Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Updated: August 3, 1:17 PM ET
Asmussen finds strength in numbers
By Bill Finley
Special to ESPN.com
It would be easy to dismiss Steve Asmussen's success as a matter of strength in numbers. Even he admits that it's not hard to win a lot of races when you have 154 horses at your disposal and most have some ability. But that would be to underestimate what Asmussen has done this year. Plenty of people have operated large operations. Never has anyone done it quite as well as this.
Asmussen may not have the name recognition of a Wayne Lukas, the depth of talent in his barn that Bobby Frankel does or a superstar to train like John Servis. But, by the time 2004 is over, he will have likely completed a historic season that will put his name in the record books and make him a worthy candidate for an Eclipse Award. Asmussen is on pace to become the first trainer in history to break the 500-win barrier for a single year.
Through July 18, he had won 317 races, which puts him on pace to win 580 this year. If so, that would shatter the record of 496 set by Jack Van Berg in 1976. His earnings are $8 million, second only to Servis' $8.2 million, which includes Smarty Jones' $5 million bonus payment from Oaklawn Park.
Asmussen, from a prominent racing family, started out professionally as a jockey, hoping to emulate the success enjoyed by his older brother, Cash. But he rode few winners and soon grew too big to continue. By 1986, he had switched over to training and, in time, built up one of the nation's top stables.
Asmussen set a personal record in 2003 when his stable won 452 races, but he figured he could do even better this year. He had the right horses, the right assistants and the right philosophy. With him, it's never been a matter of getting too fancy. He runs a lot of horses and runs them where they belong. This year, he has won with 25 percent of his starters, a career best.
"I don't know if I'm any more motivated than anyone else," he said. "If anybody had the horses that I have they would expect to win those races. We try to put them in against horses they can beat and get the most out of them at the same time. I still think of the ones that I can't believe we didn't win."
Of course, it's a little more difficult than that. In order to be successful, Asmussen must oversee a huge operation that races at most of the top tracks in the Midwest and will have 26 horses at the upcoming Saratoga meet. Already this year, he has been first or second in the standings at Churchill Downs, the Fair Grounds, Lone Star, Keeneland, Oaklawn and Retama Park. He has good horses (Lunarpal, Lady Tak) and not-so-good horses (139 of his winners this year have been claimers).
"The lesser caliber of horses have helped me a great deal," he said. "I like having those kind of horses to train and race and I like them as tools in the morning for my good horses. I don't feel that we could get some of the races we get out of some of our better horses if the lesser horses weren't accessible to use against them in the morning."
Somehow, he makes it manageable.
"I feel within myself," he said. "I've got some outstanding assistants, obviously. I feel calling them assistants doesn't give them the respect they deserve. We're all working toward the same thing. What we're trying to do is to place horses where they belong at the right level. We're just trying to make the most of what we have."
He says he's getting better all the time, learning from his mistakes while fine-tuning his operation. It's pretty obvious he doesn't like to lose.
"I think we're getting more efficient," he said. "The reason that I thought 500 would be possible this year was that we won 452 last year and all I could think of was all the races we should have won that we didn't. I have had a lot of misses this year, as well. When you write it down, I'm aware of what a great number (his 2004 win total) this is and how nice it is. But with the opportunity we have been given we can do even better than this. Who says that I'm always going to have this kind of opportunity? I can win more than we're winning right now."
That's hard to imagine. For now, the goal is to win 500 races, something that is remarkable, something that is well within his reach.
