From dustups to Derby: Brothers Desormeaux take a shot

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Keith Desormeaux has a history with the jockey riding his horse Exaggerator in the Kentucky Derby. The trainer used to fight with him growing up in the Cajun country of south Louisiana.

Keith and Kent Desormeaux are teaming up in the Derby for the first time on Saturday. For Keith, it would be the biggest win of his career. For younger brother Kent, it would be his fourth victory in America’s greatest race.

The brothers were supposed to be doing this two years ago with Texas Red. The colt had won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and stamped himself as the winter favorite for the 2014 Derby. But he got hurt and was off the Triple Crown trail.

In 2013, Keith had a Derby contender with Ive Struck a Nerve, but an injury derailed him, too.

“To finally get here with this one, I feel a lot of gratification and appreciation,” Keith said Tuesday at Churchill Downs.

Kent dropped his whip the first time he ever rode for his brother when they were teenagers at a bush track near their home in Maurice, Louisiana.

“We got along as good as you can expect two brothers who are three years apart,” said Keith, at 46 the oldest of six siblings. “Three years is an eternity in kid years. I was like, ‘Man, do you have to follow me everywhere?’ We were typical brothers, fought all the time, had a lot of fun.”

Their father, Harris, opened his own bush track for thoroughbreds, an anomaly in south Louisiana, where the old bush tracks were for quarter horses. Keith, whose first name is John but goes by his middle name, and Kent caught the racing bug there and it never left.