Mystik Dan Ekes Out A Win, Sierra Leone Places, Forever Young Shows

As a marquee-race upset, the (18-1) underdog Mystik Dan’s breathtaking victory in the 150th Kentucky Derby was a work of athletic art and a great boon for its sport at Churchill’s storied track on Saturday. Breaking two stalls from the rail, and under the cool, sure hand of Louisiana-born Brian Hernandez, the young stallion summoned all he had to thread his way through the first and second tiers of far more-favored horses, then he had to scramble to fend off the last two of them, Sierra Leone and Forever Young, by a razor-thin margin at the wire.

He won by a nose, but that actually doesn’t describe it — it was something like a whisker, so close that it caused even the battle-worn Churchill stewards to delay their official call as they dissected the finish-line snap. For the trainers and jockeys involved, not to mention the owners or the thousands of players, those were a couple of very long minutes.

As the clock ticked on with no declared winner, Hernandez turned Mystik Dan this way and that on the track, biding his time with his outrider, trying to figure out if he should head to the winner’s circle or not. He smiled broadly when the news cementing his victory flashed on the board.

The way Hernandez won the race — for it was Hernandez who won it — was this: He kept Mystik Dan driving to defend his dwindling, microscopic lead, which kept the horse’s nose out to graze the line first. A nanosecond behind but charging in on the outside, a Sierra Leone bore down and flashed into place, and between them, Forever Young clung to show.

But Hernandez’ victory was built further back inside the race than the last furlong. The early going was no less a cliff-hanger, with the favorite Fierceness popping as expected into the front early, but then his backers and connections began to rue the day, because it quickly became clear that Fierceness was delivering yet another of his dispirited fading tricks at the top of the backstretch, as the hard-driving pack neared the far turn. He would finish the race a lackluster fifteenth, with literally all the top horses and many more less talented runners than he ahead of him.

He did have a bad, rather hopping start, but that didn’t seem to be enough to be the key to his bad race. Talented though he is, and training in the last weeks rather like a rocket, on race day Fierceness didn’t even look ready for the Triple Crown’s shortest race, the Preaknesss, much less a roiling, chaotic Kentucky Derby. It seemed, in fact, as if the infamous fanfare and madness of a Derby day might actually have gotten to him. Whether or not that proves to be the case, it’s going to be back to school for Mr. Juvenile -And-Then-Some with Todd Pletcher.

Going off at 18-1, Mystik Dan paid $39.22 to win, Sierra Leone paid the estimated low $6.54 to place, and Forever Young brought up the rear, bringing $5.58.

It was a history-making upset for both trainer Kenny McPeek and jockey Brian Hernandez, who had on Friday just won the $1-million Kentucky Oaks with filly Thorpedo Anna. McPeek is the first trainer since 1952 to earn victories in the Oaks and the Derby on the same weekend, and neither Hernandez nor McPeek had ever won the Derby. Hernandez had never won either of them.

For his part, the elated McPeek, who has won both the Preakness and the Belmont, knew precisely what a superb tactical performance his pilot Hernandez had given both the trainer and his horse. He told the camera crews: “I mean, just a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant jockey in-ride. Brian’s amazing. Probably one of the most underrated riders in racing. But not anymore.”

What McPeek meant with that curious horsemanly construct “in-ride” was that, quite early, Hernandez had tactically found a spot just off the front-runners on the rail, which accomplished two crucial tasks and created much opportunity for his mount horse during the race. It might seem counterintuitive to take to the rail in the Kentucky Derby, but that is only the rule in the early, terrifying going into the first turn.

Nevertheless: Tucked into their pocket on the rail just behind the leaders by Hernandez, Mystik Dan and his jockey enjoyed many easy strides up the backstretch in a self-made eye-of-the-storm calm, which meant that much of the real heavy fight amid the Derby’s inevitable bumper-car jostling played out in the lanes well outside Hernandez and Mystik Dan. The second major advantage that Hernandez’ keeping to the rail created was that it saved Mystik Dan a tremendous amount of ground into and out of the far turn. Unlike both his closest competitors, Sierra Leone and Forever Young, Mystik Dan ran a far shorter race.

Necessary as those two huge accomplishments were, by no means did they seal the victory for the horse or his pilot. The two of them still had the second turn and the stretch , the real killing floor of the race, before them. The moment that began the building process of their victory came at the half-mile pole.

Shortly after that mark, Hernandez realized that he and his mount faced, at last, a very real traffic problem. There was no way to the outside to bring a stretch run. There was just a squeezy little whisper of a lane — not even a full one — down on the rail, where they already were. Hernandez drove Mystik Dan headlong for that tiny gap and, predictably, according to the unforgiving rules of the Derby, immediately got bumped, which, in a big testament to Mystik Dan’s mental and physical toughness, literally kicked him up but didn’t throw him off his stride. It was as if, in the middle of building a stretch run, he sort of hopped around the traffic and still managed not to hit the rail, which was about as close as the furiously flat Derby ever gets to a steeplechase moment.

Hernandez himself described the moment in a wry horseman’s laconic way to the cameras post-race: “Around the far turn, my horse was so game being up on the inside. I came through a really tight spot and we kind of climbed up on top of the rail a bit. When he shot through that spot and was able to cut the corner and I asked him to go for it, he shot off. I was like, ‘Oh man, we have a shot to win the Kentucky Derby.’”

Yet the race was still not over for them, because, of course, the daunting Derby stretch lay like a range of mountains ready to dash every good thing that the two of them had done to that point. Down the stretch, Hernandez had plenty of horse under him and slowly built, eked out, for a moment, an almost two-length lead on the pack. Simultaneously, many lanes to the outside, the infamous closer Sierra Leone and his pilot Tyler Gaffalione were in a furious stretch battle with the touted Japan-owned runner Forever Young. Forever Young was giving Sierra Leone a monstrous run for his money, and the sheer closing power and momentum of that entertaining battle carried the both horses around the entire field and right up alongside Hernandez and Mystik Dan.

In the last hundred yards then, the fourth and arguably the hardest chapter of this Derby shifted into high gear. Stride for stride, it looked as if Sierra Leone would live up to his billing and storm by Mystik Dan, which in fact he and Forever Young both did on the gallop out, pretty much in the instant they passed the wire. Put another way, Mystik Dan’s bare victory was less a stalwart stretch-duel defense of his lead and more a combination of everything that Hernandez and Mystic Dan had done, the sum of which had, in the last seconds, put them out of reach of the hard-charging Sierra Leone and Forever Young. If the race had been just two strides longer, Mystic Dan would have run third. The wire prevented that from happening. Sierra Leone and Gaffalione had left themselves just a whisker too much to do.

For their part and for their magnificent close, Sierra Leone and Forever Young acquitted themselves most honorably, and Sierra Leone in particular looks like a fine candidate for the Belmont, should his post-race recovery allow him to point to that grueling contest.