In Result No One Saw Coming, Rich Strike’s Kentucky Derby Win Helps Redeem Racing

Big-name jockeys and owners and exiled trainers were outdone and outshone by a group of racing no-names who brought a storybook finish Saturday at Churchill Downs.

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky.—Thoroughbred racing is a mess of a sport, but it finds incredible, preposterous ways to redeem itself. It occasionally interrupts raging controversies to drop romantic stories from the heavens. It sometimes shoves aside the rich and famous to elevate winners you could not dream up, much less see coming.

No one saw Rich Strike coming Saturday. Not before the Kentucky Derby, where the horse wasn’t even assured of a spot in the field until another competitor scratched the day before. Not during the first nine furlongs of the 10-furlong race, as all eyes focused on a stretch duel between star 3-year-olds Epicenter and Zandon. Not until the very end, when this nobody of a horse, with a nobody trainer and nobody jockey and nobody owner, came knifing along the rail a few strides before the wire to launch himself into history.

Rich Strike, at 80-1 the second-longest shot to win this 148-year-old race, left 150,000 people gasping at Churchill Downs. He left a handful of his backers roaring and weeping with joy as they stood on the track—“We shocked the world, people!” said one member of the entourage. He left his trainer, Eric Reed, on the ground in the paddock, collapsing after watching this miracle play out on the big screen—“I passed out,” he said. “I don’t remember what happened.” He left his owner, Rick Dawson, who estimates he has won “about 10” races in his life, in a complete state of shock—“Um, what planet is this?” he asked, in a giddy daze.

The Sport of Kings was overtaken by delightful, endearing commoners on this first Saturday in May. No one missed Bob Baffert, banished from the track for medication violations, his former horses finishing well up the track while he is in exile. The plutocrat owners, big-shot trainers and big-name jockeys all were beaten to the wire by a group that normally competes at obscure venues for small purses. For two mind-boggling minutes, racing became a playground for the little guys who saddled their first Derby dressed in jeans and with their right pinkie fingernails painted gold for good luck—even Reed’s father, Herbert, who trained horses for 40 years and taught his son the business.

Jockey Sonny Leon, trainer Eric Reed and owner Rick Dawson celebrate their first Derby win in their first Derby appearance with Rich Strike :: Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

None of it made any sense. Even by the wildly unrealistic standards of previous long-shot winners like Mine That Bird (50-1 in 2009) and Country House (65-1 in 2019), this was much less plausible. Mine That Bird was at least ridden by Calvin Borel, a Churchill Downs hero for years. Country House at least was trained by Hall of Famer Bill Mott. Rich Strike’s connections? Come on.

“We came here on a prayer,” Eric Reed said.

The human stories are amazing, but start with the horse itself. Prior to Saturday, Rich Strike had won exactly one race in his life. He hadn’t even finished second in his previous five starts, coming in third three times, fourth once and fifth once. There was a grand total of zero people talking about him during morning workouts at Churchill leading up to the trace. 

It began inauspiciously for Rich Strike. His first race as a 2-year-old was at Ellis Park, a low-level track in Henderson, Ky., just across the border from Evansville, Ind. The track’s nickname is “The Pea Patch,” for the soybeans that used to grow in the infield. Owned by Calumet Farm and trained by Joe Sharp at the time, Rich Strike was entered in a maiden special weight race on grass. He bombed, finishing 10th. “He ran terrible,” Reed said. 

But after some fast workouts on dirt, Sharp targeted a race on that surface at Churchill Downs in September, a $30,000 claiming race. That means another owner and trainer can put in a claim to buy horses in the field.

Claiming races are the backbone of the sport, but they almost always are the province of cheaper horses with modest futures. You do not find Kentucky Derby horses in claiming races. Reed, who admitted that he never dreamed of having a Derby horse— much less a Derby winner—has made the majority of his living in the claiming ranks.

Given those pre-race workouts, Reed had his eye on Rich Strike and put in a claim. He lost a “shake” with another trainer for a different horse in the race, but got Rich Strike after he romped to a 17-length victory at 10-1 odds. (Say what you want about the horse’s career, but he’s had two great days at Churchill Downs.)

Rich Strike then ran well in an allowance race at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington in October, finishing third despite a shaky start and being steadied in traffic on the turn. Dawson asked Reed, “Do we have a Derby horse?” Reed’s response: “Maybe.”

“He tends to undersell and overdeliver,” Dawson said of Reed.

So the two looked at the calendar for the first Saturday in May 2022 and worked backward from there to craft a racing schedule that could get Rich Strike to Louisville. As a 3-year-old, the horse was campaigned at Turfway Park in Florence, Ky., which is suburban Cincinnati.

Trying to earn enough points to crash the Derby Top 20, Rich Strike earned just one for finishing fourth in the John Battaglia Memorial on March 5. Then he earned 20 for a third-place finish in the Jeff Ruby Steaks on April 2. That was enough to at least put the colt on the bubble, but at No. 24, he still needed multiple late defections to make the field. 

After making a ‘kitchen move’ around Messier, Sonny Leon and Rich Strike edged out favorite Epicenter at the finish :: Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

Rich Strike moved up to No. 21, but by Friday morning, all hope appeared to be extinguished. Reed started disseminating the bad news to the workers in his barn and family members, sending out texts saying the horse wasn’t going to get in. But then, one of Reed’s barn workers called him and said, “Don’t do anything with your horse.” Reed protested, but she insisted she heard of a scratch that was coming down.

Sure enough, Reed was officially notified that Ethereal Road was scratching. Racing steward Barbara Borden called to ask him if he wanted to draw in off the “Also Eligible” list. “I couldn’t even breathe to answer and say yes,” Reed recalled.

(The scratch of Ethereal Road gave legendary trainer D. Wayne Lukas two historic footnotes on the weekend. He won the Kentucky Oaks Friday with Secret Oath at age 86, and then cleared the way for the Derby winner to get in the race.)

Reed texted the thrilling change of plans to a group that included his daughter, Shelby. She drove from Nashville to Louisville on Saturday morning for the race, thinking, “I just hope he doesn’t finish last.” Then, she found herself talking through sobs on the track after the stunning triumph. Her father’s presence here was remarkable for more reasons than just spending his career on the sport’s lower levels. He survived a near-death bout with COVID-19 last year, landing in the intensive care unit for nine days. Six years earlier, a devastating barn fire nearly chased him out of the sport.

In the early morning hours of Dec. 18, 2016, one of three barns at Reed’s Mercury Equine Center in Lexington, Ky., caught fire, likely the result of a lightning strike. By the time Reed and his wife, Kay, rushed to the scene, there was nothing in the barn that could be saved. That included 23 horses that were housed there.

“The next morning when we saw the devastation—because this happened in the middle of the night—I just thought of all the years and all of the stuff we had done to get this beautiful farm,” Reed said. “And to have this happen, that something might be telling me it's the end of the line.”

Shelby Reed was among the family members who encouraged Eric to persevere. “He said he was going to quit,” she recalled. “We told him, ‘You can’t. You can’t go out when you’re down.’”

The outpouring of support was overwhelming. Said Reed: “About the third or fourth day, when people started showing up from states that didn’t know who I was and they just saw the story, it let me know there’s so much good out there. And then I had a few trainers that sent me texts—some big trainers, the guys you know well—that told me, ‘Don’t let this take you out. And we’ll help you. We’ll get you horses. We’ll get you clients, whatever you need.’ And I think that kept me going.”

After getting back on his feet, Reed eventually hooked up with Dawson to partner on a few horses. They never won a stakes race, just one allowance race, but got along well and saw the business the same way. One of their regular riders became Sonny Leon, a Venezuelan whose modest record fits right in with the rest of the crew. Leon currently is the fourth-leading rider at Belterra Park in Hamilton County, Ohio, downriver from Cincinnati. It’s a modest place tethered to a casino, with no races of national note. Leon’s last win there was May 3, a $5,000 claiming race. The trainer of that horse: Eric Reed.

On Friday, Leon went 0-for-5 at Belterra. On Saturday, he rode in his first Kentucky Derby. And he happened to turn in the ride of a lifetime, one of the greats in the history of the race.

“I’m not nervous,” he told people who asked him about riding in the Derby. “I’m excited.”

Breaking from the far outside post, Leon prudently guided Rich Strike toward the middle of the track and back of the pack. He was 18th in the 20-horse field going under the wire the first time, still 18th after half a mile, and 17th midway through the race. A non-factor. But the pace in front of Rich Strike was stout, setting it up for a closer. Leon made a patented “kitchen move,” urging his mount forward around the track kitchen on the backstretch, about 5/8 of a mile from the finish line. 

He fearlessly moved Rich Strike into mid-pack, then down toward the rail to save ground around the turn. The traffic thinned at that point, heading into the stretch. “When I turned for home, the road opened for me,” Leon said. But dead ahead, a tiring Messier was stopping badly. Leon had to make an abrupt decision and bold move, veering out around Messier and then back to the rail. Then, he took aim on the leaders, Epicenter and Zandon, who appeared to be in a match race for the roses.

That certainly was how Epicenter trainer Steve Asmussen read the situation. He and Chad Brown, trainer of Zandon, are two of the most accomplished in the nation. One of them finally was about to win his first Derby … until Rich Strike loomed, impossibly.

Afterward, Asmussen could only laugh about the result.

“It’s as improbable as any scenario any of us ever imagined,” Asmussen said. “As they were loading into the gates, I was thinking how much goes into this exact moment and all of the buildup. And all the scenarios my rambling mind can come up with? That wasn’t one of them.

“At the head of the stretch, this is what you’re dreaming about. Oh, and by the way, you’re about to get run down by a claimer. And I don’t mean that as any disrespect to the winner. What a beautiful story.”