ARCADIA — By almost any measure, thoroughbred trainer Jeff Mullins has been having his best seasons in a long time in 2024 and 2025, winning stakes in a variety of equine divisions while posting win percentages and earnings figures among the leaders in California.
What’s different from Mullins’ peak in the early 2000s is the absence of the kind of Derby prospects that brought him fame (not always comfortably) back then.
That could begin to change Saturday.
Mullins will send out the 2-year-old ridgling Intrepido with jockey Hector Berrios in the $300,000, Grade I American Pharoah Stakes at Santa Anita, seeking to earn a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on the first day of the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar.
The competition is strong. Bob Baffert entered Desert Gate, Kristofferson, Balboa and Plutarch and Doug O’Neill is running Civil Liberty in the 1 1/16-mile race, the longest any of the six horses has attempted.
“There’s some nice horses in there, and he’s got something to prove,” Mullins said of Intrepido one morning this week in his Santa Anita barn office. “This is where you find out what you’ve really got.”
Intrepido is the 6-1 fourth choice on the morning line for the American Pharoah, one of five stakes on a 10-race card that starts at 1 p.m.
But the horse purchased by owners Dutch Girl Holdings and Irving Ventures for $385,000 at an auction in April in Ocala, Fla., is well-bred, by Maximus Mischief, the 2018 Remsen Stakes winner and a son of leading U.S. stallion Into Mischief, out of Overly Indulgent, a winless mare whose own sire is Pleasantly Perfect, the 2003 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner.
And Intrepido has looked good on the track – in different ways – in both of his starts so far and is the only horse in Saturday’s race who has won at 1 mile or longer.
In his debut July 26 at Del Mar, in a 5½-furlong sprint, Intrepido broke slowly under jockey Julien Leparoux before making a sustained run to finish fourth behind top California 2-year-old Brant, Civil Liberty and Balboa. It wasn’t a race Mullins expected to win, Intrepido’s tall, lanky frame being better suited for longer distances. Anyway, for Mullins, first starts are all about gaining experience.
“I never pressure my jocks to win first time out,” Mullins said.
In Intrepido’s second start, Aug. 23 in a 1-mile race at Del Mar with Berrios riding, he battled for the early lead and then took control, going on to win at nearly 5-2 odds by 3¼ lengths over Plutarch with 1-2 favorite Provenance a slow-starting third. Plutarch came back to run second to Hey Nay Nay in a Grade III turf mile. Provenance came back to break his maiden next time out.
“I didn’t really expect him to go to the lead like that, but he did and ran a pretty nice race,” Mullins said.
It has been seven years since Mullins has run a horse in any of the Grade I, II or III main-track stakes for 2-year-old males at Del Mar, Santa Anita and Los Alamitos. He places his horses at realistic levels. Bettors rarely can overlook them.
“I think Mullins is one of the best horsemen in California, and I’ve always thought that since he came here about 25 years ago,” said Bob Ike, who handicaps at BobIkePicks.com and co-hosts the Thoroughbred Los Angeles radio show. “His horses always look great and, (for me) as a handicapper, they usually run to or exceed my expectations.”
Mullins, 62, a native of South Jordan, Utah, first experienced victory at the racetrack at age 17, too young to get his own trainer’s license, when he saddled horses at Les Bois Park in Boise, Idaho, under the name of his father, Leonard. At 18, with a horse named Doctorious at Le Bois, Jeff scored the first of his 1,827 official wins.
Working his way up through smaller circuits, Mullins arrived in Southern California in 2001 and had quick success, most famously winning the Santa Anita Derby a record three years in a row in 2003-05 with Buddy Gil (at 6-1 odds), Castledale (30-1) and Buzzards Bay (30-1), and getting to four straight Kentucky Derbys. (Another Mullins 3-year-old, I Want Revenge, won New York’s Wood Memorial in 2009 and was the 3-1 morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby but had to be scratched.)
Success came with unwanted headlines.
In 2005, Mullins was one of four trainers sanctioned at Santa Anita after a horse failed a test given by track officials to stop suspected cheating with performance-enhancing baking-soda cocktails called “milkshakes”; he denied intending to cheat. Amid that controversy, Mullins fell into more when he was quoted by Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers saying people who bet on horses are “addicts and idiots.” Mullins said the comment was taken out of context, and went on a racing TV network to apologize and try to clarify.
Mullins said this week the cloud from that period “could have been” a reason his barn dwindled from 80 horses at one point to about 12 a decade ago.
“But it’s water under the bridge. I’m still here,” Mullins, back up to about 65 horses, said with a smile this week.
Mullins credits horse owners Red Baron’s Barn and Rancho Temescal with helping to “put me back on the map.” In 2024 and 2025, he has won stakes with the main-track filly Sugar Fish, turf sprinting filly Queen Maxima, turf miler Artislas and California-breds Man O Rose and Shocking Grey. His win percentages of 22% and 23% are his highest in consecutive years since 2006-07, and his earnings per start are over $10,000 for the first time back-to-back since 2004-05.
It could get even better Saturday.
The American Pharoah is a “Win and You’re In” qualifier for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, the race that annually identifies early favorites for the Kentucky Derby. Intrepido isn’t Breeders’ Cup-nominated, so his owners could face a hefty supplemental fee to enter.
“He’d have to win this race,” said Mullins, but he also says: “This horse has obviously got the potential.”
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.