![]() ![]() His dad gave him two horses and essentially said, “There you go. Reed, a charmingly rumpled Kentuckian, told his father upon his high school graduation that he intended to follow in his old man’s footsteps and become a trainer. They are, like their horse, long shots in the purest form of the word. When Herbert told his son how proud he was of him, Reed started to cry, the two wrapping their arms around one another, overwhelmed with emotion. Asked to describe his emotions, owner Rick Dawson closed his eyes and muttered, “What planet are we on?” Their extended entourage of family and friends started up a chant of “Rich Strike, Rich Strike,” shouted, “Big E!” when Reed was introduced, and hooted and hollered so much it felt more like being in an NFL Draft pit than at a Derby news conference. The Rich Strike team, by comparison, was so green that when they headed to the dais, trainer Eric Reed, jockey Sonny Leon and Reed’s father, Herbert, sort of lingered behind the microphones, not realizing they were expected to sit down. “It’s Baffert.’’ He held court in his postrace news conferences, good for at least one reference to his wife, Jill, and his son, Bode, spinning yarns that he knew made for good TV. The white-haired owner, in a tailored suit and ever-cool sunglasses, is the sport’s biggest kingpin, and even when his horses aren’t supposed to win, their victories can be easily shrugged off with an explainer. Even when Baffert was “shocked” by a win - a win that ended up not being a win after Medina Spirit was disqualified and Baffert exiled from Churchill Downs and accused of drugging the horse - it was hard to buy the shock value. It was, in fact, impossible not to juxtapose this Derby win with last year’s. The bright lights belong to Bob Baffert and the conglomerate ownership teams, the ones that invest millions of dollars in horses and get the big payouts, not to a trainer who quotes a TV bass fisherman in his news conference, the jockey whose best win came in Ohio, and the owner who figures he’s had fewer than 10 winners in his career. Usually, they stay there in the shadows, enjoying some modicum of success that never percolates up to the real world’s attention. There are countless people like them in the sport, all toiling in obscurity because, somewhere along the line, they found a passion for horses they couldn’t shake and decided to hang on for the ride. Theirs is a tale of horse racing in the purest sense, if you will, the kind forged on a small farm more in keeping with the simplicity of the backside than the glitz and glamour of the front side. ![]()
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