Kentucky Derby: Connections of Hit Show looking for untainted win

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Gary and Mary West watched their colors cross the line first at Churchill Downs, only to have roses literally taken out of their hands. Trainer Brad Cox experienced the opposite, as he saddled a colt to cross the line second in the Kentucky Derby, only to later be promoted to the victory.

Together, the owners and trainer team up in this Saturday’s running of the Derby with Hit Show, hoping for a first-place finish they can celebrate this time.

“I want to win the race – and cross the wire first,” said Cox, who also will saddle Angel of Empire, Jace’s Road, and Verifying in this Saturday’s race.

In the 2019 Kentucky Derby, the Wests’s homebred Maximum Security, trained at the time by Jason Servis, veered out at the five-sixteenths pole, impacting several other horses, before going on to cross the line 1 3/4 lengths ahead of Country House. After a lengthy inquiry, he was disqualified from first to 17th, a decision the Wests appealed without success.

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Two years later, Cox watched Mandaloun, whom he saddled for Juddmonte Farms, lose by a half-length by Medina Spirit in the Derby. A little more than a week after the race, trainer Bob Baffert acknowledged that Medina Spirit had tested positive for betamethasone, a medication that is banned on race day in Kentucky. On Feb. 21, 2022, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission issued the ruling that Medina Spirit had been disqualified and Mandaloun had been promoted to the Derby victory. The decision is still under appeal.

Hit Show, by Candy Ride, also is a West homebred, out of their homebred multiple graded stakes-winning mare Actress. The gray colt put his name into the Kentucky Derby mix when he overcame a bump at the start to win the Grade 3 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct by 5 1/2 lengths while going nine furlongs. He then ran that distance again in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial in April and was between horses down the stretch in a jostling finish to be second by a nose.

Hit Show has done his share of shipping, and Cox feels that experience will serve him well this week.

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“He’s been on an airplane this winter, vanned from Fair Grounds to Keeneland, Keeneland to Belmont, and then obviously shipping over to Aqueduct to race,” he said. “So I’m hopeful that all that experience, all that stuff we’ve done with him, will pay off when he’s in front of 150,000 people. He’ll hopefully settle and his mind’s on right. I love how he came out of the Wood Memorial.”

Hit Show and jockey Manny Franco drew the rail in the 20-horse starting gate for the Derby. Wednesday morning, the colt practiced in the schooling gate in the quarter-mile chute at Churchill Downs, loading in the inside slot several times with Verifying and Jace’s Road taking turns outside him.

Of drawing the rail, Cox said: “It’s okay. We’ll live with it. We have to. He’s doing great. Manny is obviously going to have to work out a trip from down in there.”

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