Art Collector Becomes a Silver Lining for Drury

There are few people who have been fortunate enough to find a silver lining during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trainer Thomas Drury Jr. is one of them.

Drury has won fewer than 500 races in a nearly 30-year training career that dates to 1991. Operating primarily out of the Skylight Training Center in Goshen, Ky., his small stable of about 20 horses will race at Churchill Downs and Keeneland, but more often his name will pop up in the entries at Belterra Park Gaming & Entertainment Center, Indiana Grand, or Turfway Park.

In all that time, he has amassed modest totals of 2,229 starts, 469 victories, and $7.8 million in earnings with a highly respectable winning percentage of 21%.

What's missing on that résumé is a graded stakes win. Running so frequently at smaller tracks, Drury has only 12 starts in graded stakes since 2000, with a pair of thirds serving as his best finishes.

So how did Drury wind up as the trainer of Bruce Lunsford's Art Collector, a top contender in one of the sport's most famous races, the $600,000 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G2)?

"Welcome to 2020," Drury said.

In any other year, the promising Art Collector, a morning-line 5-1 shot, would have been preparing for the July 11 Blue Grass at Keeneland under the care of trainer Rusty Arnold. Yet in 2020, the combination of a drug violation plus quarantines and the closing of racetracks during the pandemic brought Art Collector into Drury's life—and kept him there.

"I'm one of the few people in the world who has been impacted in a positive way by the pandemic," Drury said. "It's been that kind of a year."

The Blue Grass promises to be a litmus test for Art Collector, who will be making his first start in a graded stakes on dirt. In his two starts for Drury, the bay son of Bernardini  has fashioned a 2-for-2 mark in advance of a race that ranks as the most important for both the up-and-coming horse and the veteran trainer.

"This is a big deal for us. It's why you wake up in the morning and go to work. It's special," Drury said. "Bruce has given me a lot of nice opportunities over the years, and we've won some good races together, though nothing like the Blue Grass. It's a big opportunity for us. I've been on the outside looking in with some really good horses, so to be able to lead over one like this in the Blue Grass Stakes, it's good stuff."

For Lunsford, it's been rewarding to see the fruits of Drury's work with the 3-year-old colt.

"It's the kind of feel-good story that explains why I'm in the business," the Louisville resident said. "This is a big opportunity for Tom. It could be a breakthrough moment for him."

The events that led to Drury becoming Art Collector's trainer began innocently enough at the start of the year. 

The homebred son of Lunsford's Distorted Humor  mare Distorted Legacy was coming off an impressive 7 1/2-length victory for trainer Joe Sharp in a Nov. 30 allowance optional claiming race for 2-year-olds at Churchill Downs. As he has done with other horses for the past 15 years, Lunsford then sent Art Collector to Drury's base at Skylight for some freshening.  

Aside from training, Drury has made a name for himself caring for young horses or those in need of some time off at Skylight, with Claiborne Farm, trainer Al Stall Jr., and Lunsford being some of his top clients. At times, he'll have 30-40 horses bound for other trainers under his wing at the center, with juvenile champion Hansen, Tom's d'Etat, and Lunsford's Madcap Escapade among the list of grade 1 winners who have spent time away from the racetrack with Drury.

"Tom is a protégé of (former trainer) Frank Brothers, and he does a great job of bringing back horses after some time off," Lunsford said. "He's always done a stellar job for me. He has a great feel for a horse and has a nice place to train a horse. I've had some pretty good trainers over the years, but I've never seen anyone handle laid up horses better than him."

While Drury was preparing Art Collector for a 3-year-old campaign, news broke in early March that Art Collector was among three horses trained by Sharp at Churchill Downs who tested positive for levamisole, a deworming agent. As a result, Art Collector was stripped of his win and purse money from the Nov. 30 race, and Lunsford found new trainers for the horses he had with Sharp.

"I took the horses from Joe because I didn't like that stuff going on with him. It wasn't Joe's fault, but I don't want to be around that. It's not what I want to spend time doing," said Lunsford, who did not contest the disqualification.

Lunsford tapped Arnold to train Art Collector, but that became problematic as the pandemic worsened, travel restrictions were enacted, and racetracks began to close like a set of dominoes. 

"They weren't letting horses into racetracks or train every day at that point," Drury said. "There was a lot of uncertainty."

So when Churchill Downs finally opened in mid-May, Lunsford opted to let Drury step in and serve as the colt's trainer for a seven-furlong May 17 allowance optional claiming race.

When Art Collector rallied from seventh to post a 2 3/4-length victory, the homebred had a new full-time trainer.

"I thought it was Tom's time," Lunsford said. "He did everything right and earned the right to have a big horse."

Drury said even Arnold called to say Art Collector should stay with his new trainer.

Art Collector's next start served as his ticket to the Blue Grass as Drury tried him at 1 1/16 miles, running him around two turns on dirt for the first time. With his dam being a half sister to Lunsford's Belmont Stakes (G1) and Travers Stakes (G1) runner-up Vision and Verse, Art Collector had the pedigree to handle the June 13 dirt route at Churchill Downs. Yet in his first try around two turns, he was seventh in the Dixiana Bourbon Stakes (G3T) on turf at 2.

"We were cautiously optimistic before the (May 17) race, and when he won like he did in the first race for me, you couldn't help but get excited," Drury said. "The question was whether he could get around the second turn."

Art Collector only faced three rivals in the June 13 race, but two of them were subsequent Indiana Derby (G3) winner Shared Sense and fellow Blue Grass starter Finnick the Fierce, who is grade 1-placed. When Art Collector grabbed the early lead and never looked back, winning by a 6 1/2-length margin, it was time to think big.

"When he won the second allowance race, that was the impressive race in my eyes," Drury said about a colt with a record of three wins in seven starts, with one win and a second in three tries on turf. "I know he kind of walked the dog on the front (with a :48.43 opening half-mile), but he sure came home the right way (1:41.35 for the 1 1/16 miles) that day, and if you watched him gallop out, he had his ears pricked and looked like a horse who still had something left. To run that fast and look that good, I thought he earned his way into the Blue Grass."

While Drury has lived vicariously through the stakes winners he has cared for at Skylight, his work with Art Collector has been rewarded with a long-awaited opportunity to compete against Hall of Fame trainers such as Steve Asmussen and Bill Mott and place the saddle on a horse from his own barn in a stakes with a long and storied history.

"I don't know if I'm nervous," the congenial Kentuckian said. "I'm kind of anxious. My family is excited. I'm excited. We're all looking forward to it. It's not something we get the opportunity to do every day. I know how special it is, and I am definitely not taking it for granted."

Nor is Lunsford. For him, the Blue Grass will be important on several fronts. 

As a breeder, he has several mares at Claiborne Farm and owns a few more in a partnership with John Sikura, the president of Hill 'n Dale Farm. Among Lunsford's babies is a half brother to Art Collector by Into Mischief  whom he entered in the first book of the upcoming Keeneland September Yearling Sale, and Saturday's race could have a huge impact on that horse's value and future.

"I'm not sure if I'll sell him," said Lunsford, who also has an Into Mischief-Distorted Legacy weanling and bred the mare to Justify  this year. "I entered him in the sale to cover myself."

On another front, though Art Collector is nominated to the Triple Crown, he has no qualifying points toward a start in the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1). With 100-40-20-10 points distributed to the top four finishers in the 1 1/8-mile Blue Grass, finishing in the trifecta would put the Bernardini  3-year-old in the picture for this year's middle leg of the Triple Crown and possibly give Drury and Lunsford their first Kentucky Derby starter.

"This horse will tell us how good he is," Lunsford said, "but as of now, he's among the top five I've ever had."

Meanwhile, Drury said his mind is much more focused on Saturday's chance of a lifetime than a race in September.

"I'm taking this one race at a time," he said. "I can only handle one dream at a time."