ARCADIA, Calif. — Jeff Mullins wipes the dust off an old family photo album in his tack room at Santa Anita Race Track. He turns to the pages that track his journey from South Jordan to Louisville and his fourth consecutive Kentucky Derby.
The 42-year-old trainer arrives Wednesday for Saturday's Derby with Buzzards Bay in tow — and buzzards circling overhead after a triumphant but contentious winter in Southern California.
Mullins opens the album, and there he is at 2, astride a sawhorse wearing a cowboy hat. At 5 he's pictured with his father, Leonard, riding Smokey, a Shetland pony. Mullins flips to a skinny 11-year-old standing next to Jeff's Model, the first horse he broke.
If 3-year-old thoroughbreds are born to run on the first Saturday in May, Mullins was born to train on racing's most glamorous day. He calls the road from his father's horse farm outside Salt Lake City to the bush tracks of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming to racing's high altar, Churchill Downs, the stuff of "fairy tales."
It wasn't that long ago that he was bunking in a tack room at Turf Paradise in Phoenix furnished only with a bed, a slow cooker and a refrigerator. He was just an anonymous trainer trying to make ends meet. After some early success he "moved up" to a recreational vehicle.
Now, 15 years later, he's a rising superstar thrust into a conflicting spotlight on racing's biggest stage. In February, he raised industry eyebrows when his stable landed in the detention barn at Santa Anita. More eyebrows were raised in March after he called bettors, the lifeblood of the sport, "idiots."
In April, however, Mullins answered his critics when he made industry history as the first trainer to win three consecutive Santa Anita Derbies, a feat he downplays.
"Actually, winning three in a row didn't matter," he says. "The most satisfying part of it was we'd been under a lot of stress. It was a vindication."
Getting all the attention
These are the best and worst of times for Mullins. He's armed with his best Derby shot ever, yet disarmed by the negative attention he's attracted by being cast as a cheater and baiter of bettors.
"It's hard," he says. "You have to hold a lot back. You have to hold a lot inside."
Bob Baffert, the two-time Derby-winning trainer, knows all about the red-hot microscope Mullins has fallen under.
"When you start winning a lot, a lot of people don't like you," Baffert says. "I told him his only defense is to keep winning. Nothing he can say will help."
The gang-tackling began when one of Mullins' horses, Puppeteer, tested positive for an excessive amount of sodium bicarbonate solution after finishing second in the San Marcos Handicap Jan. 22.
The milkshake-like mixture — it includes alkalizing agents such as baking soda and sugar — is suspected of masking other drugs in a horse's system. It may also fend off fatigue and aid in recovery time.
As a result of the test, Mullins' horses, for 30 days beginning in early February, were sent to a detention barn for 24-hour observation before they ran. A 15-day surveillance of his barn followed.
Three other trainers were cited during the Santa Anita meet, but Mullins had the highest profile. He denies use of a milkshake.
"They're telling you you're guilty of giving him a milkshake, and we're not," he says. "What they test for are alkalizing agents, and there are a million — in sweet feed, in feed supplements, in stomach medication. So, given enough, say in the morning feed, you might get a positive.
"But they're leading the public to believe that everybody is back here with a big, long tube gagging it down a horse's throat, pumping this stuff into their stomach."
Mullins says he didn't lose owners because of the citation, but his reputation took a hit. His win percentage — at 28 percent in the two months before the test — dropped to 13 percent during the 30-day detention period. He finished second in the trainers' standings at Santa Anita at 22 percent, with earnings of $1.6 million.
"It did go down," Mullins says of his win percentage, "but we've done a lot of things for these horses for their stomachs. We had a lot of different medication and stuff that we had to back off of 36 hours out. Here, we're leading horses up there that normally went up without their bellies burning and everything like that."
More controversy unfolded during the detention barn period when a Los Angeles Times columnist quoted Mullins as saying, "If you bet on horses, I would call you an idiot."
The comments outraged those in the racing industry, not to mention the betting public. A number of fans mocked Mullins by wearing dunce hats at Santa Anita.
Even worse, Mullins says his family received threatening phone calls at home. Mullins filed a police report and blocked his calls.
"He (the columnist) was egging me on on one of my bad days," Mullins says. "I was in the detention barn at the time, and he kept jabbing me. I told him how I felt."
Mullins followed with a public apology on TVG, a racing television network, that aired for two days. He acknowledges he should have declined the interview.
"A friend of mine told me, 'If the fish had never opened his mouth, he would never have gotten caught.' "
Winning cures all
At least two trainers stood by Mullins throughout his winter of discontent.
"He's a good horseman," Baffert says. "He's had some bad press lately, mainly because he doesn't have a lot of media savvy."
Adds Roger Stein, "They can say what they want about him, but Jeff's an exceptional trainer. I've told him he's a much better trainer than he is a speaker."
Mullins proved that with yet another stunning victory in the Santa Anita Derby. When Buzzards Bay came home as the 31-1 long shot winner, the relief on Mullins' face was obvious.
"There's quite a bit of gratification that comes with this one, and I think you guys (the media) all know why," he said after the historic victory.
Mullins says he's headed to Churchill Downs with his freshest Derby contender.
"This horse is getting better and better," he says. "People ask, 'Do you get Derby fever?' And I say you don't really get that fever until you get to wear those roses."
He knows all about the winner's circle. In 1980, when Mullins was 17, too young to get a license to train, his father sent him to Les Bois Park in Boise with a string of cheap horses. He trained under his father's name and won. His first official win came the next year with Doctorius, ridden by a young jockey named Gary Stevens.
Mullins grabs the album again and shows the picture of them in the winner's circle. He's come a long way since then, with stops at Blackfoot and Malad, Idaho; Wyoming Downs in Evanston; Beulah Park in Columbus, Ohio; Rillito Downs in Tucson; Turf Paradise; and the fair circuit in California.
In 2001 his wife, Amy, whom he met at Turf Paradise and married in 1991, convinced him he was ready for the big time.
"I kept telling him he could make it," says Amy, who works alongside her husband as an exercise rider.
"It was a big gamble," Mullins says. "I wasn't sure I was ready."
During his first year in Southern California, Mullins claimed Lusty Latin for $62,000 for Joey and Wendy Platts at Hollywood Park. The colt, with his Kentucky Derby run in 2002, provided Mullins' springboard into the big time.
He enjoyed a breakthrough year in 2003, vaulting to 17th in earnings nationally with a 30 percent winning percentage, the highest among the top 50. That year he won his first training title at Hollywood Park's autumn meet. In 2004 he finished second in the standings at Santa Anita and earned $6.9 million overall.
Now he's headed back to Churchill Downs ranked eighth nationally in earnings.
"The most gratifying part of all this is a lot of people here now came up under somebody else, like (Hall of Fame trainers) Charlie Whittingham or D. Wayne Lukas," says Mullins, putting away his photo album. "I just came up from Utah."
Mullins in the Derby
Year Horse Finish
2002 Lusty Latin 15th
2003 Buddy Gil 6th
2004 Castledale 12th