Best of SI: The Rise and Disappearance of the 2019 Kentucky Derby Champ

Last year's controversial victor ran a rare course, straight from the winner's circle to pasture. On what should have been race week, SI asks: What the heck happened to Country House?

When Larry Roth returned to his Long Island home last May, from Louisville, he unpacked a pair of muddy boots and declared he would never clean them again. He and his family had bought cheap ponchos and galoshes at a Walmart the night before the Kentucky Derby, bracing for a sloppy Saturday at Churchill Downs. And the rains came as expected, soaking the masses in their finery, rendering the track a gooey mess. “It was a miserable day,” says Roth.

But when the 65-to-1 long shot colt that Roth co-owned, Country House, was named the most controversial winner in the 145-year history of the Derby, that mud took on a magical quality. The dirt-caked boots were going to be Roth’s prized souvenir from a day unlike any other in the annals of America’s greatest horse race.

Then his housekeeper saw them. And made the unilateral decision to wash them. The cherished Churchill soil was gone in an instant. Frustrating but fitting, given what would become of Country House’s career.

After 125 seconds of racing last May 4, then a 22-minute delay for a steward’s ruling that elevated the runner-up colt to first and disqualified Maximum Security, a garland of roses was laid across Country House’s shoulders. Then the winner of the 2019 Kentucky Derby all but disappeared.

He’d come up out of nowhere to win the Derby, then promptly returned there. Country House never ran another step. “That was it, his run through the [Churchill] stretch,” says the horse’s trainer, Bill Mott. “But that was a good one.”

Click Here to read the rest of "The Flukish, Fascinating Rise—and Sudden Disappearance—of the 2019 Kentucky Derby Champion," for FREE at Sports Illustrated!