Changing the Face of Derby

By Bill Christine

April 30, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — One is almost twice the other’s age, but there are more differences than that. Try Gwyneth Paltrow and Roseanne Barr in the same room.

Impressions aside, Kristin Mulhall and Jennifer Pedersen have a common purpose: To win Saturday’s Kentucky Derby and become the first female trainer to wear the roses at Churchill Downs.

Female trainers are a minority throughout racing, and even more so in the Derby. Ten have run 11 horses in the Derby, the most recent Jenine Sahadi’s 14th-place finish with The Deputy in 2000. The best of them has been Shelley Riley, who saddled Casual Lies for a second-place run, beaten by a length by Lil E. Tee in 1992. The first woman trainer in the Derby, Mary Hirsch, was 13th with No Sir in 1937.

This is the first time two women will saddle horses in the same Derby. If the morning-line odds in this wacky, enigmatic 130th Derby mean anything, the 21-year-old Mulhall has the better chance with Imperialism, who’s a 15-1 longshot before the betting starts. Pedersen, 41, is running Song Of The Sword, 30-1 with an outside post position and no stakes victories.

The brunette Pedersen is a single mother, a New Yorker all the way down to her riding boots. Reporters at Song Of The Sword’s barn are helpless to jot down everything when she gets in a talkative mood.

Several barns away, the quiet, easygoing Mulhall -- blond, single and California casual -- belies her intense work ethic with a charming nonchalance once training hours are over. But even when surrounded by reporters in front of the barn, Mulhall uses that eye in the back of her head.

One morning this week, Steve Taub, Imperialism’s owner, showed up with a big box of doughnuts.

“OK if I give Impy one?” Taub asked Mulhall.

“OK,” said Mulhall, still in the middle of an interview.

But then, as Taub disappeared down the shedrow with dozens of the sinkers, Mulhall had an afterthought. She wheeled away from the reporters, and stuck her head around the corner.

“Hey, Steve,” she yelled.

“Yeah,” said Taub, who was already at Imperialism’s stall.

“Just one doughnut,” she said.

“OK,” Taub said.

“Can’t you just see the headline?” somebody said to Mulhall as she turned back. “Horse wins Derby, tests positive. Krispy Kreme blamed.”

Mulhall laughed a soft laugh. Unlike Pedersen, she was less than even money to do what she’s doing, and now she’s becoming the youngest trainer -- of either gender -- to run a Derby horse. The youngest trainer to ever win the Derby was James Rowe Sr., who was 24 when he saddled Hindoo in 1881. In this era, Don Combs was 26 when he won with Dust Commander in 1970.

Mulhall is the only daughter of Richard Mulhall, who trained for 35 years but is better known for managing the late Prince Ahmed bin Salman’s Thoroughbred Corp., which won the Derby with War Emblem in 2002 and finished fifth with favored Point Given in 2001.

Kristin Mulhall was more than a tag-along when she attended those Derbies. Mental notes were taken. She had been training and riding show horses and hoping to secure a berth on the U.S. Olympic team when a shoulder injury rerouted her career.

A couple of days after War Emblem, making a bid for the Triple Crown, was beaten in the Belmont Stakes, Mulhall returned to California and passed the state test to become a trainer.

Her father, who didn’t think the backstretch was any place for a young woman and questioned how his daughter could balance the books in a game that has been riddled by California’s soaring workers’ compensation costs, didn’t approve. But now he’s part of the backdrop at Imperialism’s barn. If his daughter wins the race he never ran a horse in as a trainer, he’ll be in the front row, hoarse from cheering.

Kristin Mulhall, in her second full year of training, already had ideas about how to prepare a horse for the Derby, and she’s not wavered from the plan. She’s the oldest 21-year-old in town.

“Changing the ways you train a horse just because you’re here for the Derby would be the wrong thing to do,” she said.

Mulhall said that she hasn’t paid much attention to the other horses, she’s just concentrating on Imperialism. If she is overwhelmed by the moment, it doesn’t show.

“I never dreamed I’d be trying to do this at my age,” she said. “It’s a thrill.”

The first day on the job, with a stable of just a few horses, she saw Bob Baffert, who trained War Emblem and Point Given.

“Never run a horse when you’re in doubt,” Baffert said.

“I ran a couple anyway, and ate it,” Mulhall said.

At the adjoining barn is the Hall of Fame trainer, Richard Mandella, who’s trying to win the Derby with Action This Day and Minister Eric.

“It doesn’t matter how young Kristin is,” Mandella said. “She’s been listening to how this business works her whole life. She’s come from a horse environment, and she’s well rounded. This is a game where you can either do it or you can’t.”

Jennifer Pedersen was not to the stable born.

“I’m by an artist, out of a housewife,” she said, describing her parents the way you’d rattle off a horse’s bloodlines.

At 16, she rode her bike from the New York borough of Queens to work for trainer Bobby Lake. She galloped horses for several notable trainers, among them LeRoy Jolley, Jan Nerud and Peter Ferriola. Leaving the track, she began nursing studies, and was even briefly in a pre-law program. But she returned to the track, became a trainer and saddled her first winner in 1987.

She and her husband, Lance Pedersen, had two children -- Teal, now 12, and Cody, 7. They had divorced before her husband, who was 39, died two years ago.

“The marriage didn’t work out, but he was great with the kids,” she said.

And Song Of The Sword’s nickname around the barn is Lance.

Five years ago, Jennifer Pedersen was hired by investment banker Ernie Paragallo as the trainer for his Paraneck Stables. Paragallo, who raced Unbridled’s Song, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in 1995, and Artax, the champion sprinter in 1999, has a far-flung stable. Pedersen is responsible for 42 horses in New York, 25 at Delaware Park and three here.

The other day, after training hours at Churchill, she left for a Kentucky farm where she had to break a few of Paragallo’s young horses.

“You need a passion to be in this business and I have one,” she said.

More than Mulhall, Pedersen seems to know about the doors she might open with a Derby victory.

“It’s my dream to win this race, and I’d like other girls to have that dream too,” Pedersen said. “They need to be shown that we can do what a man can do. When you have horses, you’re training athletes. But you have to baby them too, and that’s where our motherly instincts go a long way.”

Pedersen had a horse, New York Hero, who was derailed after tramping the Derby trail into April last year. In 2001, she saddled Griffinite for a fifth-place finish in the Preakness.

She and Mulhall, training horses a country apart, have never met.

“But wouldn’t it be nice,” a romantic asked the other day, “that if you can’t win the Derby, at least Kristin Mulhall does?”

“There are 19 other trainers in here, and I don’t care if they’re male or female,” Pedersen said. “Either way, I’d just like to kick some butt on Saturday.”

Baffert saddled the winners of three races at Churchill Downs on Thursday, including Friendly Michelle in the $100,000 La Troienne Stakes. In another stake, Nicole’s Dream, ridden by Robby Albarado, won the $100,000 Mamzelle. Alex Solis rode Friendly Michelle, who’s owned by Ed Friendly.

The weather forecast for today includes scattered showers. Thunderstorms are predicted for Saturday, with temperatures in the high 60s.