For owner Rick Dawson, winning the Kentucky Derby was an out-of-this-world experience.
“What planet is this?” Dawson said. “I feel like I have been propelled somewhere. I’m not sure. This is unbelievable. I asked my trainer up on the stage, I said, ‘Are you sure this is not a dream? Because it can’t be true.’ He assured me, ‘This is real.’ ”
Eric Reed is a folk hero – and it took an 80-1 winner of the Kentucky Derby to finally bring that fact to light.
Only after Rich Strike became the second-longest-priced winner in race history with his $163.60 mutuel in the May 7 Derby has it become known what Reed overcame to get there as the winning trainer. His perseverance and inner strength away from the racetrack add to what was already an incredible tale.
ELMONT, N.Y. – He didn’t run in the Kentucky Derby. He didn’t run in the Preakness. And in his first stakes try, We the People didn’t do much running, finishing seventh of nine in the Arkansas Derby. The best horses from that race and the other final round of Derby preps all went on to races like the Derby and Preakness, while We the People was rerouted to the Peter Pan.
ELMONT, N.Y. – A behind-the-scenes player for many noteworthy horses over the last 15 years or so, trainer Rodolphe Brisset has stepped into the spotlight with We the People, the morning-line favorite for Saturday’s 154th Belmont Stakes.
ELMONT, N.Y. – In its 10 years of existence, the racehorse partnership Eclipse Thoroughbreds has had 16 different Grade 1-winning racehorses, captured two Breeders’ Cup races, a Triple Crown race, the Australian Oaks, and a stakes at Royal Ascot. Pretty heady stuff. But this coming week has the potential to be one of the most significant in the organization’s history.
ELMONT, N.Y. - There are a bevy of multiple-race, multiple-day wagers on Friday and Saturday at Belmont Park.
There is a pick-6 with a minimum 20-cent wager that will include races run over two days. The wager consists of Friday’s True North and New York Stakes and Saturday’s Woody Stephens, Jaipur, Manhattan and Belmont Stakes. The takeout is 15 percent and the entire pool must be paid out.
There will be a pick-four with a $2 minimum bet that consists of Friday’s New York and Intercontinental and Saturday’s Manhattan and Belmont. The takeout is 24 percent.
BELMONT PARK
Weather: Clear
Track: Fast
Temp: 65
ELMONT, N.Y. - Any notion that RICH STRIKE had emptied the tank with his monster performance a month earlier at Churchill Downs may have finally been dismissed once and for all here Tuesday morning. The Kentucky Derby winner turned in an eye-catching two-mile gallop over the main track shortly after the renovation break.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Be it going six furlongs or twice that far, speed, handicappers long have been told, is always dangerous.
So even though the Belmont Stakes is a testing 1 1/2 miles, the likelihood that We the People will be loose on the lead Saturday, over a track at which he just scored a front-running victory in the Peter Pan, propelled We the People to the morning-line favorite over the likes of Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike and six others when the field for the 154th Belmont was drawn Tuesday here at Belmont Park.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Before there was Rich Strike, there was Sarava.
Twenty years before Rich Strike became the second-longest shot to win the Kentucky Derby at 80-1, Sarava upset the 2002 Belmont Stakes at 70-1. The $142.50-win mutuel still ranks as the highest-priced winner in the 153 runnings of the race.
Ken McPeek was the trainer of Sarava, who under Edgar Prado beat Medaglia d’Oro by a half-length in the same race in which War Emblem was going for the Triple Crown.
