LOUISVILLE, Ky. — We had all been here before. Six years ago, on a Churchill Downs racing surface the consistency of peanut butter and under skies the color of slate, we watched trainer Bill Mott walk triumphantly through the mud and into the Kentucky Derby winner’s circle. Saturday night, on another raw and foggy day, here came Mott again, across the sticky slop once again, on top of the racing world.
And yet these two triumphs were markedly different experiences.
In 2019, Mott’s victory with 65–1 bomb shot Country House was both wildly improbable and wildly controversial. It came after a 23-minute wait as racing stewards studied video of the race and disqualified the apparent winner, Maximum Security, for interference with other runners. No Derby victory is a bad victory, and Mott is unapologetic about that first one. Asked in April what he tells people who ask whether he’s ever won a Derby, Mott’s answer was “You’re damn right I did.” Still, that one was a little hollow, coming by way of the only in-race DQ in the 151-year history of America’s oldest continuous sporting event. And although no one knew it at the time, Country House’s career ended right then and there; illness and injury prevented him from ever running again.
Saturday night, Mott’s colt crossed under the wire first. The roars were all for Sovereignty—no doubt and no debate. The 7–1 third choice, benefiting from a predictably stout early pace that set up the race for his closing surge, rolled powerfully past favored Journalism in the stretch to win by 1 1/2 lengths. It was the first Derby victory for Godolphin, the massive international racing entity that is powered by Arab money and ambition and finally fulfilled a decades-long quest. It was the first Derby victory for jockey Junior Alvarado, who came back from a fractured shoulder blade suffered in a spill in March, and piloted Sovereignty with patience and confidence. It was the record-tying third Derby victory by the progeny of red-hot sire Into Mischief, who also fathered 2020 winner Authentic and ’21 winner Mandaloun.
But most strikingly it was the second victory for the 71-year-old Mott, a Hall of Fame conditioner who is widely regarded as one of the ultimate horsemen in the sport. He deserved the 2019 Derby, but he also deserved the immediate thrill of victory this time around.
“This is better,” Mott acknowledged Saturday night.
This time, there was no interminable wait. This time, as the human wave of celebration cascaded immediately out of the Churchill grandstand and toward the winner’s circle, Mott could grab his 33-year-old son, Riley, in a hug that sent tears spilling out of the stoic father’s eyes. Riley Mott spent his entire upbringing learning the training business from his father and ventured out on his own three years ago—he won the third race at Churchill Downs Friday, making this the ultimate racing weekend for the family.
“I think he might have been just as excited yesterday (when the younger Mott’s horse won) as he was today,” Riley Mott said.
For Bill Mott, this is the apex of a career he really could never have envisioned as a young kid growing up in South Dakota. He listened to his first Kentucky Derby in 1967, on an AM radio in a GMC pickup with a horse trailer hitched to the back in Fort Pierce, S.D. Proud Clarion won that day, and while Mott was already bitten by the racing bug, his world was too small to foresee where it would take him.
“Never dreamed that I’d ever come to Kentucky,” Mott said. “I never imagined even being at Churchill Downs.”
He got here just 13 years later, stabling horses at Churchill and quickly becoming a strong presence in the Kentucky racing circuit. Mott regularly won meet training titles, and at one point was the all-time winningest trainer in Churchill history.
Mott trained one of the all-time great thoroughbreds in the 1990s, Cigar, in his 4-year-old and 5-year-old seasons. Cigar won 16 straight races in one stretch under Mott, one of the most dominant runs in racing history. But to casual racing fans, the world revolves around the Triple Crown races, and Mott didn’t win any of those until capturing the Belmont in 2010. Thus he was probably underappreciated until he started winning the biggest race of them all.
While Country House was a flukish Derby winner nobody saw coming, Sovereignty’s career unfolded pretty much like clockwork. The Godolphin homebred won a Grade III stakes race last fall at Churchill in his third career start, then backed it up with a victory in the Fountain of Youth Stakes in Florida on March 1—a major stop on the Derby trail. Even his second-place finish in the Florida Derby did nothing to dampen the belief that Sovereignty had what it took to be a major player on the first Saturday in May.
His pedigree assured that he was bred to run the 1 1/4 miles, and his closing style is a good fit as the Derby pace has become gradually quicker in recent years. Sovereignty came to Louisville as a prime contender, then looked splendid on the track every morning. After his penultimate major gallop, the understated Mott tipped his hand to the Godolphin execs, “This was a serious racehorse work.”
The Mott training routine rarely varies with his Derby horses. He will accompany them to the track on horseback, then instruct his exercise rider to bring the colt to a stop for a brief surveying of the scene before commencing with the morning work. Mott will back his pony up against the backstretch railing and take it all in.
If Bob Baffert is the glib jokester of the sport and D. Wayne Lukas is the most opinionated, Bill Mott is the buttoned-down supporting actor. But he’s never lacked for confidence in himself or his horses, Sovereignty prominently included.
“To win these type of races, you can’t have many hiccups in your training schedule or the way the horse is doing,” Mott said. “When it goes that smoothly and you know you’ve got a talented horse that’s capable of probably winning a race like this, it gives you a lot of confidence.
“I always respect the competition. And I really believe this was a very good field of Derby horses. I watched them all train all week, and there were some really nice-moving horses in here.”
Journalism was chief among those. Coming off four consecutive victories in California, he was the deserving favorite.
“We knew what Journalism did out in California,” Godolphin’s Michael Banahan said. “It was one of those great, traditional East vs. West type of races.”
With Journalism possessing more natural speed, the race set up for Sovereignty to track him into the latter stages before unleashing his closing run. Citizen Bull set the early pace with Journalism running in mid-pack and Sovereignty unhurried near the back. He had just three horses beaten through the first half mile, then briefly dropped back to 17th in the 19-horse field with half a mile to run.
That was perfectly fine with Alvarado and Mott. Alvarado did the important work early by maneuvering Sovereignty from an outside post to the rail in short order, and stayed there through the backstretch.
“You’re not going to be wide on both turns and win these type of races,” Mott said.
When Journalism started to surge forward, so did Sovereignty. They made what was a classic Churchill “track kitchen” move—launching their five-furlong drive near the backside kitchen that is outside the rail near the top of the far turn.
“That’s when he kind of was saying to me, ‘Listen, I’m ready,’ “ Alvarado said.
With a quarter mile to go, Journalism had clear sailing outside of the tiring leaders. But so did Sovereignty, who loomed along Journalism’s right flank. At that point it was clear that the better closer would move into the lead, and everyone else was too far back.
With 14–1 Baeza finishing third, this was the long-awaited return to normalcy for a race that has been filled with strange outcomes in recent years. The last three Derby winners have never won another race, running their record of futility to 0-for-14 when 2024 champion Mystik Dan lost a stakes race at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas Saturday.
Sovereignty seems like a strong candidate to break that streak, although nobody was committing him to the Preakness for the second leg of the Triple Crown Saturday night. Mott isn’t a huge fan of running horses back in just two weeks, preferring to point his 3-year-olds toward the Belmont in June, but it would be bad for the sport if Sovereignty skipped out on a Triple Crown bid.
That will be decided in the coming days. For now, the trainer can revel in another joyous mud bath on the first Saturday in May. Gray Derby days and gray-haired Bill Mott just seem to go together.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Sovereignty Trainer Bill Mott Relishes Second Kentucky Derby Triumph.