A bay colt by Curlin and out of the Bernardini mare Carrumba came into this world on Feb. 7, 2023, foaled at famed Claiborne Farm, where he spent the first 18 months of his existence parading through paddocks, frolicking in fields. Late in the summer of 2024, the bucolic chapter of this colt’s life came to an end. Off to Williston, Fla., to be broken at Eisaman Equine. “Breaking” sounds harsh, doesn’t it? This colt did not at all require a breaking of will in order to accept a saddle, then a rider, then the commands of a rider. Having been “broken,” the colt moved on to more complex tasks – running round an oval, running alongside another horse. :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Barry Eisaman has watched thousands of young horses, many of them bluebloods and future stars, come to the training center to learn these lessons. He remembers nearly all of them. He definitely remembers the Curlin colt. “He was attractive, had great bone. He was tough, sound, showed up for work every day. If there was a little runny nose going around, he wouldn’t get it. Never had a swollen ankle, any of those little things. Tireless. Excellent behavior at the starting gate,” Eisaman said. A straight-A student, this colt, but for one minor detail: Nobody knew if he could run. At all. The colt showed no speed whatsoever. He might finish up with a blip of energy at the end of a short workout. Whatever the opposite of “brilliance” – that was this guy. And when Eisaman had done all he could to prepare his charge for the races, sent the 2-year-old off to join trainer Cherie DeVaux’s string at Ellis Park, he could not have known he was saying goodbye to a Kentucky Derby winner. Derby winners come from all quarters, of course, but most horses that might stand an actual chance to win the Kentucky Derby hinted at it long before the first Saturday in May. Hark back, for instance, to Fusaichi Pegasus, winner of the 2000 Derby. At his birthplace, Stone Farm, they called him “Superman.” This horse, no superhero, just some random dude sidling down the street. Nine months later, everybody knows the horse can run. Golden Tempo won the Derby at odds of 23-1. He’ll be among the favorites for the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga, the same horse DeVaux first laid eyes on last summer – yet totally different. “He came in the first week of August,” DeVaux said. “He wasn’t a horse that was . . . very precocious. The conversation was he’s a horse very much in development. With a horse that has that physical makeup, and the way he trained at the time, you really have to see the future and trust the process. Going three-eighths, he doesn’t have a lot of get up and go. He’d kind of just lumber around there.” Plenty of lumbering took place. Golden Tempo posted his first official workout Aug. 19. He breezed six times at Ellis before moving in late September to Keeneland, where he worked Oct. 4 and Oct. 11 before a minor setback kept him from breezing again until Nov. 7. Four works during November before it was off to winter quarters, Fair Grounds, though by then, DeVaux already had decided she had seen enough practice. “The farther he breezed, the better he looked, and sometimes you just got to run them and see where you’re at,” DeVaux said. “We were just expecting him to get experience – a lot of times horses like him, colts especially, they’ll come with a run but give themselves a lot to do, pick up the pieces. I was not expecting him to finish and fire the way he did going six furlongs.” Jose Ortiz had never sat on Golden Tempo before DeVaux gave him a leg up in the Fair Grounds paddock before the third race on Dec. 20. Golden Tempo had not been hiding anything. He flopped out of the gate like a sack of potatoes and a half-furlong later sat last of 10. “Cherie told me that eventually he was going to be a two-turn horse,” Ortiz said, recalling pre-race discussions. “Just make him do everything right and teach him, and if he wins, he wins. He was very green in the early stages. At the three-furlong pole, he figured it out.” At the eighth pole, Golden Tempo still had six lengths to find. He won by 1 1/2 lengths. Golden Tempo never had posted an official work longer than a half-mile. Had his debut come over that distance, he’d have finished something like seventh. This is a horse who not only needed time to grow up but needed sufficient distance, true route races, to reveal his ability. American dirt racing prizes nothing more than a flashy, fast horse. Try to imagine Golden Tempo going to a 2-year-old sale and breezing a furlong. Tack on nine more of them, and the colt might have raised some eyebrows. “In hindsight, we could say even in his little works here, he was never interested in pulling up,” Eisaman said. “One of the hugely positive aspects was Cherie training him. In some other systems, he’d have been overlooked. After two and three works, he’d have been in Stall 50 a mile from the barn office.” An actual race will awaken some horses of Golden Tempo’s ilk. Going from a sprint debut to a route second start, as Golden Tempo did, might find them much closer to the pace. Not this colt. DeVaux ran Golden Tempo back in the Lecomte Stakes on Jan. 17. “Second time out, I thought he would break better and put me a lot closer – and he didn’t,” Ortiz said. “He just has no speed – no speed. But he came to life on the second turn.” Last of 10 with a little more than a quarter-mile to run, Golden Tempo hit the line 1 3/4 lengths best, but a month later in the 1 1/8-mile Risen Star, Golden Tempo’s habitual lagging got him beat. He did manage to stick closer to the pace than in his first two starts, but the Fair Grounds track on Feb. 14 favored front-runners. Golden Tempo made his run and lost by six lengths. DeVaux already had considered blinkers, and after the Risen Star she made that equipment change. His first breeze in blinkers, Ortiz worked the colt and felt an immediate difference. Golden Tempo jumped into the bridle, got interested much earlier than usual. He went out March 21 in the Louisiana Derby and promptly dropped back to last. This time, the track didn’t favor forward placements, and Golden Tempo loomed large at the furlong grounds, Emerging Market and Pavlovian the last two horses to catch. Ortiz saw that pair drifting and drifting and elected to drop down toward the fence for a final move, but while Golden Tempo closed late ground, he came up third best. “He put up a good run, but I felt like he was a little bit spotty,” Ortiz said. Still, the horse had the qualifying points to make the Derby, and in the wake of the Louisiana Derby, DeVaux had every intention of bringing him there six weeks later. Take a good gander at this horse, who campaigns for his breeders, the Phipps Stable and St. Elias Stable. Not especially tall, but there’s a lot of him. Stamina’s his forte, but Golden Tempo looks more like a fullback than a greyhound. “I love the series in New Orleans, running every four weeks, and from a training standpoint, with a horse like him, he almost has to race himself into fitness,” DeVaux said. “But when we got the six weeks, and we had a chance to hone in, we had a couple works where we could really see the change in him.” Four starts into his career and Golden Tempo still looked heavy to DeVaux. Finally, about a week before the Derby, she gazed upon her charge and saw something different. Gone was the last baby fat. Before her stood a sculpted spring 3-year-old. Was Golden Tempo blowing everyone away in the morning? He was not, but week after week, he worked professionally, went about all his business with confident assurance. Ortiz changed his approach, too. At Fair Grounds, Ortiz had focused on getting his mount into the race, riding him aggressively through the first two or three furlongs. Lot of good that did. “I decided in the Derby, being a mile and a quarter, my plan was just not rush him at all. Just let him get together, and maybe the pace will fall apart. Just make one move from the five-eighths to the wire,” Ortiz said. Eighteen horses ran in the Derby, and into the second turn, Golden Tempo could see 17 of them. Still, the race Ortiz hoped to find was materializing. The first half-mile came up fast, the tempo still hot going round the final bend as Ortiz got Golden Tempo outside and into the clear. At the quarter pole, Golden Tempo hit high gear – or what had been his high gear. “From the eighth pole to the wire, he gave me a gear he hadn’t showed before,” Ortiz said. Ours is an impatient world that loves fast, shiny stuff. Precocity’s prized above all in young Thoroughbreds – often for good reason. “If you have 50 horses come in here that are disinterested in showing speed, you hope one will work out because a lot of them are just always going to be disinterested,” Eisaman said. How do you tell which is which? “That’s like looking into their soul!” Distance equals speed multiplied by time. Time equals distance divided by speed. Some Derby winners need more time than others. Golden Tempo just needed more distance to show his speed. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.