MOTT THE HOOPLA

INDIANTOWN, Fla. — Far from the bougainvillea and swaying palms of Gulfstream Park, in the heart of the orange-grove country north of Miami, Favorite Trick has been training purposefully for a 3-year-old campaign like no other.

Here is the reigning horse of the year, undefeated in eight races, starting a possible Kentucky Derby season with a new trainer. Exit Patrick Byrne, enter Bill Mott.

Few trainers would walk away from a horse-of-the-year champion, but doing what he had to do, for perhaps as much as $500,000 a year in guaranteed front money, Byrne gave up Favorite Trick and the rest of a well-stocked stable to train for Frank Stronach, the moneybags Canadian industrialist who probably owns more horses than any other person in North America.

Joe LaCombe, the majority owner of Favorite Trick, waited a few days, then hired Mott, a trainer well grounded in horses of the year. In 1995 and 1996, Mott took a horse that couldn’t beat a camel running on grass in California, ignored his bloodlines and switched him to dirt. Cigar won the national title both years.

“You know,” someone suggested to Mott, “you had no place to go but up with Cigar, and you’ve got no place to go but down with Favorite Trick.”

“I guess that’s about right,” Mott said. “Or at least stay even with Favorite Trick.”

Mott was sitting in his barn office at Payson Park in Indiantown, a tranquil, commodious training center 90 miles removed from the hubbub of Gulfstream Park. Gulfstream will run two important races Saturday, the $750,000 Florida Derby for bona fide Kentucky Derby hopefuls and the shorter, cheaper Swale Stakes for 3-year-olds not as far along, such as Favorite Trick.

Mott likes the advantages of Payson, the property of former Sports Illustrated writer Virginia Kraft Payson. The farm accommodates 500 horses training in virtual privacy over a deep, forgiving one-mile dirt track and a lush seven-furlong grass oval.

The cost is pricey, as equine facilities go--$1,600 a horse per season--so the tab for Mott’s 74-horse outfit runs to more than $118,000 a year. Horsemen stabled at Gulfstream pay nothing, but Mott has sold the owners of his horses on Payson, and he has enough of a long-term commitment from them to start building a house for his family in nearby Plant City.

Around the first of the year, he and LaCombe first met in Mott’s Payson Park office and had a two-hour conversation that resulted in the hiring of Favorite Trick’s new trainer.

“There were a couple of factors I had to consider,” said Mott, who is likely to be voted into the Racing Hall of Fame later this year. “One, you’re taking something that’s already perfect, which subjects you to criticism if he doesn’t live up to what he’s already accomplished. Two, you’ll be forfeiting a lot of your time--as I did with Cigar--because of the interest the media will have in this horse.”

So did Mott actually consider turning down Favorite Trick?

“It was a no-brainer,” he said. “You just had to go ahead and accept the challenge.”

According to Byrne’s plan, outlined after Favorite Trick’s victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and before the trainer left LaCombe for Stronach, Favorite Trick would have already run one race this year. But Mott is not known as a rush-them-to-the-wars trainer, and Saturday’s Swale, at seven furlongs, will have to do as Favorite Trick’s season debut.

After that, Mott presumably will run the colt in the 1 1/8-mile Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland on April 11. After that, Everest perhaps: the 1 1/4-mile Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 2. A Derby hasn’t been won by a horse with only two preps as a 3-year-old since Sunny’s Halo in 1983.

There is no margin for error with this schedule. Just missing a workout or two along the way could derail the mission. But Mott, never known as a Derby guy--in 25 years he’s had one starter, the 13th-place Taylor’s Special, in 1984--isn’t married to the idea of getting Favorite Trick to Louisville. If it happens, fine. If it doesn’t, there’s always the shorter Preakness, two weeks later at Pimlico.

Byrne, talking Thursday from Hialeah, where Stronach’s first-string horses are stabled, complimented Mott as a horseman and wished him and Favorite Trick well. But racing isn’t as sentimental as all those old Walter Brennan movies would have you believe.

“I don’t have any horses in [the races at Gulfstream], so I don’t think I’ll be there Saturday,” Byrne said.

Favorite Trick’s original trainer was not invited by LaCombe to the horse-of-the-year dinner at Rancho Mirage last month, so indifference can be a two-way street.

Several weeks ago, there was a lively round of point and counterpoint after LaCombe suggested that Mott received an undertrained Kentucky Derby prospect when Byrne transferred the horse.

In defending himself, Byrne made this observation about Mott: “Every time he hears the D-word [for Derby], he breaks out in hives.”

Mott has taken the high road in addressing this jibe. A doctor friend sent him a gag prescription for “Derby hives,” and Mott keeps a copy at the ready, on a clipboard that hangs from a nail above his office desk.

“If Derby hives start coming on, take one of these daily,” the advice goes. “Then if thoughts of the whole Triple Crown occur, increase the dosage to two daily.”

Mott chuckles after reading the prescription. But then he returns to his serious side.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t run away from the Derby. “I’ve nominated three, four horses a lot of years, but I’ve just never had a young horse develop that could run in it. The only year I was there, I ran a horse whose [stamina pedigree] was so bad, they listed his number as infinity. But he won the Blue Grass, and I thought he belonged. Of course I’d like to go to the Derby. To think anything else would be ridiculous.”