2025 Belmont Stakes Trainer Profile: Bill Mott

Key Takeaways:

• Bill Mott is a Hall of Fame trainer with over 5,500 career wins and nearly $360 million in purse earnings, known for training elite horses for decades.
• His most famous horse, Cigar, won 16 consecutive races and captured major victories like the Breeders’ Cup Classic and Dubai World Cup.
• Mott has won three Triple Crown races, including the Kentucky Derby with Country House (2019) and Sovereignty (2025), and the Belmont Stakes with Drosselmeyer (2010).
• Sovereignty, Mott’s 2025 Belmont Stakes contender, skipped the Preakness and has been training steadily at Saratoga, preparing to challenge Journalism and other top rivals.

Bill Mott has been training Thoroughbred horses since he was a teenager in the late 1960s, training horses for his family in South Dakota. Those decades of horse racing experience have led to a lot of knowledge, a reputation as one of the leading trainers in horse racing, and a long, successful career: over 5,500 wins and almost $360 million in purse earnings by his horses.

The first horses to put Mott on the national radar were Taylor’s Special and Heatherten. Taylor’s Special was his first graded winner, in the 1984 Louisiana Derby (G2); he would go on to win the Blue Grass (G1) and become his first Kentucky Derby starter. Heatherten was his first top-level winner, winning the Apple Blossom (G1) at Oaklawn in April of 1984.

Mott has won four Eclipses Award for outstanding trainer, most recently in 2023, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1998. Throughout his career, his horses have won 149 times at the top level.

His most famous horse remains the great Cigar, winner of 16 straight races in 1995 and 1996, including the Breeders’ Cup Classic and the first-ever Dubai World Cup. He has won 15 races at the Breeders’ Cup festival, dating all the way back to 1987, when Theatrical won the Breeders’ Cup Turf. That includes five editions of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff (or, for a time, the Ladies’ Classic) with Ajina, Escena, Unrivaled Belle, and two editions with the great Royal Delta. He swept both the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and Breeders’ Cup Sprint in 2022 and 2023 as well: the former with 2023 Horse of the Year Cody’s Wish, and the latter with Elite Power.

And though these races are all older-horse features, Mott knows what to do with a younger horse as well. He trained 2023 champion two-year-old filly and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Just F Y I, and he has seen success in the Triple Crown series as well.

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Bill Mott in Triple Crown races

Though he does not have as many Triple Crown starters as some other barns, his horses are well-intended, and he has seen success. In a history that runs for four decades and counting, Mott has three victories in the series.

Kentucky Derby

Mott has the most starters in the Kentucky Derby compared to the other three-year-old classics, but he has also seen the most success at Churchill Downs. Dating back to Taylor’s Special in 1984, Mott has run 14 horses in the Run for the Roses. He has won the race twice: for the first time in 2019 with 65-1 long shot Country House, who was put up after the disqualification of Maximum Security, and again in 2025 with Sovereignty. Mott has hit the board one other time in the Kentucky Derby: Tacitus placed third behind his stablemate Country House in 2019.

Preakness Stakes

Across the three Triple Crown races, Mott has by far the fewest starters in the Preakness Stakes: just two. His first runner was his first Triple Crown horse, Taylor’s Special, who improved upon a 13th-place outing in the Kentucky Derby with a fourth-place finish behind Gate Dancer. Mott’s only other Preakness starter was Riley Tucker, a long shot who finished 12th and last in 2008.

Belmont Stakes

In the final leg of the Triple Crown, Mott has one win from 10 starters. That victory was by Drosselmeyer, who gradually improved through the winter and spring season and thrived over the 1 ½ miles at Belmont Park. He only raced in one Triple Crown race, but that’s all he needed to get a classic win. Across Mott’s other runners, three finished in the money: Vision and Verse was second behind Lemon Drop Kid in 1999, Tacitus was second to Sir Winston in 2019, and Hofburg was third to Justify in 2018.

Bill Mott in the 2025 Belmont Stakes

Bill Mott has one runner in the 2025 Belmont Stakes at Saratoga Race Course on Saturday, June 7: Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty.

Sovereignty Prepares for the Kentucky Derby

Sovereignty took three starts to break his maiden, right in line with the fact that Mott is not shy to bring a good horse along instead of focusing on being ready to win first time out. He ran a good late-running fourth on debut last August at Saratoga, in a six-furlong sprint that, based on Sovereignty’s pedigree, was always going to be too short for him. Junior Alvarado was in the irons that day—and has been for all but one of Sovereignty’s races, in keeping with the fact that Alvarado gets many of Mott’s best horses nowadays.

In a one-turn mile at Aqueduct a month later, Sovereignty moved forward again, getting closer to the pace and missing by a neck. He was still a maiden, but it was a good enough effort for Mott to put Sovereignty in stakes company—a Kentucky Derby points race, even!—next out. He returned in the Street Sense (G3) in late October, his first two-turn try. The public figured was well-meant, betting him down to just under 3-2 favoritism in that stakes race despite the fact that he had never won. The public was right—under a well-timed ride by Alvarado, Sovereignty rallied for a five-length victory, making him a winner and a graded-stakes winner in one fell swoop.

Mott then freshened Sovereignty for the winter. The son of Into Mischief returned in the Fountain of Youth (G2) at Gulfstream on March 1. Given its speed-friendly tendencies, the south Florida track can be a difficult place for a closer to prepare, but Mott knew what he had. Sovereignty was good enough to close, even at Gulfstream, and got up by a determined neck in the Fountain of Youth.

Sovereignty took his final Kentucky Derby prep race in the Florida Derby (G1) on March 29. Manny Franco was in the irons, as Alvarado was on the sidelines healing from a shoulder injury that had happened a few days before. He didn’t get all the way there, missing by 1 ¼ lengths to the more forwardly placed Tappan Street, but Sovereignty still mounted a good late run and secured place honors, cementing a place in the Kentucky Derby starting gate.

Sovereignty in the Kentucky Derby

The surfeit of speed in the Kentucky Derby field was great news for Sovereignty. Less good, however, was some trouble in the early stages of the race, when he clipped heels with Chunk of Gold. However, Alvarado didn’t panic. Sovereignty settled toward the rear, made a big move around the far turn, and outfinished Journalism in the lane. He crossed the wire 1 ½ lengths clear of the favorite, earning Mott his second career Kentucky Derby victory—and the first in which his horse crossed the wire first.

Mott announced a few days after the Kentucky Derby that he would not proceed to the Preakness Stakes, instead bypassing it and preparing for the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. Preparations have appeared to go well, with Sovereignty shipping to New York shortly after the Run for the Roses. Sovereignty has posted three works since the Kentucky Derby, suggesting that he should be ready for his Saturday clash with the likes of Journalism, Baeza, and more.

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