A Second Chance With Once-in-Lifetime Horse

For a boy raised in the bosom of horse country, in by-God Lexington, Ky., Shug McGaughey sure took his time reaching the conclusion that the race track was a lifeblood running through his veins. From the day he came to understand this, though, a couple years shy of his 20th birthday, he was imbued with a raging ambition. He wanted to be a trainer, and he wanted to be one of the best.

He still is a boy in the game, not even 40, young enough to be Woody Stephens’ grandson. But, his dreams already have crystallized from the fiction of his imagination to warm, wonderful truths. As he stood in the dusty, cluttered office of Ogden Phipps’ stable at Belmont Park early the other morning, a cup of coffee and the world in his hands, he allowed a smile to escape. “This does exceed what I ever thought about,” he said.

He is a small man, 5 1/2-feet tall, with a round, red face that makes you smile, a gentle toss of gray and brown hair, eyes tinted gray and blue. He has a pleasant, little belly that pushes forward, and he speaks with a thick Kentucky accent that evokes the slow drip of molasses and the laziness of pole fishing. He looks you in the eye. He trained horses that won more than $7 million in purses last year.

Phipps, one of the last pillars of old-guard racing still standing, picked him to train his private stable in 1985. There may not be a better job in the business, but McGaughey has taken it to a higher plane. He guided the career of Personal Ensign, the filly who became the first horse in 80 years to retire undefeated. Now, he has Easy Goer, who, next weekend at Churchill Downs, will be the first prohibitive favorite at the Kentucky Derby in a decade.

McGaughey understands that there is poetry in his returning to Louisville with a Derby favorite, a prodigal son coming home. Louisville is the city where he cut his teeth as a trainer, Churchill the track he used as a base in the mid-1980s while operating a public stable that grew and grew and grew -- as many as 80 horses -- as word spread about the little trainer who had a knack.

“Churchill and Keeneland (in Lexington) will always be special to me,” said McGaughey, who has lived outside Manhattan with his wife and young son since Phipps hired him. “Coming back with the Derby favorite is something I have dreamed about all my life.”

He attended his first Derby 22 years ago, at 16. “Proud Clarion beat Damascus,” he said, and if that makes him sound like a historian, don’t be fooled. The son of a real estate agent, he knew little about racing as a youngster other than what he gleaned from occasional trips to Keeneland with his father. He played high school golf -- as low as a 3-handicap -- and went off to Ole Miss.

Much to the surprise of everyone, he dropped out after two years to work for a trainer at Keeneland. The lure of the racetrack had snagged him. He found he enjoyed being around the barn, working with horses. He started out walking hots and mucking stalls. Within a few years, he was working for David Whitely in New York. Across the road at Belmont was Phipps’ barn.

He looked across the road and dreamed of being in charge. “It was the only job I wanted,” he said. “Jimmy Johnson probably dreamed about coaching the Dallas Cowboys. This was always where I wanted to go.”

He got his trainer’s license in 1979 and began building his public stable, a wild confluence of owners and horses. Sometimes he had horses running at four tracks. “I’d work all day at Churchill, go to the airport, get on a plane, get somewhere at 10 or 11 at night, no time for dinner,” he said.

It took five years for him to begin to see real results. He had the second-place horse in the 1984 Belmont, Pine Circle. The next year he had Vanlandingham, who won the International and Jockey Club Gold Cup. On the afternoon he was preparing Vanlandingham for the Woodward in 1985, he was struck with a moment of clarity.

“I’d walked that horse in the barn until I didn’t have any soles left,” he said. “I was nervous. I used to get so nervous that it wasn’t any fun. I got to the paddock and was putting on the girth, and I found myself asking, ‘Is all this worth it?’ I looked around and saw (the trappings of a big race) and decided, yeah, it was. That day, it hit me that it was a lot more fun to be playing in the eighth (feature) race than the first race.”

The Phipps telephoned that fall, ensuring that he would be in the eighth race for years. He had been recommended by Seth Hancock, president of Claiborne Farm, where Phipps’ mares stand. Hancock had been watching McGaughey’s ascent and recognized an astute, prudent horseman. “Shug is knowledgeable about horses in a way that’s kind of magic,” John Ed Anthony, one of the owners for whom McGaughey used to train, told Sports Illustrated magazine.

That he has arrived seems above doubt. He won the Eclipse Award as the nation’s top trainer in 1988 and has heard his name lumped with those of Lukas, Stephens and Whittingham. His response is to lateral the credit. “You hope for one once-in-a-lifetime horse,” he said. “Personal Ensign was one. Now, Easy Goer is. I’m in awe of Easy Goer. I don’t know how he wound up in my barn, but he did.”

His Kentucky blood bubbles when he discusses what it would mean for Easy Goer to win. “No matter what happens the rest of my life,” he said, “it won’t be complete” without a Derby victory. Even if he doesn’t win, though, the Phipps’ stable of 2-year-olds is “the best I have ever seen,” he said. He will be back, assuredly. The little trainer is one of the big boys now. Was it all worth it? Must we ask?