by Jeff Lowe
Godolphin Racing envisions its North American division as an elite group of older runners, primarily for dirt racing, and the group has delivered at an unusually high rate in 2009 under the oversight of Rick Mettee, the U.S.-based assistant to trainer Saeed bin Suroor.
Godolphin has racked up seven Grade 1 victories between six horses over the last three months, and the American string will account for nine participants in the Breeders’ Cup World Championships this weekend, including pairs in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1), Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic (G1), Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile (G1), and Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint (G1).
Overall, Godolphin has won with 16 of 52 starters (30.8%) in the U.S. this year, and a dozen of the wins have been in stakes races. The group has been potent even though most of the horses had long layoffs leading into the summer.
The first Grade 1 victory came with Seventh Street in the Go for Wand Handicap (G1) on August 2 at Saratoga Race Course.
A procession followed with Flashing in the Test Stakes (G1), Music Note in the Ballerina (G1) and Beldame (G1) Stakes, Pyro in the Forego Stakes (G1), Gayego in the Ancient Title Stakes (G1), and Vineyard Haven in the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash Stakes (G1), after he was disqualified from a victory in the King’s Bishop Stakes (G1) in his first start since February.
“We’ve had really good weather and good racetracks to train on most of the summer and the staff did a great job getting them ready,” Mettee said. “Most of them were horses that trained well—talented horses that were good work horses in the morning. Regal Ransom, Vineyard Haven, although he got taken down, Girolamo … they’re all good work horses that get themselves fitter than most.
“Some of the others—Pyro, Music Note, and Cocoa Beach (Chi) needed a race and then they came back well. This is the way it was supposed to be—a small, select group of horses running in graded stakes—and it’s kind of been the perfect storm, with these horses all coming right at the right time. They all came right in the middle of the summer, and we still feel like we have fresh horses.”
Mettee will be at home at Santa Anita on North American racing’s biggest two days. He was based in Southern California for nine years with trainer John Gosden in the 1980s, when Gosden’s deep barn churned out top runners like 1983 champion older male Bates Motel, inaugural Breeders’ Cup Mile (G1) winner Royal Heroine (Ire), and Grade 1 winners Hatim, La Koumia (Fr), Zoffany, Bon Ile (Ire), Alphabatim, and Annoconnor.
“He came to me from Maryland as a groom and very quickly became foreman and then he was my assistant,” Gosden said. “You’ll never meet a better person. He’s just 100% straight. He also just happens to be a superb horseman. He’s very quiet, and he’s always thinking about the horses. He would not be what you would call a commercially-minded trainer. That wouldn’t be his scene, hustling around the grandstand or the turf club trying to get owners.”
When Gosden left California in 1988 and returned to his native England, he left some horses with Mettee.
“He kept them going for another six or seven years, but it wasn’t his scene to find new ones and clients,” Gosden said. “That wasn’t his world. When the opportunity came up that Godolphin wanted a trainer here in America to be sort of Saeed bin Suroor’s kind of understudy, if you like, he was obviously the perfect choice. I think the proof is in the pudding.”
Mettee recalls his time in California very fondly, not only for the chance to work with Gosden and his elite roster but also to be a participant in what he considers a great era.
“It was a real privilege, John’s not only such a great trainer but also a real gentleman,” Mettee said. “It was just a magical time. I was in my 20s at the time and the racing was so good here. You had Charlie Whittingham, Bill Shoemaker, and Laffit Pincay. It was really a lot of fun being out here with a good string of horses like that. We had the Bates Motels, the Royal Heroines, and the Juddmonte [Farms] horses. It was just a lot of fun. As you look back on it, it was probably the golden age of California racing.”
Jeff Lowe is a Thoroughbred Times staff writer