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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
It was back in 2006 and Brian Hernandez, Jr. was mired in 12th place in the jockey standings at Churchill Downs with 14 wins. It wasn't that he had been a failure. He won an Eclipse Award in 2004 as the nation's top apprentice, winning 243 races that year. And before moving to the Kentucky circuit in 2006, he was among the top riders at Evangeline Downs and Delta Downs in his native Louisiana. It's just that Hernandez had larger goals and he was starting to worry they would never come to fruition. “There was one point right after I lost the bug around 2006 that I got pretty discouraged. I was planning on packing it in and returning to Louisiana,” he said Sunday, a day after his winning ride aboard Mystik Dan (Goldencents) in the GI Kentucky Derby and two days after he captured the GI Kentucky Oaks with Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna). But something made him stay, and it was the best decision of his career. Hernandez is anything but an overnight sensation. But he never quit, never stopped working and never lost the desire to be one of the leading riders in the sport. It took some time, but it looks like he has made it. Ordinary riders don't win the GI Kentucky Oaks and the GI Kentucky Derby on back-to-back days, with each win coming as the result of a perfect ride. “I'm hoping that we opened up some eyes,” the 38-year-old Hernandez said. He was born in Louisiana, where his father, Brian Hernandez, Sr., was riding on the Delta Downs-Evangeline Downs circuit. It didn't take the younger Hernandez long to figure out what he wanted to do. “We grew up around Evangeline and Delta Downs where my dad was a jockey,” Hernandez said. “My little brother, Colby, and I grew up watching him race and we both wanted to be jockeys. There's a photo floating around of me when I was about six years old wearing my dad's jockey pants and my saying that some day I was going to win the Kentucky Derby.” Like his father, he started off at Evangeline and Delta and in 2004 won 243 races and was named champion apprentice. After winning 100 races in 2005 without his apprentice allowance, he decided to move on to Kentucky in 2006, which would prove to be one of the worst years of his career. He won only 65 races. “I was a young kid and my business kind of tailed off,” he said. “It was one of those things. We fell out of the pecking order. We had to put our nose to the grindstone and work it out. Here in Kentucky, trainers want too see if you're going to stick things out and make things work. More than anything, it took putting in the time and the effort and having the kind of work ethic that says, 'Hey, we're just as capable of winning on your horse as any jock.'” His fortunes would improve and in 2012 he won the GI Breeders' Cup Classic with Fort Larned (E Dubai). But that changed little. He remained a middle-of-the-pack jockey in Kentucky. “The thing about my career is I've been fortunate to ride for many of the same guys for a long, long time,” he said. “That's the thing about when you ride for outfits. Guys go through cycles. There will be some years when they have really good horses and some years they don't. You have to stay loyal to the guys you ride for and you have to hope those guys stay loyal to you, which they have for the last 10 to 12 years.” In 2016, he won 156 races, the most since his apprentice year. That caught the attention of trainer Kenny McPeek, who started riding Hernandez in 2017 and would soon become his go-to rider. It was exactly the break Hernandez needed. Hernandez has won 232 races for McPeek, including 25 graded stakes. The list includes winning rides in the GI Ashland S., the GI Breeders' Futurity and the GI Alcibiades S. “He knows what to do out there,” McPeek said. “I always had a world of confidence in him. Rarely second guess anything he does.” As the year began, McPeek had a pretty good idea that he had some special horses in his barn. Mystik Dan won only one of three starts in 2023, but the win came in a rapidly run maiden race at Churchill Downs in which he turned some heads with a 7 3/4-length victory. He was fifth in his 3-year-old debut in the Smarty Jones, but followed that up with an eight-length romp in the GIII Southwest S. He then finished a well-beaten third in the GI Arkansas Derby. He wasn't winning every race, but on his best days, it appeared that he had the talent to beat the very best. Of course, getting a perfect ride doesn't hurt. Mystik Dan broke from the three hole and Hernandez instantly steered him to the rail out of the gate. He stayed glued to the rail while tracking front-runner Track Phantom (Quality Road). A narrow hole opened up as the field turned into the stretch and Hernandez and Mystik Dan squeezed their way through. After having saved ground every inch of the way, Mystik Dan had just enough left to hold off fierce late runs from Sierra Leone (Gun Runner) and the Japanese runner Forever Young (Jpn) (Real Steel {Jpn}). “Brian Hernandez gave him the ride,” McPeek said. “Look, he doesn't win the race without the job Brian did.” “It means a lot more winning it the way we did because that was the trip we envisioned,” Hernandez said. “I talked to Kenny about it. After we drew the three hole, that was kind of the trip I had envisioned. That's the beauty of riding for Kenny. He doesn't give me any instructions. He entrusts me to go out there and give the horse the best trip we can. When we drew the three hole I watched a lot of replays and picked out a horse we could follow that would get us to the second turn. When we crossed under the first time Track Phantom was on the lead and I was thinking 'Oh, man this is working out better than I dreamed.' It was a magical moment.” It was more of the same in the Kentucky Oaks. Hernandez guided Thorpedo Anna to the lead right from the start, never left the rail and never allowed another horse to get past him. Thorpedo Anna won, drawing away, by 4 3/4 lengths. With top jockeys like Tyler Gaffalione, Luis Saez, Florent Geroux and Jose Ortiz all calling the Kentucky circuit home, the competition at the Churchill meet will be fierce. But Brian Hernandez, Jr., who says he may ride in Saratoga this year, won't have to take a back seat to anyone. Not after the weekend he had. Why No Inquiry Did Sierra Leone cost Forever Young the win in the Derby? Maybe. In the stretch, Sierra Leone continued to bear in and was leaning all over Forever Young and bumped him at least six times. Had the two horses been separated by a couple of lengths at the wire, it would have been no big deal. But Forever Young, who was third, lost by two noses in one of the closest Derby finishes in history, and you can make a case that he might have won had Sierra Leone not laid all over him. Japanese rider Ryusei Sakai didn't claim foul, but that doesn't mean that the stewards couldn't have posted an inquiry and taken a look at the roughly run stretch. Taking down Sierra Leone was hardly a no-brainer, but at the very least the stewards should have taken a closer look at the stretch run. The post The Week in Review: Persistence Pays Off for Derby-Winning Jockey Hernandez appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Asked to sum up his victory with Mystik Dan (Goldencents) in Saturday's GI Kentucky Derby, trainer Ken McPeek succinctly said, “Wow,” Sunday morning on the Churchill Downs backside. An 18-1 outsider, Mystik Dan just held on to a nose victory after a rail-skimming trip under Brian Hernandez, Jr. “Brian Hernandez gave him the ride,” a joyous but sleep-deprived McPeek said. “Look, he doesn't win the race without the job Brian did.” For his part, Hernandez was appreciative of McPeek's faith in him. “I was fortunate to ride for Kenny,” said Hernandez. “He and the owners entrusted me to have the daring trip that we had. And we were fortunate to have a horse that trusted us, and he went through a couple of tight spots, and never thought twice about doing it. It was like, 'No problem,' and did it. It's a big team effort, more than anything.” Of his trip in the Derby, Hernandez said, “It got pretty tight. Going around the second turn, I was watching those horses to the outside, and the thing about a race like that, everyone starts to make their moves. They can just stack and stack and stack, but we were just sitting there waiting. And the minute that Joel [Rosario, riding 41-1 Track Phantom] made a half a step to go meet those horses, we're shooting through. When we did that, [Joel] tried to come back down, but by then, Mystik Dan was already through there.” With the wire fast approaching, Mystik Dan was all out to hold off the late-closing Sierra Leone (Gun Runner) and Forever Young (Jpn) (Real Steel {Jpn}) in a dramatic three-way photo finish. “We kind of busted through there right before we straightened up and headed for home,” Hernandez said. “And Mystik Dan switched leads, and spurted off, it was like, hurry up and get to the wire as fast as we can. It was just rolling. When we got to the eighth pole, I was thinking, 'Wow, we're about to win the Kentucky Derby. And then, right at the wire, it was like, maybe we got beat. He never stopped running. It was the first time they were going a mile-and-a-quarter, those horses were getting to him late, but he was there for us.” The Derby win completed a big 24 hours for McPeek and Hernandez, who teamed to win the GI Kentucky Oaks with Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) Friday. “For three weeks, I've felt that we had a shot at winning both races,” McPeek said. “Both horses have been doing fantastic. There was never any little issue, anywhere or anytime, with either horse. It was always all systems go.” Two members of the partnership that owns Mystik Dan were at the McPeek barn Sunday, checking out the horse, talking to the news media, and accepting the presentation of WWE championship title belts that the fight organization is presenting to winners at various sporting events this year. When asked how many trips to the Kentucky Derby they've made, both Lance Gasaway and Sherilyn Gasaway, wife of Lance's cousin Brent, made a startling admission. “Just one,” the two said in unison. McPeek is taking a wait-and-see approach to an engagement in the second leg of the Triple Crown in the May 18 GI Preakness S. “We're not committing,” the trainer said. “When I ran him back in two weeks [at Churchill Downs last November], it completely backfired. And we skipped the Rebel because it was too short as well. So we'll watch him over the next week, and probably decide then. It will be a last-minute decision. We'll let him tell us.” The newly minted Derby winner will ship to McPeek's Saratoga base and, should he skip the Preakness, will prepare there for the June 8 GI Belmont S. Thorpedo Anna will likely make her next start in the June 7 GI Acorn S. Of speculation the filly could take on the boys in the Belmont, McPeek said, “I couldn't have Brian riding both horses.” Also heading to Saratoga is Derby runner-up Sierra Leone. “He's good, but he's not going to the Preakness,” trainer Chad Brown said of Sierra Leone. “I'm going to take him to Saratoga tomorrow and he's going to train there for the Belmont. He's a little tired. He's a real laid back horse, but when we brought him he out, was a little more tired than he normally is after his races. I think giving him the five weeks to the Belmont is definitely the right thing to do.” Sierra Leone rallied from 18th early on, made a wide, sweeping move off the far turn, traded bumps with third-place finisher Forever Young in the lane and still only came up inches short. Brown said Sierra Leone does have a tendency to lean in and that jockey Tyler Gaffalione was trying to keep the colt straight in tight quarters with Forever Young without accidentally striking that rival with his stick. “There was so much bumping going on there,” Brown said. “When horses are fatigued, they have a tendency to lean in a bit like he did with his last two wins and it's going to be more exaggerated when they're more tired. He had so much to do and by the time he got to the eighth pole, he was leaning in a bit. “What Tyler was attempting to do is make room for his left stick, which the horse really respects, and keep him straight. And he was looking for sort of a pathway to use his left stick. But with the bumping, the tight duel between those two horses, it disarmed him with the stick. All he had was a rein to pull on and it really hurt his momentum. He couldn't use it because he had no room to use his left stick without hitting his horse. He didn't want to do that either. So he was trying create a path not only to straighten out my horse who really respects that, he was trying not to foul the other horse with the stick.” Brown concluded, “I'm very proud of the horse. I'm disappointed with the result, but I'm so proud of the horse. In my mind, he ran the best race. That's no disrespect to the winner. It's just, it's a hard race to win, everything has to go right. With the winner, the horse showed up and was prepared right and he ran terrific. You have to have a trip where everything goes right. “It's not [Mystik Dan's] fault the doors opened for him, I wish that would have happened for me. But I don't think lesser of the winner's performance. It's just an example of two trips. But that's what has to happen here. For us, I don't think we had a bad trip. But our horse was very far back on a track that favors speed and he had to go around a lot of horses and he had a ton of ground to make up. To almost get there despite all that, I really feel he ran the best race. We'll see going forward the rest of the year where he stacks up with the entire body of work.” Susumu Fujita's Forever Young was scheduled to return to Japan Tuesday starting with a van trip to Chicago and then a flight to Narita. Fujita left Louisville after the race Saturday night, but told Hiroshi Ando, racing manager for trainer Yoshito Yahagi, that he “enjoyed the massive atmosphere and was proud of his horse's performance.” Despite the bumping down the lane between Sierra Leone and Forever Young, no claim of foul was made by jockey Ryusei Sakai. “Claims of foul do not happen much in Japan,” Ando explained. “It is the stewards' call, not us.” Kentucky Derby favorite Fierceness (City of Light) came out of his disappointing 15th-place effort none-the-worse for wear, according to trainer Todd Pletcher. “The colt seems fine this morning,” trainer Todd Pletcher said. “He cooled out fine and scoped clean and he's doing OK. I haven't had a chance to discuss what's next with [owner] Mike [Repole], but I think we will take a couple of weeks and let the dust settle before we make any decision. I believe he'll ship up to Saratoga in the next week.” The post Wowed by Derby Win, McPeek Won’t Commit to Preakness with Mystik Dan appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
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