Trainer Pederson basking in his hot summer at Del Mar
DEL MAR » The late American singer Jerry Reed, in a hit song released in 1971, told us: “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot.”
Jockey Irad Ortiz
Jr. knew the feeling Tuesday when he rode six horses at Colonial Downs in Virginia, won with five of them and finished second on the other. Ortiz was hot.
Trainer Dean Pederson has experienced the same feeling this summer at Del Mar, bringing 10 horses to the seaside track and winning eight of 12 races for an extraordinary 67% win rate. That’s unfathomable in horse racing.
Pederson wasn’t just hot, he’s been white hot.
“We had good horses that were in good spots and they did their part,” Pederson said as he prepared to head back north to Santa Anita and Los Alamitos. “You look back at the winners we had, most of them were 3-1 or less.”
There was one big price — Fashionably Fast, a 7-year-old gelding who’s been good to Pederson, won at the juicy odds of
15-1 on Aug. 27.
“He’s kept a roof over my head the last three or four years,” said Pederson, who refers to the Cal-bred son of Lucky Pulpit as “our old war horse.”
The 60-year-old Pederson, who took out his trainer’s license in 1985, started on the Northern California circuit and moved to Southern California in 2011. He was surprised Fashionably Fast went postward at such a generous price.
“That was kind of an insult for him to be 15-1,” Pederson said. “He looked over at the tote board and took it personal. He just stepped up. He’s always been a horse the last couple of years that’s done well down here. The weather agrees with him. He stepped up to the plate. It wasn’t that he’d been running bad races, he just hadn’t been winning.”
Although a trainer would love to have a stable full of horses that give their best every time like Fashionably Fast, Pederson takes what he can get.
“I just appreciate the one I have,” he said.
Pederson is quick to acknowledge that a measure of luck has played a part in his huge meet. A horse can be spotted in the right race, ready to run its heart out, and they don’t always find the winner’s circle.
“We win photos that just ... when things are going good, you win ’em,” he said of photo finishes. “When you’re not going good, you get the wrong bob of the head. The horse draws a good post. Anything and everything that could go right, has gone right for the last seven weeks. Talk to any trainer and they’ve been on the flip side, when things aren’t going good, you lose the photo. You draw the one hole.
“There’s so many things that go into what we do and what can alter the outcome that people don’t understand. It’s a game of ups and downs. We win these races down here, which I am thankful for, but now you go into Santa Anita and you have horses that have to move up a level because of the conditions they’ve lost. The water gets a little deeper when you’ve gotta do that. But that doesn’t take anything away from what we did this meet.”
While Pederson has taken a cue from Reed’s country hit, other capable horsemen have shot blanks heading into the final three days of the meet. Foremost among them is Hall of Famer Neil Drysdale, who is 0 for 23.
Yes, when you’re hot, you’re hot. But when you’re not, you’re not.
“Number one, you gotta get lucky,” Pederson said. “Without luck, none of us ... I don’t care who you are, no matter how good you are or how good your horses are. You still gotta be lucky.”
There were years in Northern California when Pederson won at a 25% clip. He was hot. But he also had a yearning to train better caliber horses.
“We always did well up north, but it just got to a point where my father (former jockey Gene Pederson) passed away and there was nothing holding me down up north,” he said. “Then Mr. Harris (John Harris from Harris Farms), my main client, had been asking me to come down, but it was one of those deals where as long as my dad is alive, I’m not leaving. Then I just made up my mind if you’re going to give it a shot ... the worst thing you can do is never come down here and give it a try and then say woulda, coulda, shoulda.”
Pederson obviously made the right choice, and for the past 28 racing days, he’s shown us that Jerry Reed had it right all along.