See how family built Asmussen’s record-breaking résumé

Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen could not have asked for a sweeter scenario than the one Saturday at Saratoga that allowed him to surpass Dale Baird as North America’s leading trainer with 9,446 victories.

With his wife, Julie, and their three sons, Keith, Darren and Eric, cheering wildly at his side, Asmussen watched debuting Stellar Tap, a colt co-owned by long-time supporter Winchell Thoroughbreds and guided by go-to rider Ricardo Santana Jr., easily provide the milestone triumph he had sought for so long in the seven-furlong, $100,000 fifth race.

It only added to Asmussen’s jubilation that his parents, Keith and Marilyn, helped to develop the gray-roan Tapit colt at their farm in Laredo, Texas.

[RELATED: Timeline of Asmussen’s record-breaking career]

“To be surrounded by people you love and who love you and have a common goal, it’s impossible to put into words what horse racing means to me and my whole family,” said Asmussen, 55. “All of the employees, they are family and they know so.”

Asmussen was born into racing. His father is a retired jockey. His mother gained the distinction of becoming the first female trainer to win a major quarter-horse race when Vespero captured the Kansas Futurity in 1978. His parents still operate the Asmussen Horse Center and the El Primero Training Center in Laredo, Texas.

“I’m very proud of where I came from and don’t ever want to forget it,” Asmussen said. “I think it makes you who you are.”

The goal-oriented conditioner still has much to inspire him to arrive at the barn before dawn. He has been steadily closing ground on Juan Suárez Villarroel of Peru, who ranks as the world leader. According to the web site Pagina de Turf, Suárez Villarroel owned 9,882 victories through Friday.

Then there is the weighty matter of the Kentucky Derby. Although Asmussen is a two-time winner of the Eclipse Award as the leading trainer in North America and has trained the Horse of the Year on four occasions, he is 0-for-23 in what is usually the opening leg of the Triple Crown. When asked about how much it would mean to attain that last missing piece, he said before this year’s Preakness, “It is the bucket list.”

Considering how far Asmussen has come, it seems there is nothing he cannot attain once he sets his mind to it. Consider that his first winner, Victory’s Halo at New Mexico’s Ruidoso Downs in 1986, marked his only success with 15 runners in a year that brought a meager $2,324 in earnings.

He earned his first graded-stakes win when Valid Expectations took the Derby Trial Stakes (G3) at Churchill Downs in the spring of 1996. He and Julie were so unfamiliar with the layout at famed Churchill Downs that they did not know how to reach the winner’s circle. Now, no trainer has won more often beneath the Twin Spires.

Asmussen gradually built a far-flung operation that includes horses of all levels of ability that run at tracks big and small. He set the single-season record with 650 victories in 2009, the same year he received the great Rachel Alexandra arrived at his barn shortly before the Preakness and became the fifth filly to win what is now the middle jewel of the Triple Crown.

Given Asmussen’s willingness to work with horses at all levels, it was perhaps fitting that a victory with Shanghai Dream in a six-furlong, $19,500 race on Friday at Ellis Park allowed Asmussen to draw even with Baird, a West Virginia-based trainer whose career stretched from 1961 until he died in an automobile accident in 2007.

Once Shanghai Dream stormed from last to first, middle son Darren Scott (named to honor top assistants Darren Fleming and Scott Blasi) knew what he had to do. He immediately left Missouri, where he had been working as a camp counselor, to make an eight-hour drive to Dallas. He slept for 2 1/2 hours before arriving at the airport at 4:30 a.m. CDT to catch the first flight to New York.

Darren’s determination to be there for his father illustrated the strength of their family bonds.

“As long as I can remember, this is what he’s been going for,” Darren said. “He’s always told me, ‘You don’t aspire to be second.’ It was a big deal. Just getting to witness first hand like what it takes to be the best at what you do, it’s been incredible. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”