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For the love of the sport
Son of legendary trainer Bill Mott finds horse racing is in his blood
M By Riley Mott
Riley Mott has been around horses since he was a small child. He plans to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a trainer.
54
STRIDE MAGAZINE
April 17, 2010
Photos courtesy Riley mott
y first memory of horse racing is when I was about 5 years old in Saratoga. My dad was training his horses at the old Green Tree Stables, which is now owned by Darley. It has its own private track, with two nice big barns. It was a great place to be stabled. I remember my dad getting me a gray pony to ride named Peaches and Cream. He would put me up in the saddle and pony me around the barn and the track. I remember my dad even bringing me to the main track one day. I
recall being really nervous at the time. Looking back at pictures of it now, it’s pretty funny because I was so small that my feet could barely reach the stirrups, and I had a big old helmet on my little head. I remember sitting by the rail while the horses were training and loving the rhythmic sound of their breathing, and their feet hitting the ground as they galloped past. They are such huge animals, and I was so small – so it was pretty fascinating. It would get me really excited and made me want to run around all over the place. (Needless to say, I was a pretty hyper kid.) There are too many memories of horse racing for me to pick a favorite. One contender would be when we had a real nice Handicap horse a few years ago named Go Between. He was a Point Given homebred colt for Peter Vegso, one of my dad’s longtime owners whom we have had a lot of success for. Early on, he was an average horse, but as he got older he took his game to another level. In his five-year-old season he won the Sunshine Millions Classic at Santa Anita. I think at that point we knew he would be a serious horse in the Handicap division. He finished second in both the Big Cap and Hollywood Gold Cup in California. He was running great in every race but kept falling short of that big Grade 1 win. We finally ran him in the Pacific Classic later in the summer. It had been a pretty mediocre Saratoga meeting compared to the meet my dad had the previous summer, so running well in this race would make up for a lot of those seconds and thirds we had been getting at Saratoga. We had Garrett Gomez riding him back, and I remember he got in a real nice spot going into the first turn and down the backside. It looked like he was traveling great, so I knew that he was going to have a real nice shot to win if he ran back to his previous races in California. In the final turn he was forced to go four or five wide, but he was still making up a lot of ground from mid-pack. In the stretch he hooked up with Well Armed, the eventual Dubai World Cup winner, and wore him down to win by a neck. I don’t remember ever being so excited in my life. It was really special to be with my mom and dad watching the race and to see this hard-knocking horse win one of the premier races in the country. We were all so proud of him. He was definitely a barn favorite, and he is greatly missed.