People’s Horse for the People’s Race

The owners of her main rivals in the Kentucky Derby are men whose net worth is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, but Shelley Riley isn’t intimidated to find herself in such company. Actually, she feels pretty rich herself since Casual Lies -- a colt she bought for $7,500 -- has developed into one of the country’s leading 3 year olds.

“You know what we’ve bought with all our money?” Riley asked. “We bought a new garage door. And I went out and bought a new car -- a red BMW 735i. I feel a little guilty about it. I’m so ostentatious when I drive into the stable area.”

Even if the car is a bit flashy, it is doubtful that other horsemen at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, Calif., would resent Riley’s sudden success. Like most of the people on this level of the sport, Riley and her husband, Jim, have scuffled to make a living in any way they could. The horses they have owned have invariably been cheapies. But like everybody else at the Alameda County Fairgrounds and places like it, they have been partly sustained by the dream of the “big horse” -- the one exceptional animal who could change their lives.

Casual Lies offers proof that such a dream can, in fact, come true. Despite his humble origins, the colt has won three stakes in Northern California, finished a close third in the Santa Anita Derby, and amassed earnings of $445,000. He comes to the Kentucky Derby as a well-regarded contender.

Until Casual Lies started winning races, Riley had earned her livelihood principally by breaking young horses for clients who would either race them or put them into sales. She would also train a few horses for small-time owners -- “people who couldn’t afford the big boys” -- and she might own a couple herself. Jim, who had been a jockey for 14 years, exercised Shelley’s horses in the morning, then worked for the rest of the day as a blacksmith.

The Rileys’ development of young horses had been esteemed by their clients, and Shelley proposed to her husband, “Why don’t we do this for ourselves as another way to make ends meet?” She became what is known in the racing business as a pinhooker: She would buy a young horse at a sale and try to sell him at a profit at another sale. She would look for well-conformed horses nobody wanted because they were still a bit immature or undeveloped. (Her theory: “Horses do the most amazing thing: they grow.”)

Riley’s successes were ones that high-stakes pinhookers would consider modest; in her best transaction, she bought a filly for $7,200 and later sold her for $26,500. But as the commercial-breeding business took a downturn, pinhooking got riskier. In early 1991 Riley bought a yearling son of the stallion Lear Fan in a Kentucky sale for $7,500, and a year later took him to a sale of 2 year olds. She recalled: “The horse would be standing there and I’d ask buyers, ‘Would you like to see him?’ and they’d say, ‘No!’ I couldn’t take the rejection.”

Riley wound up stuck with the horse, but she didn’t mind, for she felt strongly that this was a horse with promise. “When you break horses for a living, you recognize things in babies from the very beginning,” she said. “You can see the good movers and the bad movers. This colt always had a daisy-cutter motion, and he had a presence about him -- a real explosive nature.”

Casual Lies started out running at the Santa Rosa Fair, but proved himself a solid stakes horse by the end of his 2-year-old season. He won the $300,000 El Camino Real Derby at Bay Meadows this year, then got the chance to prove his class when he went south for the Grade I Santa Anita Derby.

Even though he didn’t win, his finish -- just two lengths behind highly regarded A.P. Indy -- proved his legitimacy and earned him a trip to Churchill Downs.

The colt suffered a setback since coming here, when he ate the shavings in his stall that are supposed to be his bedding and got so sick that Riley said “his stomach sounded like a washing machine.” But he is recovering.

The trainer is optimistic that the colt will be in peak condition Saturday, and she is confident about his chances, but she is realistic about one thing. In contrast to the tycoons and sheiks who may get many shots to win the Kentucky Derby, Riley knows it is a rare stroke of luck for anyone like her to have a Derby contender.

“This,” she recognized, “is our first and last chance.”