Category: Churchill Downs

Walking by the Kentucky Derby winner’s circle after the biggest victory of his life, trainer Kenny McPeek held the hand of his daughter, Annie. McPeek looked at her and, with his other hand, held his index finger and thumb about three inches apart. That was his assessment of the margin of victory in one of the most dramatic Derbies in the 150-year history of the race.

A three-horse photo finish, the first in the Derby since 1947, turned the 1 1/4-mile race into a withering battle of inches in the final strides. Nobody knew in real time who won—Mystik Dan on the inside, or the hard-charging duo of Sierra Leone and Forever Young in the middle of the track. When the official order of finish was posted it evoked gasps and roars from the Churchill Downs crowd of 156,710, with Mystik Dan declared the winner by a nose over Sierra Leone in second and Forever Young third.

Mystik Dan’s win was a significant upset at odds of 18-1, but the first career Derby win for McPeek and jockey Brian Hernandez nearly got away from them at the last second. Hernandez had gotten Mystik Dan clear in the stretch and was seemingly home free, driving for the finish line. Hernandez had no idea what was coming for him.

“Three jumps before the wire,” he said, “I didn’t see them at all.”

Then the pursuers loomed alongside. Sierra Leone and Forever Young waged their own battle and evoked memories of the 1933 “Fighting Finish” Derby, in which the jockeys of Brokers Tip and Head Play engaged in literal hand-to-hand combat in the stretch. Sierra Leone jockey Tyler Gafflione reached out with his left hand to seemingly grab the saddle or reins of Forever Young as they dueled. In the end, they both came up agonizingly short.

Past the wire, Hernandez thought he won but wasn’t sure as Mystik Dan galloped out around the turn. The jockey asked an outrider if the result was official yet, but it wasn’t.

“That was the longest two minutes in sports,” Hernandez said. “From the fastest two minutes (as the Derby is known) to the longest two minutes.”

After that brief eternity, the outrider got the news and relayed it to Hernandez: “You just won the Kentucky Derby.”

That moment capped an epic 25 hours for McPeek and Hernandez, who teamed up to win the Kentucky Oaks Friday with monster filly Thorpedo Anna. McPeek became the first trainer since 1952 to win that double, and Hernandez was the first jockey to do so since 2009. Neither man operates at the highest echelon of horse racing, but they stand astride the sport today.

In the days leading up to those races, McPeek radiated an almost outrageous confidence. “It wouldn’t surprise me if I won both,” he said two weeks ago. 

The Oaks unfolded largely as expected Friday, with 4-1 Thorpedo Anna (“a grizzly,” McPeek says) dominating. Then came the harder part Saturday.

McPeek arrived at his Churchill barn at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, opened the back of his Mercedes SUV to let out his dog, and greeted reporters with this line: “Let’s do it again tonight.”

And then they did, with Hernandez delivering a ride that was both smart and daring. 

The 38-year-old Louisiana native, who rides regularly at Churchill, got Mystik Dan out of the gate cleanly and steered him from the No. 3 post quickly to the rail for a ground-saving trip. Hernandez kept Mystik Dan tucked into a pocket of clear ground, never farther back than eighth place, settling the colt into an easy stride. “He was just cruising along so nicely and so comfortable,” Hernandez said.

From there, Hernandez drafted behind Track Phantom through the far turn. When Track Phantom drifted just a touch off the rail, Hernandez pounced. He urged Mystik Dan into the hole like a running back finding a sliver of daylight. 

Joel Rosario appeared to try to swerve Track Phantom back over to cut him off. The two horses bumped hips but Mystik Dan was undeterred—he’s a smaller horse but still powered through along the rail and cut the corner into the stretch, drawing clear.

“Brian gave us a huge opportunity because we saved ground, saved ground, saved ground,” McPeek said. “And when you look at that photo finish, I think we needed all of it to hold off the two second- and third-place horses.”

It takes incredible nerve to urge a horse into a tight spot at high speed. But the Derby was on the line. It was a now-or-never moment and a spur-of-the-moment decision.

“We might have took out a little bit of the inside fence, but that's okay,” Hernandez joked.

Hernandez had spent many years at Churchill learning from the master of the inside move, Calvin Borel, who won Derbies aboard Mine That Bird and Super Saver by hugging the rail. The shortest way around the track is as close to the rail as possible.

“As a young kid out of Louisiana, I got the privilege of sitting in the same corner (in the jockeys room) as Calvin Borel,” Hernandez said. “So I got to watch him ride those Derbies all those years. And today, with Mystik Dan being in the three‑hole, I watched a couple of his rides there between Super Saver and Mine That Bird. I said, ‘You know what? We're going to roll the dice.’”

Hernandez rolled sevens, Meanwhile, favored Fierceness rolled snake eyes—getting a favorable trip and pace but fading badly in the stretch to finish 15th. Second choice Sierra Leone came running late, as expected, but couldn’t collar Mystik Dan.

Sierra Leone was a $2.3 million yearling purchase, regally bred and seemingly destined for this moment. Mystik Dan was a homebred owned by Arkansas businessman Lance Gasaway, a former standout small-college wide receiver for the Arkansas-Monticello Boll Weevils who had never gotten a horse to the Derby before.

Asked what he was going to do Saturday night to celebrate, Gasaway said, “Probably drink a lot of alcohol.”

Gasaway got into racing through his father, who died a year ago Saturday. His stable isn’t lavish, but the decision—informed by input from McPeek—to breed their mare, Ma’am, to former Derby runner Goldencents proved to be the master stroke that produced Mystik Dan.

“This isn’t some zillion-dollar operation,” McPeek said. “We didn’t throw money at this. We thoughtfully went through it all, and it’s amazing.”

The 61-year-old McPeek has been around the sport for a long time, rising to within reach of winning a Derby in the 1990s. He finished second in 1995 with Tejano Run and had the 2001 favorite, Harlan’s Holiday, who finished seventh. Meanwhile, the Lexington, Ky., product and University of Kentucky graduate dabbled in things like developing an app (Horse Races Now) for videos of races. He’s always been a racing wonk who loves to talk about the inner workings of the sport. 

“My grandfather took me to the races at Keeneland when I was boy,” he said. “Learned how to read a pedigree. Used to go to the Keeneland library and read about good horses. Went to [Kentucky] and found the [agriculture] library—in the basement of the agriculture library, I read every thoroughbred and blood horse record ever printed when I was in college.”

He’s won some big races—the 2002 Belmont, the 2020 Preakness, the Kentucky Oaks on Friday—but the Derby had remained elusive. For a Kentuckian, that was tough. Now, he’s reached the pinnacle.

By a matter of inches. The margin between making history and suffering a staggering defeat was that tiny. The three-horse photo finish in the 150th Kentucky Derby will be talked about in the sport for the next 150 years.

The dominant news of the day in Kentucky on May 17, 1875, was the death of John C. Breckinridge, a U.S. Congressman turned Confederate Civil War general. Breckinridge died at the age of 54 at his home in Lexington, Ky., a divisive historical figure. His obituary filled several columns in the next day’s The Courier-Journal newspaper.

On page 4 of that Courier-Journal, a relatively modest headline read, “Derby Day.” The accompanying story chronicled the Kentucky Derby victory by the colt Aristides, in what the paper termed “a brilliant inauguration of the Louisville Jockey Club Association.” The founder of the association was Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., grandson of William Clark, one of the principals in the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

The originator of the Derby traces his sire line to the early days of the United States, when President Thomas Jefferson commissioned two explorers in 1804 to traverse the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. That’s how deeply intertwined the Kentucky Derby is with American history.

The Courier-Journal declared that first Derby day to be “a great success at every foist, and the promise of the future assured.” That promise has been kept. That future has remained assured far longer than the newspaper could have envisioned at the time.

The 150th Kentucky Derby will be run Saturday, the longest continuously contested sporting event in the United States. The race predates the automobile and the airplane, radio and television, Edison’s light bulb and Einstein’s relativity. It is the anchor of American sporting longevity.

Wars, contagions and economic calamities have not unmoored it. World War II necessitated moving the 1945 edition to June, but the race was run. The COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t cause a cancellation, though it did present such a threat that the 2020 race was pushed into September. Evolving societal tastes, concerns about equine safety, a million other things to do—none have interrupted an event that began with Ulysses S. Grant in office, one decade after Robert E. Lee surrendered to him at Appomattox Court House. 

There were 37 states in the union at the time of the first running. The Rose Bowl, which began in 1901, is called the Granddaddy of Them All—but the Derby could be the Granddaddy’s daddy.

From 1877 winner Baden-Baden to Joe Biden, the Derby abides. From 1899 winner Manuel to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Derby endures. From 1958 winner Tim Tam to TikTok, the Derby prevails. 

In a world of unsettlingly swift change, the sameness of the Kentucky Derby is a powerful force. The traditions are immovable.

It has always been run at Churchill Downs, named for two men who were cousins of Clark and provided the land for the track in Louisville’s South End. It has always been run on the dirt course. It has always been a race for 3-year-old horses. It has, since 1896, been a 1¼-mile race, shortened from the 1½ miles of the first 21 runnings. That’s never going to change.

For 146 of the 149 previous editions, it has been run in May—and since 1946, the first Saturday, specifically. The dogwoods bloom, the Kentucky bluegrass grows thick and the Derby comes, every spring. On the calendar of iconic vernal sporting events, there is the Masters, the Derby and the Indianapolis 500. The Derby is 59 years older than the former and 36 years older than the latter.

Churchill isn’t quite Saint Andrews, which was established in 1843, but it’s ancient by American sporting venue standards. The signature Twin Spires were built atop the grandstand in 1895, 17 years before Fenway Park unveiled its Green Monster. The white-paneled grandstand has been remodeled many times, with additions and enhancements annually (a spectacular $200 million, multilevel paddock addition debuts this year), but it retains an old-world feel. 

The history is palpable. The names of every Derby winner are on the grandstand walls in chronological order; the barn area on the backside of the track is timeless. Walk by Barn 42, peep in Stall 21, and it’s easy to imagine Secretariat’s chestnut head poking out of there 51 years ago, before Big Red broke the Derby record at 1 minute, 59⅖ seconds, a legend in the making. Listen to the horse’s hooves thump on the dirt during predawn training and you can envision the great Citation doing the same thing, in the same place, 76 years ago.

For the 150,000 patrons who will flood the massive property on Central Avenue on Saturday—at lamentably exclusive prices, with the cheapest admission tickets now soaring to $130—the same rituals play out every Derby day. What keeps these traditions alive? Simple but powerful things: cold, hard cash; nostalgia; vague romance; one hell of a party; and an incredibly dramatic two-minute race.

The allure of making a buck on who wins and loses is deeply ingrained in sporting culture, but horse racing might have been the original gambling gateway drug. It’s an old sport that embraced wagering early on and never let go. With most American sports betting illegal outside of Las Vegas for decades, racetracks were one place to get down a few bets without needing a bookie and a low profile. 

Correspondingly, there are generations of Americans who went to the racetrack with their parents and saw them place wagers (maybe two dollars, maybe $2,000) at the windows. There is a throwback appeal to buying an actual, print Daily Racing Form or track program, decoding the hieroglyphics of the past-performance charts, then handing over paper currency in exchange for a betting slip. (More and more racing fans conduct business on their phones, of course, but mutuel clerks are by no means extinct.)

The romance stems from a slightly different form of nostalgia. Nobody wears formal attire to sporting events anymore—except at the Derby. This is the women-in-hats, men-in-seersucker capital of the world, a dress-up day that runs the fashion spectrum from classy to gaudy. (The fit checks help make the Derby a highly Instagrammable event, which boosts popularity with younger generations.)

Mint juleps must be consumed, even if those purchased from track vendors would make high-end mixologists cringe. Cocktail culture has had a renaissance in America, but at Churchill Downs, it never left. The party aspect is very much part of the Derby experience for many patrons. (When it’s time to stagger out after about 10 hours on-site, a large number of those beautiful people are drunk, dazed and disheveled—and wishing they wore more sensible shoes.)

The race itself is exquisitely unchanged. The horses and jockeys still largely do their jobs in the same way they always have (though training methods and breeding philosophies have changed more substantially). Thoroughbreds are faster today than they were in the 1870s, but not necessarily faster than in the 1970s. (They’re also less durable.) 

Then and now, they’re beautiful animals in motion and at rest, which is part of what has always drawn talented writers to the sport. When you combine all the elements of the Derby—the massive crowd, the revelry, the buildup to the razor-sharp tension of the competition itself—the elements of romantic storytelling are always present. From the great Sports Illustrated writer William Nack, recounting his first Derby as a teenager in 1958:

“I can still see the writers gathered around that coppery bright chestnut, Silky Sullivan, already a stretch-running immortal, as his groom gave him a sudsy, warm bath on the patch of grass outside his barn. … The sun was up and counting change at her old lemonade stand in the sky, and a thin patina of sweat made Tim Tam’s chocolate coat glisten in the tree-sifted light. He was coming to the race beautifully, his eyes afire, as though lit by a Bedouin torch passed down through generations, from the windswept deserts of Arabia to the ancient rolling leas of England and Kentucky.”

Similar passages could be written this week, though perhaps not as lyrically. The morning gallops, the sudsy baths, the sunbeams warming horses and humans—the eternal Derby week sensory experiences have been handed down. So, too, have the rhythms of the race—the explosion of noise when the starting gate opens, the charge into the first turn, the jockeys parrying for position through the backstretch and making bold moves on the far turn, the withering stretch run to the finish line as roars rain down, the jubilation of the winners. Two minutes and change packs a reliable emotional wallop.

Despite that sameness, each year carries its own sense of urgency. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event for the equine competitors. A thoroughbred foal crop of some 30,000 is whittled down across three years to no more than 20 who load in the starting gate. “You don’t get any do-overs,” says trainer Todd Pletcher, who will saddle favored Fierceness on Saturday.

Massive amounts of brain power are exerted in trying to figure out who will win, but then the gates open and randomness is in play. In a two-minute event, a single jockey calculation or miscalculation can make all the difference. A single stroke of good or bad racing luck can decide who goes down in history. Some horses, like Seattle Slew in 1977, confirm their greatness on Derby day. Some horses fluke their way into fame and fortune; the last two Derby winners, Rich Strike in 2022 and Mage in ’23, never won another race.

The first Kentucky Derby game story in The Courier-Journal in 1875 rhapsodized about the performance of Aristides: “Right gallantly did the game and speedy son of Leamington and Sarong answer the call on his forces, for he held his own all down the stretch in spite of the most determined rushes on the part of Volcano and Verdigris, and slashed under the wire the winner of one of the most fastest and hardest run races ever seen on the track.”

Saturday, they will run that race for the 150th time. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever will be.