Motion hones in on Sam F. Davis Stakes with wide-ranging barn

Even in the dead of winter, spring seems tantalizingly close to racing fans when they are reminded the 2019 Kentucky Derby is only 15 weeks away.

Trainer H. Graham Motion knows the road to Churchill Downs and the first Saturday in May is strewn with pitfalls. He also knows how to get there and win, as he proved in 2011 with Animal Kingdom, who made only four starts before capturing the Run for the Roses.

So Motion is quick to dismiss any talk that the Grade 3, $250,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes on Feb. 9 at Tampa Bay Downs might be too early to test his 3-year-old colt Still Dreaming, who broke his maiden on Jan. 1 at Laurel Park going a mile in his second career start. Owned by West Point Thoroughbreds and Chris Larsen, Still Dreaming is a half-brother to 2016 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist. 

“We’re very high on him. There is a very small window between now and the first week in May, and we have to find it,” Motion said.

The Sam F. Davis is a Road to the Kentucky Derby points race.

Picking the right spots at the right times seems like second nature for Motion, who earned the Salt Rock Tavern Trainer of the Month Award at Tampa Bay Downs after sending out five winners in recent weeks.

The Fair Hill, Md., resident has won 2,359 races in his career, but if you threw out all his victories except the stakes he has won at Tampa Bay Downs, he still would reside in the top echelon of active conditioners.

Motion won the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby in 2014 with Ring Weekend, 12 years after he saddled Equality to win the same race as a Grade 3 event. In 2014, he took the Grade 3 Hillsborough and the Grade 3 Endeavour, both on the turf, with the 5-year-old mare Cloud Scapes.

He also won the Endeavour with Silver Reunion in 2011 and that year’s Florida Oaks (now a Grade 3 event) with Dynamic Holiday. Last season, Motion won the Sandpiper and Gasparilla Stakes with Almond Roca, who competes Saturday in the $50,000 Wayward Lass Stakes.

Truth be told, Motion piles up graded-stakes victories like some kids used to collect marbles or baseball cards. In the last five years, he has a staggering 69 graded-stakes victories, including 12 Grade 1s.

While based at Fair Hill, Motion considers Tampa Bay Downs an integral part of his success.

“I like Tampa’s program and the consistency of the racetracks, both the main track and the turf,” he said. “It’s a good option for getting horses started.”

Two of his recent victories here came with homebreds owned by major client Isabelle de Tomaso, the breeder-owner of Motion’s since-retired Irish War Cry, a multiple graded-stakes winning millionaire and the 2017 Belmont Stakes runner-up to Tapwrit. One was Irish Strait, a half-brother to Irish War Cry.

Motion, who also maintains strings at Gulfstream Park and Laurel while targeting major races on both coasts and everywhere in between, credits his assistants and staff with ensuring his horses are primed to perform to their utmost. He spends most of his time at his Fair Hill home, which is only a mile from the training center.

“You’re only as good as your owners and your employees, and I’m fortunate to have very good assistants. I couldn’t be spread out like I am if I didn’t have confidence in them,” Motion said. His Tampa Bay Downs assistant, Cat McGee, has been with him for almost seven years and runs his barn at Fair Hill during the summer.

“She is very loyal and committed, and I’m lucky to have her,” Motion said.

Also with McGee here is the Motion-trained sophomore filly Her Royal Highness, who will be prepared for the Feb. 9, $150,000 Suncoast Stakes, a Road to the Kentucky Oaks points race.