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GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas -- Todd Pletcher has yet to win a Breeders' Cup or Triple Crown race. By other standards, though, the Dallas native is doing well.
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Pletcher leads the nation's trainers in victories (203) and earnings ($13,707,158) through last week. He started his own stable eight years ago after working as an assistant to Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas.
He set Saratoga's season record for winners last year with 35, and tied it this year.
The 37-year-old only child went to grade school in El Paso and high school in San Antonio, and has aunts, uncles and cousins who live in Texas. He left the state many years ago and is based in New York.
Pletcher's only other visit to Lone Star Park was during its opening season in 1997, when his horse finished third.
He will saddle four horses Saturday: Ashado in the Distaff, Speightstown in the Sprint, Proud Accolade in the Juvenile and Newfoundland in the Classic.
A year ago at Santa Anita, he came close when Ashado was second in the Juvenile Fillies and Chapel Royal was third in the Juvenile.
"Winning those kind of races will come in time," Pletcher said Friday. "The idea is to keep getting good horses that you can develop so you can participate in something like the Breeders' Cup or the Triple Crown. I'm not consumed with it because there are many Hall of Fame trainers that have never won a Breeders' Cup or a Triple Crown race."
Baffert's stable
Trainer Bob Baffert is adding to his personal stable in December.
That's when his wife Jill will deliver the couple's first child together. They already know it's a boy, and Baffert is partial to the name Bode. He came up with it after watching American skier Bode Miller in the 2002 Olympics.
Asked if his son might become a skier or a trainer, Baffert joked, "He's probably going to be a bowler, with my genes."
Baffert, 51, has sons Taylor, Canyon and Forest and daughter Savannah from his first marriage.
