They Went Down a Road Less Traveled

One of the many messages on Jenine Sahadi’s answering machine the night of the Santa Anita Derby was a congratulatory call from Patti Johnson.

“How sweet of Patti,” said Sahadi, the first female trainer to win the Santa Anita race. “That was very nice of her.”

Sahadi won at Santa Anita on April 8 with The Deputy, the same Irish-bred colt who’ll try for another landmark victory in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. Not many women trainers have started a horse in the Derby, and none has won it.

“How many are there, nine?” Sahadi said at her Churchill Downs barn.

She’s as coy as they come. Sahadi had looked it up, of course, and there are exactly nine women trainers who have run horses in the Derby.

Patti Johnson finished fourth with Fast Account in the 1985 Derby, finding it more than slightly ridiculous that her colt, nosed out by Skywalker in the Santa Anita Derby, would have been sent off at 92-1 in the Kentucky Derby. Skipping the Preakness, Fast Account was fourth in the Belmont Stakes, at 10-1 odds that made more sense.

Another of them, Dianne Carpenter, has been to the Derby twice, finishing 12th with Biloxi Indian (third at the quarter pole before fading) in 1984 and 14th with Kingpost in 1988.

Shelley Riley, who ran second with Casual Lies in the 1992 Derby, the best finish by a woman here, was on the phone Tuesday from Pleasanton, Calif., with a social note: She and Mark Ashley, an Englishman who works in information technology, were married Sunday in South Lake Tahoe. Jim Riley, the trainer’s former husband, had been Casual Lies’ exercise rider during the 1992 Triple Crown. Shelley Riley is the only woman to have taken a horse through the entire series, finishing third in the Preakness and fifth in the Belmont with Casual Lies.

Although Riley has been living in England in recent years, and returned just before her wedding day, she was current with the Sahadi-Bob Baffert brouhaha at the post-position draw two days before this year’s Santa Anita Derby. Baffert wisecracked about whether Sahadi was the real trainer of The Deputy, and Sahadi, steam rising from her forehead, dropped a microphone and stormed off the stage.

“Remember what I did at the Santa Anita Derby draw in ‘92?” Riley asked. “I didn’t even go up there with the other trainers. You can get in a lot of trouble that way. I sat in the back someplace and just ate my breakfast. That was the better part of valor.”

Asked if she was pulling for Sahadi and The Deputy on Saturday, Riley said, “Of course. I hope she goes in there and beats all those hardboots.”

A month before his Kentucky Derby, Casual Lies ran third in the Santa Anita Derby, behind A.P. Indy and Bertrando. A.P. Indy, scratched from the Kentucky Derby because of a bruised foot, was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame on Tuesday.

“My best Triple Crown experience was finishing second in the Derby,” Riley said. “My worst Triple Crown experience was finishing second in the Derby.”

The 1992 Derby was a pratfall for all the favorites. The odds on the first seven finishers were 16-1, 29-1, 33-1, 21-1, 10-1, 33-1 and 20-1 before you came to the seventh-place Arazi, favored at 9-10. Casual Lies, ridden by Gary Stevens, led at the eighth pole before Lil E. Tee beat him by a length.

“I’ve watched the tape a few times, but not any more and not lately,” Riley said. “It’s really a very painful thing, even after all these years. Living it, that stretch run was a physical as well as an emotional feeling. You live with the what-ifs and if-onlys the rest of your life.”

Several years later, Riley was out of racing.

“It was a very complicated thing, something I’d rather not get into,” she said. “Jim and I went our separate ways. I sold Stanley [Casual Lies’ nickname] as a stallion to New Zealand interests. He’s still standing down there, and has sired a Grade I winner. I had some breeding shares, but I’ve sold them. I don’t own any horses.”

It says something about the narrow window for women in the sport when you consider that Carpenter and Riley are out of the game and Johnson seldom runs horses in her own name in California anymore. Johnson’s main job in recent years was as an exercise rider and assistant to the late Willard Proctor.

Akiko Gothard, who saddled K One King for an eighth-place finish in last year’s Derby, said that female trainers face what amounts to a stacked deck.

“If something goes wrong--a horse gets hurt, or doesn’t run well, you’ll hear, ‘Well, that’s a woman trainer for you,’ ” she said. “But if the same thing happens to Mr. Baffert or Mr. [Wayne] Lukas, nothing is said and their business doesn’t suffer.”

Gothard, a Tokyo native who has lived in the U.S. for more than 40 years, has developed K One King into one of the best older horses in the country. He won the Oaklawn Handicap in his last start and will run in the Pimlico Special on May 13.

Carpenter is an instructor in the Department of Education of Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss. She left racing in 1993.

“I left for physical reasons,” Carpenter said. “I got on a lot of my horses, and it took its toll. I had injured my back, legs and arms, and rather than undergo a back operation, I just quit.”

In the 1980s, she said, there were far fewer female trainers than there are now. A former prom queen, she flew into Arkansas one night, and went directly to Oaklawn Park to check on a horse.

“Women aren’t allowed back here after 9 p.m.,” a security guard in coveralls told her at the stable gate. “And you sure don’t look like a trainer.”

“And you sure don’t look like a security guard,” said Carpenter, who finally talked her way in.”

Before Carpenter and Biloxi Indian in 1984, a woman hadn’t saddled a Derby starter in 19 years, when Mary Keim had a sixth-place finisher with Mr. Pak.

The first female trainer to run a horse in the Derby was Mary Hirsch, who was 13th with No Sir in 1937. She was the daughter of the renowned Max Hirsch, three-time Derby winner.

Since Riley, the only women who have saddled Derby horses in the 1990s are Cynthia Reese, 15th with In Contention in 1996; Kathy Walsh, seventh with Hanuman Highway in 1998, and Gothard last year.

Walsh, based in Southern California, said that she didn’t increase her business after going to the Derby, but this was more by choice.

“I’m not a high-profile trainer, and have no desire to be,” she said. “I’m comfortable with a barn of between 16 and 20 horses, because I think I have more control over them with that number. I think the woman issue is overplayed. One time it was a big thing, but there are a lot of women out there winning stakes races now.”

Gothard, interested in expanding her barn, disagrees.

“Since I ran in the Derby, I picked up two horses, and they’re both owned by Allen and Madeline Paulson, who bought K One King,” she said. “Generally speaking, you can sense that people might not have as much confidence in you because you’re a woman. And that comes from the owners all the way down to the jockeys.”