Instead of team roping, Briley will be in Kentucky Derby 2025

Louisville, Ky.

Coal Battle has taken Lonnie Briley where he never has been before in his 72 years. To a graded stakes. To the winner’s circle in a graded stakes. And to Kentucky Derby 2025.

It goes beyond Briley never training a Derby horse before. For him the run for the roses was something to be experienced not in person but on television. If Coal Battle had not won three points preps, including the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes, then Briley would be somewhere else May 3.

Gauging the odds for Kentucky Derby 2025.

“I’d probably be at a team roping,” he told a gaggle of reporters and photographers outside barn 42 at Churchill Downs after Coal Battle breezed Tuesday morning. “Me and my grandson, we like to rope. I’m being honest, but yeah, I’d be a-ropin’ in Oklahoma, probably. I had a buddy who called me the other day. He went a-ropin’. It paid him $120,000.”

Instead, the man who calls the tiny village Washington, La., home will have to be content competing for a piece of the $5 million at Churchill Downs, where the winner gets $3.1 million. Briley’s share would be $310,000. Second place is worth $1 million with a mere $100,000 going to the trainer. Not quite what Briley would call “headin’ and healin’ ” money.

“Never,” he said when he was asked if the Kentucky Derby was a career goal. “I watched it on TV, but I never thought I’d have a horse of that quality to run in the Derby.”

That 3-year-old Coal Front colt who cost Robbie Norman $70,000 at a Texas yearling sale drilled a half-mile on the fast main track in 47.8 seconds Tuesday. According to track clockers, his splits were 12.4 and 24.6 with a gallop out to 1:00.8 for five furlongs. Ridden by assistant trainer Bethany Taylor, Coal Battle turned in his third consecutive Tuesday breeze at Churchill. He went a half-mile in 48.4 seconds two weeks ago and five furlongs in 1:01.2 last Tuesday.

“It’s his best work since he’s here,” Briley said. “Every time we worked him, he’s gotten better. He has one more little prep work (next week) before the Derby. He come back good. He never drinks water. He always protects himself. I can tell Bethany to go 1:01, and he’ll go 1:02 and come back bucking and squealing like, ‘ha-ha,’ you know? He always takes care of himself. You’re not going to send him out there and gut him out.”

Briley might have been excused if he squealed himself Tuesday. After working another horse and then getting immersed in a conversation with a couple owners, he literally was taken aback when he came through his barn to find a phalanx of cameras and media types waiting for him on the other side.

“The paparazzi’s crazy,” he said with the proverbial deadpan. “But no. It’s good.”

Aside from the pleasantries about his 34-year training career, there were questions about whether Coal Battle might already have peaked after his five-race winning streak was snapped March 29 with a third-place finish in the Arkansas Derby (G1). At the time, the Kentucky Derby invitation was a certainty. Briley believes it was more about the crowd in Hot Springs.

“He was fresh that day for some reason,” Briley said. “They had a lot of people in the paddock. At Oaklawn the paddock is kind of condensed. They were yelling and stuff. He kind of got on the muscle, and then I had to put the over gird on the walk. So I told (jockey Juan) Vargas he’s going to be a little fresh coming out of the gates. Usually he always breaks good, and you can kind of grab him and place him where you want him, and he broke running.”

Coal Battle was not running as fast, though, as Cornucopian and Speed King, who established withering splits of 22.46, 45.21 and 1:10.37 for the first six furlongs of the 1 1/8 miles. But Briley thought the race set up well for Coal Battle.

“When they started backing up, my rider got a little nervous, and he punched the button too soon. They were coming back to him, so he went on. But Mr. Mark Casse had told his jockey (José Ortiz) to just stalk Coal Battle, and don’t move (Sandman) until he moves. If Vargas had waited until the five-sixteenths pole, he has such a quick turn of foot that I think it would’ve been catch-up. They’d have had to catch him.”

The crowd will be maybe three times as big at Churchill Downs next week, so Briley hopes Coal Battle will not be as wound up on Derby day as he was at Oaklawn.

“We went to the paddock yesterday, and we worked today,” he said. “We’ll go to the paddock the next two days for sure. The way they have it set up, all them horses meet right outside the gates and then walk up and then go to the eighth pole and everybody go in the paddock. That’s asking a lot of a horse. But it’s what it is. Hopefully he’ll be OK, but I won’t know until the day.”

Briley’s charm belied his inexperience with the ever-growing media numbers on the Churchill Downs backside. As he stood in the springtime sunshine while wearing a baseball cap, plaid work shirt and blue jeans, he saw right through a reporter’s question about what he would wear on Derby day.

“I’ve got some short pants,” he said. “Let me turn my hat backwards.”

Asked about where he would like to be drawn Saturday when entries are taken for the 20-horse field, Briley was more than ready.

“I’m thinking between the 8 and the 11, somewhere in there,” he said, “because my horse has enough of a quick turn of foot, I can come over and get in position. The 1 hole, everybody’s coming over. And the 20 hole, that’s too far out. I might as well go the other way.”

And if Coal Battle were to defy 30-1 Las Vegas futures odds and win the 151st running of the Kentucky Derby?

“I’d probably cut across the field,” Briley said laughing, “so I can dodge a lot of people.”