Kiaran McLaughlin is catching up on his sleep. Sort of.
After spending most of his adult life with a wake-up call before the sun, McLaughlin is spending more time with his dreams. Well, kind of.
“I used to get up between 4:30 and 5,” McLaughlin said about his former morning routine. “Now, it’s like 5:20.”
The soft-spoken Kentuckian chuckles at his own words. McLaughlin changed jobs earlier this year, but he didn’t go very far. He still calls the race track backstretch his office, a place he has been comfortable — and successful — for nearly 40 years. Now, though, his title is different.
He carved his niche in the game as a trainer. Now, call him an agent. Five months ago, McLaughlin walked away from the barn and now represents jockey Luis Saez.
Some things remain the same. Besides getting up at dawn every single day, he comes to the backstretch. Only now he doesn’t have to figure out a training regimen for a barn full of horses or try to figure out which horse has the best chance of winning which race. Those days are over.
Now, the trick is trying to get the 28-year-old Saez on the horses with the chance to get him to the winner’s circle on a regular basis.
“I am going to be 60 years old in November,” McLaughlin said, sitting in his familiar white golf cart on the Saratoga backstretch Wednesday morning. “I had a great career training, but I felt this was a great opportunity for me because Luis is such a top rider and such a good person to work for.”
The opportunity came to be when Richard DePass, who had been Saez’s agent for the past eight years, announced he was retiring. Last winter, DePass told McLaughlin he was getting out and asked if he would be interested. McLaughlin, who represented the late Chris Antley in 1992-93, was. He said he had been thinking long and hard about getting out of training.
Last November, he was fined more than $300,000 by the New York State Labor Board for wages due, damages and penalties for violating minimum-wage requirements. He reportedly said he did nothing wrong, but the high costs of running a stable in New York was a reason he wanted to get out. When DePass floated the idea of working with Saez, McLaughlin didn’t have to be asked twice.
“(DePass) was trying to figure out who the right person would be to take his place,” McLaughlin said. “Luis and his wife are like children to him and he wanted someone to look after him. He was surprised when I said I would be interested.”
Saez has been one of the top riders in the country for the past four years, finishing in the top nine in purse money won. Last year, he had a personal-best $18.2 million in earnings but was known for being the rider of Maximum Security, who was disqualified from his win in the 2019 Kentucky Derby after it was ruled he interfered with other horses during the running of the race.
McLaughlin and Saez’s Saratoga meet got off to a rough start when the jockey tested positive for the coronavirus and had to miss the first six days of the 40-day season.
“It has been a bumpy road,” McLaughlin said.
Despite giving everyone else a head start, Saez is in a three-way tie for fifth place in the jockey standings with 15 wins.
Four of his wins have come with horses trained by James Bond. He has also finished second in four other starts for Bond, two of them by a head and two others by a neck.
Having McLaughlin as the agent has certainly been a plus, Bond says.
“For Richard DePass to pass the baton to Kiaran, well Luis is the luckiest guy in the world and Kiaran is the luckiest guy in the world,” Bond said Wednesday morning. “Both of them are class acts. Kiaran knows the job. He knows the other side of the fence. He knows how hard it is for us trainers when you have to tell an owner that you have a top rider to ride our horse and then he is going to ride a horse for someone else. Kiaran is not like that. Other guys will spin you in a heartbeat.”
McLaughlin, who has multiple sclerosis, is enthused about his new position. The one thing he misses the most is being around the horses on a daily basis. During his training career, he had horses like Invasor (his all-time personal favorite), who was the 2006 Horse of the Year. He also had Eclipse Award winners in Lahudood (best turf female of 2007) and Questing (3-year-old filly of 2012).
He was also the trainer of Alpha, who won the 2012 Travers in a dead heat with Golden Ticket. McLaughlin won four Grade I races at Saratoga that summer. In 2008, he won the Saratoga training title.
Now is the time to make new memories.
“We have some good business coming up,” McLaughlin said. “Sometimes you get frustrated when races don’t go and you have a real live horse, but I’m happy where we are. “
twilkin@timesunion.com • 518-454-5415 • @tjwilkin
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