He was back on the podium that is used once a year in the Churchill Downs media center, surrounded by Kentucky Derby (G1) signage, answering questions, accepting accolades. He had been there before, six years earlier to be exact, trying to articulate how adding the most famous career-defining race to his résumé impacted his already Hall of Fame career.
This time, however, when Bill Mott was introduced as the winning trainer of the horse who had captured the first leg of the Triple Crown, the experience and emotions hit differently, as they say. So even as he went through the victor's routine on the first Saturday in May for the second time in his career, he couldn't stop watching the replay loop of the first time he saw one of his proteges cross the wire first in the 1 1/4-mile classic.
"This is special, they're all special ... but this is better," Mott grinned.
History will record Sovereignty's triumph over Journalism in the 151st Kentucky Derby as the second victory in the race for Mott, joining his previous triumph in 2019 with Country House when the chestnut colt, who crossed the wire second, was elevated to the win after Maximum Security was disqualified for interference. As much as Mott has stated the level of satisfaction he carries with him despite that adjudicated result, seeing Sovereignty uncork his ability in a traditional winning fashion brought a new level of fulfillment to a man who makes no bones about the importance of keeping his emotions in check.
As he sat alongside jockey Junior Alvarado, fielding a slew of queries on how he developed the Godolphin homebred into his third career winner of a Triple Crown race, Mott's gaze repeatedly turned to the television screen to his left, where the winning moment played over and over throughout the press conference. For nearly 20 minutes he watched, marveling every 2:02.31 at the sight of his bay protege crossing the finish line as the pro tem king of the 3-year-old male division.
"I don't want to take anything away from Country House's effort because he actually ran a very good race that day," Mott said. "He may have been second best on the day, but I guess it was our luck that the horse who crossed the finish wire first took out three to four other horses. They had to do something, they had to put us up.
"I said afterwards that I'd want to finish first, to cross the line first. We always take them any way we can get them, but this was pretty special."
With his second Derby win came some introspection and reflection from the trainer who has been as much a fixture at Churchill Downs over the last four decades as its famed structures. For nearly 32 years, he held the record as the all-time winningest trainer at the Louisville, Ky., oval after he surpassed Henry Forrest for the honor in 1986.
Though he has since been overtaken for the mark, first by Dale Romans, then by current leader and fellow Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen, Mott has viewed Churchill as both a second home and an incredible manifestation of a boyhood dream he never dared believe would materialize.
"I listened to my first Derby when I was probably 14 years old and I was sitting in the front seat of GMC pickup with a trailer behind it, it was owned by Keith Asmussen by the way," a smiling Mott recalled. "I listened on an AM radio to the call of the race of Proud Clarion winning the Derby. And from where I started—Fort Pierce, South Dakota—never dreaming that I'd ever come to Kentucky. I mean, I never imagined I would ever be here.
"To wind up having the win title here and winning so many races here ... I was very proud of that," Mott continued. "I look back at that time and ... I couldn't even imagine being at Churchill Downs. It was a dream that was even too far away for me."
The significance of Mott's career is such that it didn't need any classic embellishment as he has long been recognized as one of the best true horsemen to ever grace the craft. His ethic is such that even after the Derby presser wrapped, he stayed in the media center still glued to a television to watch his final entry on the day compete in the 14th race on the card.
Some things never shift with Mott, not his attitude, not his principles, not his skillset. But Saturday night, things were different in his world—and he couldn't stop watching it change before his eyes.
"To be sitting up here and thinking back to 1967 or whatever it was, it's like going to outer space," he laughed.
