Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Reed’s life takes happy turn
Eric Reed is a folk hero – and it took an 80-1 winner of the Kentucky Derby to finally bring that fact to light.
Only after Rich Strike became the second-longestpriced winner in race history with his $163.60 mutuel in the May 7 Derby has it become known what Reed overcame to get there as the winning trainer. His perseverance and inner strength away from the racetrack add to what was already an incredible tale.
With all its wondrous improbabilities, the story of Rich Strike is one that already has movie-makers calling. “There have been serious inquiries,” Reed said early this week from New York while preparing Rich Strike for the 154th Belmont Stakes. “But we’re not going to entertain anything until we have some time after the Belmont.”
The tragic fire that killed 23 horses at Reed’s Mercury training center outside of Lexington, Ky., in December 2016 is one detail that has made all the media rounds. Reed has spoken dozens of times about what a calamity it was.
But there are other compelling layers to this real-life drama. Reed and his wife, the former Kay James, have five grown children, the youngest now 22. It was nearly two years ago that their second-oldest child, Jessica, lost her 2-yearold son, Raylin, in a horrifying accident in their garage at home.
“It was the worst day of our lives when he died,” said Reed. “I want to say it was June or July of 2020, but it was such a bad thing, I’ve blocked most of it out of my mind.”
Reed, 57, grew up in racing as the son of trainer Herbert Reed. A trainer since 1985, he has had hundreds, if not thousands, of employees come through his shed row. Two of his all-time favorites who worked for him for 25 years, ultimately ascending into positions as assistants, died within a few months of one another in 2020 – James Wellman of cancer in May, and Nelson “Hollywood” Sweeting of pneumonia and pleurisy in November – adding further agony to his life.
“Hollywood didn’t even tell us he was sick because he saw how we were all grieving over James,” Reed recalled. “One day I finally got a call from his wife saying, ‘He’s been in hospice, you need to come see him.’ And he passed that day.”
All the while, Reed was battling serious health problems that dog him to this
moment.
Earlier in 2016, Reed was thrown from his stable pony, breaking his pelvis and hip and puncturing a lung. He now has four bulging discs in his lower back that require “three to four hours of treatment a day, six days a week,” said Reed.
“The discs have affected the nerves, which is where all the pain is,” he said. “It causes my pelvis to drop, so I’ve constantly got to work on keeping my pelvis right to keep the pain away. I’ve been wearing a TENS unit,” which sends an electric current from the spine to the pelvis, “that I keep going almost 24 hours a day. I’m trying to put off surgery until the fall.”
But that’s not all. Back in 2000, Reed was diagnosed with IgA Nephropathy, more commonly known as Berger’s disease. It’s a chronic kidney condition that, if not treated properly, often ends in renal failure and death.
Reed said that after he was initially diagnosed with IgA by a local doctor, “I was sent home with end-of-life papers.”
“So I went and got a second opinion, and they confirmed I had the disease,” he said. “Then I got in touch with the Mayo Clinic, and they actually came down to Kentucky and put me on an experimental medicine in a case study. They told me after the first month that if I’d been given the placebo, my numbers wouldn’t change. But went I went back in, thankfully my numbers had dropped enormously, and I knew I’d been getting the good stuff. I still take the medicine twice a day, and I’ve done just fine all these years – although the COVID did a real number on me.”
Atop all else that happened to Reed in 2020, he was hospitalized for 2 1/2 weeks during the height of the COVID scare.
“The doctors keep my blood pressure lower than normal,” he said. “It runs about 106 over 65 because it helps my kidneys function better. When I got COVID, I went from a Stage 1 to a Stage 3 [with IgA], and right now I’m between a 2 and 3. The medicine is working, but not like before. It’s one of those diseases that you want to keep dormant, but they say COVID kind of woke it back up.”
Reed was front and center in one of the most exuberant postDerby celebrations of recent memory. His unbridled joy was all the more understandable in view of the pain and heartbreak he has endured.
“We’d love to win Saturday, and, honestly, I can’t see the horse not running good,” he said.
Anyone rooting against Rich Strike might not know a hero when they see one.