Sunday 8 May 2022 07:14 AM Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike was bought for just $30K before beating 80-1 ... trends now
The story of Kentucky Derby-winning horse Rich Strike shocked the sports world on Saturday and the colt's entire team is a story of underdogs persevering.
Rich Strike wasn't even in the Derby field until Friday when Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas scratched Ethereal Road, making room for the chestnut colt trained by Eric Reed.
The horse was purchased by Rick Dawson, who races as RED TR-Racing LLC, for $30,000 last fall when the colt was entered in a low-level claiming race by former owner Calumet Farm, who bred the horse.
Rich Strike earned $1.86 million for just his second career victory. The colt lost to Zandon in the Blue Grass Stakes last month and was beaten by derby favorite Epicenter in the Louisiana Derby in March.
Trainer Reed endured a tragedy five years ago when he lost nearly two dozen horses in a barn fire after lightning struck his training center in Lexington.
Reed puts up one finger to signify how his horse performed at Churchill Downs
Trainer Eric Reed (L), Jockey Sonny Leon (C), and Owner Rick Dawson (R) celebrate with the trophy after Rich Strike won the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs
Leon regularly rides on some of the country's smallest circuits, where the horse flesh is inexpensive and the purse money modest.
Jockey Sonny Leon guided Rich Strike from far back in the 20-horse field to beat 4-1 favorite Epicenter by three-quarters of a length
He briefly considered the fire might be a signal for him to leave the sport.
'When we drove up on that that night, I told my wife, I said, 'We've probably lost everything,'' Reed told the Louisville Courier Journal. 'By the grace of God, the wind was blowing in a direction that kept it from getting to the other two barns. 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 the stuff we had done to get this beautiful farm and have this happen, that something might be telling me it's the end of the line.'
He said that the kindness of friends, high-profile trainers and people he'd met in the business over the years was the thing that kept him going.
'People I hadn't seen, people I haven't talked to in years, my best friends were there in the morning to pick me up,' Reed recalled. 'It let me know there's so much good out there, and then I just decided I wasn't going to let it take me out.'
Prior to the Derby, Reed trained horses on such a small scale that he didn't even have a Wikipedia page.
Trainer Reed endured a tragedy five years ago when he lost nearly two dozen horses in a barn fire after lightning struck his training center in Lexington
Firefighters believe the fire was caused by storms that passed through Kentucky
