Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike: A longshot brings joy back to racing

LOUISVILLE — This is what the Kentucky Derby does: It rises, it falls. It elevates, it diminishes. It rewards, it punishes. It welcomes storylines but does not make promises; it exists outside the whims and wants of bureaucrats and rulers. It pays homage only to the result. This is also what the Derby does: It makes us laugh, cry, cringe. It makes us thrilled or gutted. Sometimes it makes us squirm. And most of all, the Derby cares not in the least which of these emotions it evokes. There is no man behind the curtain. There are just 1 ¼ miles on the first Saturday in May, first to the line gets roses, no matter whom.

So on a cool, grey Saturday at Churchill Downs, a blustery day more suited to college football than horse racing, victory in the 148th Derby could have gone to one of the two horses prepared for the race by disgraced celebrity trainer Bob Baffert and cosmetically transferred to another trainer to allow them to run, a hopelessly awkward outcome for the sport. It could have gone to Epicenter or Zandon, the horses deemed best by most handicappers. It could have gone to Crown Pride, a horse bred in Japan, trying to make history.

It went to none of these.

It went, instead, to a place somewhere beyond handicapping, beyond reason, and beyond lucid dreams. It went to a chestnut colt named Rich Strike, who earned a place in the 20-horse field only because another horse scratched on the day before the Derby. A horse who was claimed for $30,000 after his first start last June, who hadn’t won a race since a maiden victory more than six months ago and came to the Derby on a five-race losing streak. Whose jockey, Sonny Leon, had never won a graded stakes race in his career and does most of his riding in the thoroughbred