Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
How longshot Rich Strike won Kentucky Derby
This doesn’t happen. Horses at odds of nearly 81-1 don’t win the Kentucky Derby. Jockeys who have never won any big stakes race of any kind don’t win the Kentucky Derby. Owners with fewer than 10 career wins don’t win the Kentucky Derby.
Rich Strike and his connections disagree with those sentiments.
One of the biggest upsets in racing history happened Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., where Rich Strike shocked the establishment by running past everyone and winning the first leg of this year’s Triple Crown series.
Those who bet $2 to win on Rich Strike got $163.60 in return. Not bad for about two minutes of work. For jockey Sonny Leon, trainer Eric Reed and owner Rick Dawson, the result was lifechanging.
Leon was racing Friday at a little-known track in Cincinnati called Balterra Park. Reed’s biggest win before Saturday was with a filly called Satans Quick Chick in a Grade 2 race nearly 12 years ago. Dawson, a half-hour or so after the Derby, rhetorically asked a question to anyone within earshot.
“What planet is this?” Dawson said.
Indeed, it’s a whole new world that he’s part of now. And a 3-year-old colt that was much closer to last place than first for most of the race Saturday made it all happen. How did he even get in? Good luck for him, bad luck for another. The Kentucky Derby can’t have more than 20 horses in the field. Rich Strike was 21st on the list. If one of the 20 horses that qualified didn’t scratch from the race before 9 a.m. Friday, Rich Strike’s Derby plan would have ended.
At 8:45 a.m. Friday, the call came: No scratches. Reed texted his father: “Didn’t happen.” The security guard working the barn and protecting Rich Strike was sent home. Plans were being made to run Rich Strike in a race this week in New York instead.
Around that time, the connections for Ethereal Road — trained by D. Wayne Lukas — told Derby officials that they were pulling out of the race. Reed got another call at 8:55 telling him not to move the horse, then another call a minute or two later with the official word.
They were in. “What just happened?” Reed asked.
Turns out, history was starting to happen. How did he win? Think of horses like race cars. There’s a finite amount of fuel in the tank. The faster you burn the fuel, the quicker the tank empties. And that’s exactly what happened in the Kentucky Derby.
Summer Is Tomorrow was the leader after a quarter-mile, or two furlongs. He covered that distance in 21.78 seconds — the fastest time in Kentucky Derby history. No horse can sustain that pace for 1 ¼ miles. And Summer Is Tomorrow wound up finishing last in the 20-horse field, 64 ½ lengths behind Rich Strike.
It wasn’t just Summer
Is Tomorrow. Many horses went out on a blistering pace, because so many trainers and jockeys had decided their best move was to get close to the lead for the opening portions of the race.
The biggest indicator that this was going to be a wild finish probably came when track announcer Larry Collmus briefly stopped his rundown of which horse was where in the field at the half-mile mark.
“The opening half-mile was — WHOA! — blazing fast, 45.36 seconds,” Collmus said.
Those fuel tanks were emptying far faster than anticipated.
At that half-mile mark, Rich Strike was ahead of only two horses. He was sitting in 18th place.
How did he pass so many horses?
Two answers: He ran by some, and some, as they say in racing, stopped running.