Three Technique's longshot connections thrilled by Knicks Go victory

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kentucky Derby Day 2022 was a day of monumental upsets, and not just in the big one.

The inaugural Knicks Go Stakes, held nearly six hours before Rich Strike launched his 80-1 stunner in the 148th Derby, also lit up the Churchill Downs toteboard when Three Technique returned $75.60.

The winning connections went out of their minds after that one, too. Some 50 people affiliated with owner David Miller and trainer Jason Cook packed the winner’s circle in an exceedingly exuberant celebration.

“I’d won stakes before,” said Jason Cook, the trainer of Three Technique. “But this one, it means more to me than any win I’ve ever had.”

One big reason: Cook, 48, got to revel in the victory with his 12-year-old daughter, Peyton, who was born seven weeks premature, weighing less than two pounds. When Peyton was 2 1/2, her mother, Tracey, died of sepsis.

Cook has raised Peyton alone through the intervening years, “with the help of a whole lot of other people,” he said early Monday from the Trackside training center, where his stable currently consists of seven horses, a typical number for him. “There were a lot of people in tears after this one.”

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Three Technique was claimed for $40,000 in a 27-way shake by Miller, a local businessman, on Nov. 28, closing day of the 2021 fall meet at Churchill. Ridden by Rafael Bejarano, the 5-year-old horse by Mr Speaker edged away in the final furlong of the one-turn-mile Knicks Go in prevailing by a length to earn a winner’s share of $94,366.

Three Technique, then trained by Jeremiah Englehart, had finished second in the Smarty Jones at Oaklawn Park in January 2020 when becoming a fringe candidate for the Kentucky Derby later that year. His form eventually tailed off, eliminating him from the Derby, and more than a year later, Miller and Cook were among the many would-be claimants thinking his prior connections “were giving up on him too soon,” said Cook. The Grade 3 Steve Sexton Mile on May 30 at Lone Star Park is the next likely target, he added.

The stakes win was the first in nearly 25 years for Cook, who has never had a job anywhere but the racetrack since graduating from Southern High, the Louisville school best known for producing Hall of Fame quarterback Phil Simms. His four prior stakes triumphs all came in a span of a little more than eight months, from Sept. 1996 to May 1997, with Sapphire Beads and Rare Indication winning two apiece.

Cook’s father, Lois “L.C.” Cook, was a top jockey in the country from the 1940s and into the 60s when riding mostly in the Midwest. His greatest win also came on Derby weekend at Churchill, where he booted home Lori-El in the Kentucky Oaks in 1957, well before Jason was born. L.C. Cook died in 1988.

“The Oaks win picture is hanging in my house,” said Cook. “My dad won the Clark and most of the big races at Churchill during his time. Hell, there’s a picture of Marilyn Monroe kissing him on the cheek after he won the American Derby” at Arlington Park aboard Dunce in 1959 for Claiborne Farm.

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L.C. Cook was one of 15 children who grew up in the coal-mining town of Kona in Letcher County in eastern Kentucky. He somehow found his way to Chicago, where he began riding at the old Washington Park.

“I went to Oaklawn Park about 15 years ago and was talking to a couple of older guys, one of them a steward, and we were looking at a life-size picture of the 1955 Arkansas Derby behind some stairs,” said Jason Cook. “I said, ‘That’s my dad on the horse,’ ” Trim Destiny. “And one of the guys, said, ‘Oh my God, I had his book when I was in college.’ You could write a book about my dad.”

Cook recorded his first of 142 career wins in June 1993 with a $4,000 claimer named One Dark Cloud at Churchill. He was 19. It’s mostly been tough sledding in the nearly 30 years that have passed – in 11 of those years, he had two or fewer winners – but he wouldn’t trade his experience in racing for anything.

“Most of the times you learn from losing,” he said. “I’ve learned all my important lessons from losing, from paying a price. There are very few times you can learn something from winning – and this was one of them. This was quite a moment. I learned that if you keep grinding and believe something is going to happen, it can happen.”