Captain Cook, a mudder, may return Dutrow to Kentucky Derby

When it comes to wet, miserable weather, it seems that only farm crops, bird dogs and Jim Cantore want more. On Saturday at Aqueduct, add the names Captain Cook and Rick Dutrow.

“We have to find it very appealing towards our side, because he has proven over it,” Dutrow said. “That really sometimes makes a big difference.”

In his first race with Dutrow training him, Captain Cook cruised seven furlongs through the Aqueduct slop Dec. 28 and broke his maiden by 9 1/4 lengths. With up to a quarter-inch of rain beneath him Saturday, the Practical Joke colt hopes the slop becomes him again, this time in the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial.

A win or a second-place finish would guarantee Captain Cook of an invitation to Kentucky Derby 2025.

“I’m sorry for all the fans, but yes, I hope it pours Saturday, and he wins the right way,” Dutrow said in an interview this week for Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “And then I will be doing rain dances with everybody involved for it to rain Derby day, yes, sir.”

Among the 10 entrants still in the Wood, only Captain Cook, the 7-2 second choice on the morning line, and Omaha Omaha, a 30-1 long shot, have raced on wet tracks. Omaha Omaha won a muddy allowance race going 1 1/16 miles Nov. 28 at Laurel Park.

While Omaha Omaha has gone winless since, Captain Cook impressed in his 3-year-old debut by winning the listed, $250,000 Withers going the same 1 1/8 Big A miles as he will in the Wood. That 2 1/4-length score earned him a 94 Beyer Speed Figure, according to Daily Racing Form, progressing from the 83 he got for that splashy first victory.

Captain Cook also comes into the weekend off a two-month break. Just what the trainer ordered.

“I love the timing. It’s absolutely perfect,” Dutrow said. “After he won that two-turn (Withers) for us, you pick up a condition book, and you see what’s possibly next. The only thing that was next was the Wood. We didn’t want to back up to a mile in the Gotham (G3) running him back in 30 days and then running him back in another 30 days in the Wood. I’d rather have freshness on our side, and once they conquer the two turns, you want to kind of keep them doing that unless you find a really, really good reason why you don’t.”

Regular rider Manny Franco will be aboard in post 2. Morning-line favorite Rodríguez, a Bob Baffert shipper, will be next door with blinkers off in stall 1. Trainer Todd Pletcher goes with 2-for-2 Grande from the 7 hole, and Gotham runner-up Sand Devil breaks from post 5 for Linda Rice. All four figure to be forward early.

“It’s a tougher field than he’s ever faced,” Dutrow said. “Our horse has natural speed where he can lay close if asked, and our horse in his last race didn’t break so well, and he just kind of wound up chasing them, which he can do very well, too. So I can’t really come up with a plan. I think the best thing to do is for (Franco) to just play the break. We got a good draw inside to where we should be able to save some ground going around the first turn. It just depends on what these other horses do.”

Captain Cook, who is out of Indian Charlie mare Pow Wow Wow, was bred in Kentucky by the Marylou Whitney Stables. As a homebred trained by Norm Casse, he finished a troubled sixth in his six-furlong debut Oct. 27 at Churchill Downs. Less than three weeks later he was in the sales ring at Keeneland, where bloodstock agent Steven Young paid $410,000 to buy him for Vinnie Viola’s St. Elias Stable.

“(Viola) called me,” Dutrow said, “and he says, ‘Rick, there’s a horse named Captain Cook. I can’t think of a better person to send him to. He’s on his way to you.’ ”

Dutrow waited until that rainy day between Christmas and New Year’s Day to get Captain Cook racing again just as he has again with the two months between the Withers and the Wood.

“I don’t like running horses every 30 days,” he said. “When we had the white horse, we waited three months for the Breeders’ Cup Classic.”

That would be White Abarrio. Between his first and second stints with Saffie Joseph Jr., he landed with Dutrow long enough to win that 2023 Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita.

“I feel that the more time in between races for any horse out there is just working towards their advantage,” he said. “They’re just gaining steam, gaining more energy. They’re saving all of it for a long break, and then they’re ready to fire a bullet.”

Dutrow’s work with White Abarrio stamped his return from an unprecedented, 10-year suspension and $50,000 fine for repeat medication violations, most of which he steadfastly denied. And still does.

It has been almost exactly two years since Dutrow’s comeback, and Captain Cook has brought him to the verge of his first Kentucky Derby in 15 years. It was 17 years ago in his Derby debut when he guided Big Brown to an emphatic victory that was parlayed into a Preakness triumph.

Now 65, Dutrow has come back to a sport that continues to evolve or devolve, depending on the point of view. Horses race to breed even more than ever. Tracks continue to face economic peril and some looming closures. Ever-shrinking foal crops make it hard to fill races and even write them in condition books.

“Babe, I’ve got to tell you, I was not aware of so much that I am right now,” Dutrow said. “Right now I am aware that if you have a ($25,000, non-winners-of-three) horse, and the race comes up where it’s three weeks after they run, you know the owners, they call you, and they put pressure, because they lay this out there, saying, ‘Rick, you know if we pass this, they might not use the next (condition), and that would be what I would want, which would be like 35, 40 days in between, but we can’t wait around on that anymore, because the owners are more involved. They know what races are coming up. They know they don’t want to wait around all the time So you have to deal with that, and you just can’t sit there.”

Dutrow said this is especially true during winters at Aqueduct and Santa Anita, two tracks where he has done a good deal of business since his comeback.

“These places where they don’t have a whole lot of horses to support them in the winter, you’ve got to take what comes. You cannot sit there and map it out, because they’re not going to use your race once you’ve mapped it out, only because there’s a shortage of horses. So I think that you have to take what comes now as opposed to laying out big-time plans for the regular fellas and the regular girls.”

As he continues to rebuild his stable with those regular, non-stakes horses, Dutrow also has growing number of stakes candidates. He actually has two in the Wood. He said, however, he probably would scratch McAfee, the fifth-place finisher last month in the Gotham, if the Aqueduct main track is as sloppy as expected Saturday. He also said he would not run 5-2 second choice Masmak on a wet track in the listed, 1 1/4-mile Excelsior for older horses. In the Gazelle (G3), a qualifier for the Kentucky Oaks (G1), Dutrow said “we’re not going to get our hopes really up that high” for long shot Diriyah.

Dutrow was typically matter of fact in his conversation this week. He also sounded as enthusiastic as ever, even with the modern challenges of a game that is contracting, and even after his 10 years on ice.

“I’m a horse trainer, and right now I can train,” he said. “I freaking love it. I just love being a horse trainer.”