Preakness 2024: McPeek hopes Mystik Dan fulfills his TV dream

Baltimore

The mainstream sports world has gotten to know Kenny McPeek this week. It comes along with training the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

Before he flew in to attend to Mystik Dan’s preparations for Saturday’s running of Preakness 2024, he made an appearance at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., while practice rounds were going on for the PGA Championship.

He arrived Wednesday in Baltimore with his wife Sherri, his children and his 5-year-old yellow Labrador. Sonny wears a Preakness security credential around his neck and a calm, charismatic disposition that has made him a media darling this week.

McPeek has a long history of being friendly with reporters and photographers. With that he has one holy grail. For years he has wanted to be on “Pardon the Interruption,” the popular ESPN show featuring Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. He rarely misses it.

“The only problem with ‘PTI’ is they have no horse racing,” McPeek said. “It kills me. But we’ll see what we can do about that.”

He said that Thursday on the Tony Kornheiser Show, one of the most regularly downloaded podcasts in the sports spectrum. McPeek was the first Thoroughbred trainer to be a guest on that show.

The Kornheiser experience was the smart exception to the average interview. Still, McPeek was not unlike every Derby-winning connection who has gone through the carwash of media conversations during Preakness week.

There are repeated questions. And repeated answers. And only so many ways to review the three-way photo at Churchill Downs and Brian Hernandez Jr.’s brave ride and the decision process that led Mystik Dan back to race again just two weeks later and how he does not worry about the forecast of rain for Preakness day.

But McPeek also has some untold stories in his hip pocket. Like the one he told a few reporters who have known him a while. Familiar faces whom he knew were looking for something new. Something more than he was telling the all-star notes team of former journalists hired by 1/ST Racing to publicize the Preakness.

Talking about Mystik Dan’s disposition, McPeek said, “He’s just calm. Just nothing fazes him. He’s easy to be around. He’s bomb-proof.”

He contrasted the son of Goldencents against the daughter of Fast Anna who just won the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks for him. Thorpedo Anna, McPeek said, is more than a handful.

“The filly is the polar opposite,” he said. “She gets a little wound up about anything and everything.”

That was when McPeek dropped another nugget, so to speak. It was another way Mystik Dan makes life easier for him and his team.

“The funny thing about this horse is he poops in the same spot,” he said, trying and failing to hold back his infectious laugh. “He poops in the same spot every time. He finds a spot, and the groom says he literally has to clean one spot.”

Pressed into making an evaluation about Mystik Dan’s psychology and whether that is symptomatic of some greater mental talent, McPeek said he did not exactly have much of a, ahem, sample size to make any kind of comprehensive study.

“I’ve never seen a colt do that,” he said. “I’ve seen mares that feed in one spot, but never a colt that went in one spot. He’s very thoughtful. Smart.”

McPeek has his own smarts. Now 61, he has diversified his training career into horse ownership, an investment in his own equine-transportation fleet and the launch and eventual sale of the Horses Now app.

His organizational discipline is built around making lists, something the public became aware of right after Mystik Dan prevailed two weeks ago at Churchill Downs. His to-do list said win the Oaks and Derby. Now it says win the Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

Not that McPeek is looking past Saturday, because having long-range goals does not preclude taking ’em one race at a time. The fact that the Preakness comes only two weeks after the Derby brought McPeek back to his biggest disappointment with Mystik Dan.

It was Thanksgiving weekend, and Lance and Sharilyn Gasaway’s homebred colt was only 13 days removed from his maiden-breaking win at Churchill Downs. McPeek wheeled Mystik Dan right back, stretching him from 5 1/2 furlongs to a mile for an allowance race, again at Churchill. The ensuing fifth-place result as the 2-1 favorite was one of the first things McPeek mentioned when he took his time to decide on the Preakness.

The difference between then and now was not so much that Mystik Dan has done a lot of growing up between ages 2 and 3. The November situation was simpler than that.

“He wasn’t eating well coming in,” McPeek said. “He ate well for the first few days. And then (during) the week as we got closer to the race, he backed out of the tub, and I really started to scratch him. Between (assistant trainer) Greg Geier and my nightwatchman, we all powwowed and said, aw, he should be fine. In hindsight it was the wrong decision. But that’s water under the bridge, right? This horse is doing super coming into the race.”

The feed tub has not been a problem this week. With assistant Ray Bryner doing so much of the hands-on work since the horse trailer arrived Sunday, Mystik Dan has devoured his hay and oats. He has been eating so much of the grass thatch across the walkway from his stakes-barn stall, the mower may as well stay parked in a Pimlico garage.

Even with all the encomiums aimed at Mystik Dan for his attitude and appetite and the way he has trained this week, who really knows how he will do coming back so quickly from a grueling victory in the Kentucky Derby? He is bidding to become the first repeat winner of a Triple Crown race since Justify finished his Triple Crown in 2018. The last 17 U.S. classics have had 17 different winners, the longest no-repeat run since the 20 between 1923 and 1930.

The more than century-old challenge was not lost on Kornheiser. Back on that Thursday podcast, he brought it up to McPeek. Three classics in five weeks. Tradition or anachronism? Kornheiser proffered the analogy that modern horses are like a major-league pitchers, because they have longer gaps between starts.

In lay terms that were educating while not insulting the intelligence of seasoned players, McPeek mentioned Lasix and the time it took horses to recover from the dehydrating effects of it. But he preceded that with something that may have gotten lost between the cracks of forgotten races. Another rarely told story from his hip pocket.

“They started printing win percentages back in I want to say the late ’80s, ’90s,” McPeek said. “When they started printing trainer win percentage, the starts per horse per year dropped two points. That’s because trainers tended to be more conservative, because the wanted to keep their strike rate up. Strike rate’s really not the most important thing. I actually took zero effort, energy or concern in my strike rate. I’m more worried about the process of the horse.”

McPeek’s Derby victory completed his career Triple Crown. He won the 2002 Belmont Stakes with 70-1 long shot Sarava and the autumn 2020 Preakness with the filly Swiss Skydiver. Still, that dream of being on “Pardon the Interruption” remains unfulfilled. Kornheiser would love to make it come true, but he said Wilbon was a roadblock, especially while the NBA Playoffs were going on.

That could change if Mystik Dan strides triumphantly into the winner’s circle Saturday in the Preakness.

“Our hope is that you win, and you get a chance at the Triple Crown,” Kornheiser said, “And then maybe I can deliver Five Good Minutes on ‘PTI.’ I’ll just get rid of Wilbon and put (fill-in host) Frank Isola or Pablo (Torre) in that day and just go ahead and tell Wilbon that the NBA Finals have been moved to another country, and he has to leave.”

McPeek may be only 1 3/16 miles away from Five Good Minutes. And perhaps three good weeks to promote horse racing to an even wider audience.