Keith Asmussen has spent a lifetime in racing as the patriarch of one of the sport’s most accomplished families, but on Saturday the 79-year-old horseman will experience a whole new chapter in the game when Super Stock runs in the Kentucky Derby. Appropriately, Super Stock’s journey to the gate has gone through three generations of Asmussens. Keith and 58-year-old son Cash Asmussen, the 1979 Eclipse Award-winning apprentice turned five-time champion jockey in France, gave Super Stock his earliest lessons at the family’s El Primero Training Center in Laredo, Texas. Keith’s other son, 55-year-old Hall of Fame member Steve Asmussen, trains Super Stock, while 22-year-old grandson Keith James Asmussen was aboard the horse when he won his maiden in the $100,000 Texas Thoroughbred Futurity last August at Lone Star Park. That was just the start of the family fun. Super Stock won the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby three weeks ago at Oaklawn Park to lock up a spot in the Kentucky Derby. “That was a family win,” said Keith Asmussen, who races the horse in partnership with Erv Woolsey. “Everybody won. That was a big, big day.” The stage gets bigger Saturday, and it’s one Keith will enjoy with his wife of 60 years, Marilyn, and Woolsey, a longtime partner who is the manager of country music artist George Strait. “I’m obviously very biased, but I couldn’t think of anybody more deserving than my grandparents and Erv Woolsey to be put in this position,” said Keith James, the oldest son of Steve and wife Julie. “My grandfather and Erv have owned hundreds of horses together and to get to realize success on this level is very exciting. “Especially for my grandfather – he rode for 38 years, has been breaking horses. Ever since I’ve been alive, he’s been waking up at 4 in the morning. It’s all out of admiration and respect for horses.” Keith Asmussen is a native of South Dakota. He was born into racing, his first exposure coming at small meets in his home state, as well as in Montana and Wyoming. “My dad was an owner and trainer,” Keith Asmussen said. “He raced Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds – spent 20 years in Tijuana running down there. I started breaking horses at a young age, and that’s been my high spot, my living. “I rode my first recognized race in 1957. My dad was the one that encouraged that. It didn’t take too much encouragement because I was breaking a lot of babies at that time.” :: Get Kentucky Derby Betting Strategies for exclusive wager recommendations, contender profiles, pedigree analysis, and more Asmussen started out riding Thoroughbreds, then shifted to Quarter Horses and would win such top races as the Rainbow Futurity. His ties to the sport led him from South Dakota, where he met and married Marilyn, to Texas. “As far as getting young horses ready, the weather didn’t suit and that’s how I wound up in Laredo.” Asmussen said. “I came down here to a Quarter Horse meet to ride for Wayne Lukas, rode a couple of trials. I left the north, had a big old coat on, got here and it was 80 degrees. I thought, ‘This will work.’ ” Asmussen and Marilyn met as children. “I had an older cousin that was horse crazy and she was horse crazy and so they used to come down to our ranch in South Dakota,” Asmussen said. “She dragged along with my cousin when she was about 5. She grew up with owning a horse all the time. They used to board their horses in the winter at our ranch. “We both came here from the cold weather. We’ve been here about 50 years or a little bit better.” The family’s Asmussen Horse Center sits on 36 acres and houses broodmares, stallions, and weanlings. They built El Primero in the early 1980s on 85 acres. In addition to Super Stock, it’s where another member of this year’s Kentucky Derby field, Midnight Bourbon, received his early training for longtime client Winchell Thoroughbreds. Keith and Marilyn spent many years racing at tracks around the Southwest. Their sons were involved in the stable, too, which has made for a strong family bond. “I don’t think you can get much tighter than your mom training and your dad riding and you and your brother being the help,” Steve Asmussen said. “Seven days a week, you’re in it. I think that, and the love that we share for the horse and each other, makes us a close family.” Keith Asmussen and Woolsey purchased Super Stock as a yearling at Keeneland in September 2019. The son of Dialed In was a $70,000 buy. “The price was right,” Keith Asmussen said. “He’s correct, had a lot of balance. We weren’t thinking Derby-type horse when we bought him. That wasn’t the idea. We buy horses and pinhook them back into in training sales, and make a nice little profit. We’re happy.” It’s a business model Asmussen and Woolsey have been following for about 20 years. They also race some horses together. “We’ve sold some Grade 1 winners, but we never kept them to run,” Asmussen said. Super Stock had been ticketed to sell in spring 2020. “They still have him because of the pandemic,” Steve Asmussen said the morning after the Arkansas Derby. “He was in the 2-year-old in training sale in Texas and it was canceled because of the pandemic and here we are.” Super Stock spent time at Lone Star as a 2-year-old, twice racing in Texas. “He was there at Lone Star and I was working for my father,” Keith James said. “I hadn’t begun to ride yet, but it was in the works. I got to gallop him every day. I worked him a bunch. I got his okay card out of the gate and called my grandfather and said, ‘I know what I want for Christmas. I want to ride this horse in a race.’ ” Keith James, who was attending the University of Texas remotely due to the pandemic, launched a temporary riding career and teamed with Super Stock for his first three starts, winning his first stakes race in the Texas Thoroughbred Futurity. “To win that race for my grandfather, for my entire family, to be able to make them so proud, it’s beyond all words,” he said. Darren Fleming is one of Steve Asmussen’s top assistants, and he’s been close to Super Stock at both Lone Star and Oaklawn. “He has filled out and grown up nice,” Fleming said. “We loved him at Lone Star. We loved him last summer. We just didn’t know how good we had it.” Fleming, 53, met Steve Asmussen in 1988 at Canterbury. “We both went to Houston for the opening in 1994 and that’s when I started working for him full time, because we both wanted to be in Texas,” he said. “I’m immensely proud for the family. I mean, they just deserve this so much. They all put so much into the racing.” Ricardo Santana Jr. was aboard Super Stock in the Arkansas Derby and has the mount Saturday. He’s been aligned with Steve Asmussen over the past several years, and as a team they’ve won 769 races from 3,778 starts for $53 million in purses, according to Daily Racing Form. “The Asmussens are like my second family,” Santana said. “They’ve helped me grow in my career. I feel that I’m part of the family. They always treat me good and treat my family good. I’m really happy to be part of the team. “My dream was to win the Arkansas Derby for them. We were talking about the race. We did it. We did it together.” :: Get DRF Clocker Reports for the Kentucky Derby and Oaks cards to access exclusive insights from morning training Keith Asmussen is now looking forward to seeing what Super Stock does Saturday. “He’s been on the improve since way back to last spring,” he said. “He just was slow-maturing. His knees didn’t close until about July. We never came that fast with him on account of it. I really like the jump he made between the Rebel and the Arkansas Derby. “I don’t think distance is going to hurt him. Naturally, with 20 head in the Kentucky Derby, you’ve got to have a little luck on account of the traffic, and he’s a pretty cool horse and I think he can make a lot of his own luck.” Asmussen was to travel to Louisville on top of the race as he’s been busy with his day job – developing about 100 young horses in Texas. “This fate deal turned out awful good,” he said. “I hope,” said Steve Asmussen, “that this is a culmination of a lifetime of work for my parents, in an industry that they love.”