LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Lonnie Briley contemplated the dizzying world he currently inhabits, one so different from what he’s known for seven decades, and summed up this sudden convergence of fame and adulation and pressure with two homespun sentences spoken in his rich south Louisiana patois.
“It’s a good thing I don’t drink,” he says. “Because I’d be a drunk.”
The strongest thing the 72-year-old thoroughbred trainer imbibes is Dr. Pepper, with lemonade and water his other beverages of choice. The other day, a smooth-talking photographer came by Briley’s barn at Churchill Downs and put a Starbucks cup in his hand, thinking he was charming Briley by bringing him coffee. Lonnie handed it right back.
So there will be no mint juleps this week for the blue-collar trainer of Coal Battle, a 30–1 Kentucky Derby long shot. Life lately has been its own intoxicant. Briley doesn’t need anything else to enhance the six–month bender he’s been on with the best horse he’s ever trained.
The Derby and horse racing in general have a captivating penchant for elevating previously anonymous horse riders into the brightest spotlight. It's tough to get here, but the small–timers still do on occasion. But it would be inaccurate to call Coal Battle’s Derby berth the improbable culmination of a lifelong dream.
“Never even dreamed about it, in truth,” Briley says. “Just didn't think I was going to get here. You watch the Derby on TV, but you don't think about running in it. You go buy horses and stuff, and you’re looking for a good horse, a race horse, but you don't know he's going to be a Derby horse.”
Coal Battle is a Derby horse, winning four straight stakes races from November through February before finishing third in the Arkansas Derby in March. The son of Coal Front has carried his modest human connections to the higher reaches of the Sport of Kings— propelling Briley far beyond his previous experiences in the sport.
Derby dreams? Those don’t exist for a guy like Briley, who followed his father into the oil fields of Louisiana and Texas after high school. He started as a roughneck, but wound up becoming a tool pusher—operating the machinery that dug wells—because “I was the only one could read blueprints.” His knack for understanding how things work ultimately translated well to dealing with horses.
Briley always had an interest in the animals—he was a rodeo roper and broke young thoroughbreds in his spare time. Eventually, his talent with “babies,” as yearlings are often called, caught the eye of an oilman who owned horses named John Franks, who asked him to run one of his farms. Franks, who had a large thoroughbred operation, told Briley, “I’ve never seen a tool pusher who wouldn’t work.”
Briley quickly became a jack of all trades for Franks—working in the breeding sector, prepping younger horses and helping spot promising horses for purchase at sales. He eventually gravitated to training, putting his analytical brain to work in understanding equine physiology and movement. Briley might be the only trainer alive who once built a horse skeleton by hand in his office, piecing together all 216 bones with wire and glue.
Franks asked Briley about the skeleton one day. His answer: “Well, it ain't eating nothing. If a horse has got a problem, I can show you where.”
Briley knew what he was doing, and he experienced enough success on the Louisiana and Texas racing circuits to make a living even after Franks died in 2003. But operating a farm in Washington, La., and racing at the likes of Evangeline Downs in nearby Lafayette might as well be a different world from where the millionaires play.
That turned out to be the right level of racing to train horses with a new owner in the sport named Robbie Norman, who arrived via a mid-life crisis of sorts. The CEO of an eight-store grocery chain called Food Outlet in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, found himself going through an unwanted divorce several years ago and wondering what to do with his life. He was flipping through channels on TV one night and fell upon a racing channel that showed continuous races from across the country, and became intrigued.
Norman got his brother, Mark, to go into the ownership business with him. Living in Thomasville, Ala. (“If you mention Thomasville, you're either talking about the timber industry or white-tailed deer”), they looked for a trainer in the region. They found Copper Crowne Equestrian Center in Louisiana. Inquiring there, the Normans were directed to Briley, and a partnership was born.
As it turned out, the purchase of their horse of a lifetime was the result of a plan that went completely off the rails.
The Normans like to buy Louisiana-bred horses that are eligible for racing bonuses in both Louisiana and Texas. Briley had a list of roughly 20 horses he was interested in at the 2023 Texas Thoroughbred Yearling Sales, but his eye kept being drawn to Hip No. 263, a Kentucky-bred colt who would go to the auction ring near the end of the sales.
The Normans’ budget was $20,000–40,000. Briley was told that he might be able to get the horse for as cheap as $15,000. But shortly after the son of Coal Front stepped into the ring, a showdown ensued between Robbie Norman—who was bidding online from home—and one other aspiring owner.
Briley really wanted the horse, and Norman really wanted Briley to get the horse—the yearling sale was almost over, and they’d bought nothing together to that point. So Norman kept pushing the bidding past his pre-sale limit.
“I knew Lonnie loved him,” Norman says. “If he'd went for $100,000, I was going to $100,000. It was just one of those things that you knew you were in the battle. That's why he's got that name. I was in the bidding battle and I knew at that point I wasn't stopping.”
Norman won the battle at $70,000. He blew his budget, wound up with a Kentucky-bred who wasn’t eligible for local bonuses, and had a twinge of buyer’s remorse.
“That euphoria of the auction and the bidding process wears off, and I leaned back in my chair and said, ‘What have I just done?’ “
Bought a Kentucky Derby horse, as it turned out. But that wouldn’t become clear for quite a while.
Norman kept getting pictures of Coal Battle in training, and kept hearing what a smart and mature horse he is. Which was all well and good, but six months after the sale, he wanted the answer to the $70,000 question.
“Lonnie,” Norman said, “tell me he’s fast. I get that he’s smart, but I want to know that there’s some speed behind this horse.”
The answer came soon enough, when Coal Battle won his maiden race last July at Evangeline Downs. The connections took him up in class immediately for a pair of races in Kentucky that resulted in a pair of losses on the turf, but Coal Battle returned to his winning ways on the dirt thereafter. The Springboard Mile at Remington Park in Oklahoma last December turned out to be just that, the race that got Briley and the Normans plotting the 3-year-old's path to Louisville.
Robbie Norman didn’t attend that race, opting to see another one of his horses run on Louisiana Champions Day the following day at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans. Norman and his group drove roughly halfway from Thomasville to New Orleans, stopping in D’Iberville, Miss., and checking into a Hampton Inn. That night, they watched Coal Battle win the Springboard on a laptop and went crazy.
“We were lucky we didn't get thrown out of the hotel as we were watching it,” Norman says. “We knew there was a little bit of a dream there, so we were very excited.”
Still, a $70,000 yearling purchase is on the cheap end of the Derby spectrum. The vast majority of this year's 20-horse field that were bought at auction fetched six-figure prices, and many over the years have run into the millions. But the horses don't know their price tags, and Coal Battle kept running like a regally bred steed.
The Derby vision crystallized with wins in the Smarty Jones Stakes and then the Rebel at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas. Those victories gave Coal Battle the necessary prep-race points to qualify for the Kentucky Derby. Finishing third in the Arkansas Derby, behind Sandman and Publisher, might have been a reality check, but Briley is undeterred.
The trainer drove his Ford F-150 pickup from Louisiana to Louisville shortly after the Arkansas Derby. He and Coal Battle have been at Churchill ever since, getting adjusted to the massive surroundings and stakes. Briley has a few other horses in tow and a small crew of barn help, which includes a couple of grooms and assistant trainer/exercise rider Bethany Taylor.
Taylor is a former jockey and the daughter of a jockey who grew up in a racetrack family that migrated between the Florida racing circuit and Lexington, Ky. She spent some of her early years living in a Lexington house on the property of what is now Mt. Brilliant Farm, where the legendary Man O’War resided as a stallion.
Taylor has been with Coal Battle since he was a baby, and the attachment between them runs deep. Asked what her reaction would be if Coal Battle wins Saturday, she laughs. “I'll probably be ugly crying and flinging snot, so I hope we got to see that,” Taylor says. “I will not be embarrassed of that.”
Briley is not prone to displays of emotion, and certainly not to ostentation. In his plaid work shirts and saggy Lee jeans, Briley doesn’t present a polished figure comparable to mega-trainers Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher—but Baffert made a point of congratulating Briley on making it to the big race, a welcome gesture from one 72-year-old with six Derby wins to another 72-year-old making his first Derby start.
Perhaps a reflection of being a first–time Derby trainer, Briley has operated outside of generally accepted protocol with Coal Battle. He gave the horse a three–furlong workout Monday, just five days before the race, then didn’t take him to the track either Tuesday or Wednesday, opting to walk him in the barn shedrow both days.
Generally speaking, horses will only stay in the barn for one day after a workout, not two. That prompted some wondering on Wednesday about whether Coal Battle is feeling O.K. Not to worry, according to Briley.
“He can’t stand himself right now,” he says, referring to the colt’s high energy level. “He’s eating the grooms up as they’re trying to walk him.”
On Saturday, Coal Battle and Lonnie Briley will make the walk of a racetracker’s lifetime from the barn area at Churchill Downs to the paddock, beneath the Twin Spires. Then it’s time for a speed date with fate, lasting two minutes and change. Something too grand for an old trainer to even dream about is nearly at hand.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Trainer Lonnie Briley Set to Make Kentucky Derby Debut: 'Never Even Dreamed About It'.