trainer, and so was Mullins’. Stevens, who had ridden his first winner -- with his first mount -- at Les Bois the year before, quickly dipped into the big leagues in the winter of 1980, and left California with only four winners out of 90 races. That summer, Leonard Mullins dropped off six of his horses at Les Bois, telling his young son to do the best he could.

One of those horses was Doctorius, a maiden who won for the first time with Stevens riding. Jeff Mullins had won races before, at bush tracks in his native Utah, but Doctorius was his first training victory at a parimutuel track.

“Gary rode that horse one more time for me,” Mullins recalled this week, “but after that he didn’t ride for me again for a long time. I think the next time was [the early 1990s], when I shipped in a horse to run in California.”

Those Idaho roots have led to big things for both horsemen. Stevens, who has won more than 4,700 races, was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1997. Mullins, 40 and three weeks younger than the jockey, moved to Southern California in 2001 and this year he’s No. 10 on the national purse list and ranks second at the Santa Anita meet with 25 wins. It’s a meet that has been marked by the development of Buddy Gil, a 3-year-old gelding who’s the second choice on the morning line, behind Atswhatimtalknbout, in today’s $750,000 Santa Anita Derby. Mullins will give Stevens a leg up on Buddy Gil at about 2:45 p.m.

While winning the Santa Anita Derby is nothing new for Stevens, it would be a first for Mullins, who broke in last year in the race with a third-place finish with Lusty Latin.

Stevens has won the last major California prep for the Kentucky Derby eight times, and should Buddy Gil duplicate his winning effort of three weeks ago, Stevens will pass Bill Shoemaker as the winningest jockey ever in the stake.

Shoemaker rode in a record 33 Santa Anita Derbies, the eight wins coming over a 32-year stretch, starting with Terrang in 1956 and capped by Temperate Sil in 1987. Stevens, who has ridden in the race 17 times, won his first with the filly Winning Colors in 1988, and his eighth with Point Given in 2001. In between came Mister Frisky, Personal Hope, Brocco, Larry The Legend, Indian Charlie and General Challenge.

Stevens has won the Kentucky Derby three times, starting with Winning Colors and also with Thunder Gulch in 1995 and Silver Charm in 1997. He picked up the mount on Thunder Gulch after Larry The Legend was injured and didn’t get to Churchill Downs. By a head to Free House, Silver Charm was one of Stevens’ five second-place finishers in the Santa Anita Derby.

For Stevens, that first Santa Anita Derby win, by a 7 1/2-length margin, will always be special. “The way Winning Colors did it, she was so impressive,” Stevens said. “As soon as we crossed the finish line, I knew we were going to win the Kentucky Derby together.”

He also gave special mention to Mister Frisky’s Santa Anita Derby win in 1990.

“Mister Frisky was the Puerto Rican flash,” Stevens said. “He had won 15 straight races going into the Santa Anita Derby, but because most of those wins came in Puerto Rico, nobody gave him much respect.”

Stevens didn’t start riding Buddy Gil until his owners moved the horse from Chuck Jenda, a Northern California trainer, to Mullins’ barn at Santa Anita early this year. Stevens is two for two with Buddy Gil, winning the Baldwin at 6 1/2 furlongs on grass and the San Felipe at 1 1/16 miles on dirt.

“I’m very happy where I’m sitting with this horse,” Stevens said. “Last time, he had a lot of adversity and he overcame that. He had nowhere to go, and was behind a wall of horses, when it was time to push the button. Yet he still won. He’s a horse that’s improving, the kind you want heading for the Kentucky Derby.”