Kentucky Derby 2021: Luis Saez gets another chance with favorite
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Everybody has their ups and downs, but c’mon – what Luis Saez has crammed into a relatively short time is mind-boggling.
Saez, 28, enjoys the kind of prosperous life that people his age can only dream of. He’s a wildly successful jockey, one who zoomed to the very top of his profession in just a few years. Since leaving his native Panama for the United States in 2009, his mounts have won 2,600 races and nearly $136 million in purse money. He has accumulated more wealth in a dozen years of riding racehorses than most people can hope to earn in a lifetime.
Saez rides regularly at the most prestigious American tracks, bouncing around from sunny Gulfstream Park in the winter to picturesque Keeneland in the spring and fall while making the big-league venues of Belmont and Saratoga his primary base. His job has taken him to a multitude of destinations he would not have experienced otherwise, including Canada and the Middle East, with his most recent overseas foray resulting in him winning the March 27 Dubai World Cup, a $12 million race, aboard Mystic Guide. After returning to the United States, all he did was dominate the Keeneland spring meet as easily the leading rider.
He has three healthy children and a devoted wife, Andrea. He remains very close to his parents and his sister back home in Panama City, and he returns there to see them as often as he can, sometimes declining opportunities to ride in Europe or the Far East so he can do so.
And yet.
Saez has suffered two of the most egregious losses anyone can imagine. His younger brother, Juan, died from injuries suffered in a riding spill at Indiana Grand in suburban Indianapolis in October 2014. It was an absolutely crushing blow, one that will haunt his family as long as they live.
“My brother is on my mind 24/7,” he said in a quiet moment recently at Keeneland. “Nothing is tougher than that. I’ve been through a lot.”
“Luis was very, very distraught at the time, which anyone can understand,” said Richard DePass, a former jockey who retired as Saez’s longtime agent in April 2020 but remains a close friend and confidant.
Less than five years later, Saez was deprived of every jockey’s dream – winning the Kentucky Derby – shortly after his mount in the 2019 running, Maximum Security, crossed under the Churchill Downs wire ahead of all 18 of his opponents, only to be disqualified for interference that occurred as the field approached the quarter pole on a rain-soaked track.
Maximum Security was placed 17th by the Churchill stewards. It’s the only disqualification of a Derby winner for an ontrack violation in 146 runnings.
Insult piled onto injury, indeed.
“It was a tough moment in that time,” Saez said. “Very tough.”
Saez stops short of saying he believes the stewards should have kept Maximum Security as the winner instead of awarding victory to Country House, the 65-1 shot who was second under the wire after largely avoiding the crowding that led to the disqualification.
“It looked pretty bad,” he said, “but the horse inside of me [War of Will], when he tried to come out, he hit my heels, and that’s why my horse [veered out sharply]. It wasn’t my fault, but oh well, the stewards decided to take us down.”
The post-race inquiry led to tremendous tension, especially among those involved. With reporters and cameramen lurking close by, Saez stood stoically as the stewards took 22 minutes to reach their conclusion. When the disqualification was announced, he was disappointed, of course, but any display of bitterness was not overly pronounced.
“I don’t know how he maintained his composure through all that, with the cameras in his face and everything,” DePass said. “It must have felt like the longest walk ever back to the jocks’ room.”
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Today, Saez can more easily shrug off any regrets that may linger.
“We just keep the head up,” said Saez, who now is represented by former trainer Kiaran McLaughlin as his agent. “We’ve come back, tried to leave that in the past, just keep looking forward.”
“He sure seems to do well overcoming adversity,” DePass said.
The Derby, said Saez, “is a race everybody wants – my dream. But I always felt like we can come back and one day, you never know, we can win the race again. So I never give up.”
Lo and behold, after missing the race last year for the first time since making his Derby debut in 2013, Saez is back at Churchill with the mount on Essential Quality, the favorite for the 147th running on Saturday. The gray Godolphin homebred is undefeated in five starts, with Saez having ridden him in his last four – the Breeders’ Futurity and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last fall at Keeneland, followed by the Southwest and Blue Grass in his two Derby preps at 3.
“He’s been doing very well,” Saez said. “He’s a tough horse and of course he has a good chance to win the Derby. There’s going to be more speed in front of us” than in the Blue Grass, when he was near the pace throughout, “but I don’t know, it’s the Derby. We’re going to break and try to find a good spot and go from there.”
Brad Cox, trainer of Essential Quality, said Saez is “the kind of jockey everybody wants on their horse. He’s smart, talented, very strong, fearless. We’re lucky to have him.”
Julio Espinoza, a former jockey and fellow Panamanian who now works as agent for Rafael Bejarano, was the agent for Juan Saez when the jockey died at age 17. Espinoza, 65, recalled the Saez brothers “used to race horses on the concrete back home in Panama when they were kids – they grew up very tough.”
Still, said Espinoza, “I don’t know where Luis finds all the energy to ride the way he does. He is amazing. He must have great lungs or something. He never gets tired.”
Juan Saez was living in Espinoza’s home in Louisville at the time of his death.
“I loved that kid,” Espinoza said. “He and Luis looked so much alike, like twins, that it makes me sad to see Luis now. I have a ton of respect for him, though, the way he has handled himself. He’s been through so much.”
A few days before the 2018 Derby, when he rode Magnum Moon, Saez said in a Daily Racing Form interview in the Churchill jockeys’ room that he dedicates his success to God and to the memory of his brother.
“I want to win the race for him,” he said then.
A year later, he did just that – only to have it taken away. The ultimate “angel on his shoulder” storyline was foiled by the Maximum Security disqualification, but yes, here he is again, as determined as ever, eyes fixed on the elusive prize.
“He’s done amazingly well to get over all he’s had to deal with,” DePass said. “He’s an incredible young man, honestly.”
Saez, more than anyone, has the proper perspective. Racing is his career, but family is his life.
“Losing my brother was the most bitter,” he said, “but I feel like he is always looking down on us and I’m pretty sure he is happy to see everything that is going on. We are so blessed.”