LOUISVILLE – It’s doubtful that Nyquist’s victory in the 142nd Kentucky Derby will make anybody jump off the Sherman-Minton Bridge. After all, he was the 2-to1 favorite in the 20-horse field.
Yet a lot of folks no doubt felt like smacking themselves in the forehead as jockey Mario Gutierrez guided the sensation brown colt down the long stretch at iconic Churchill Downs.
For reasons not completely clear, Nyquist just didn’t generate a lot of buzz in the days leading up to the Derby. He lacked the glamour that American Pharoah brought to last year’s Derby. The media was far more interested in talking about who might beat him, and how, than it was in hyping the same team that won the roses with I’ll Have Another in 2014.
That would be owner Paul Reddam, a wealthy Canadian businessman; trainer Doug O’Neill, whose formidable stable is based in California; and Gutierrez, the native of Mexico who fits Nyquist as snugly as some dresses fitted some women in the crowd of 167,227, second largest in Derby history.
Going into the Derby, Nyquist didn’t get the respect that a 7-for-7 (now 8-for-8) record deserves. Some thought he was ripe for an upset, so they bought into the brilliant idea of ignoring the facts printed in The Daily Racing Form’s past performances and became determined to find the horse or horses who had the best chances of knocking him off.
Big mistake.
At the end of a beautiful day marred only by a 10-minute rainstorm late in the afternoon, Nyquist rewarded his loyal backers with a $6 return on a $2 win investment. He also exposed his sucker critics with a performance that left no doubt about his superiority, covering the Derby’s mile and a quarter in 2:01.31 and holding off Exaggerator’s late charge to win by a length and a quarter.
“I feel really good for the horse,” said Reddam at his press conference, “because along the way the last year, he has taken a lot of shots for whatever reason And I think he proved all his critics wrong.”
The apathy about Nyquist, who’s named for hockey star Gustav Nyquist of the Detroit Red Wings, might have been due partly to the fact he came along at a time when racing fans were still loving on American Pharoah, who last year became the first horse to win racing’s Triple Crown (Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes) since Affirmed in 1978.
But that was only part of it. Some keen-eyed observers felt that he hadn’t trained well in Kentucky. Others wondered if his pedigree (by the popular Uncle Mo out of a Forestry mare) gave him the stamina to get the Derby distance. There also was the luck factor. As if it wasn’t enough to draw the No. 13 post, Nyquist was tempting fate by trying to become the fourth consecutive favorite in to win the world’s most coveted race.
In a sense, the people who seemed determined to dump on Nyquist had much in common with the Republicans who have fallen in love with Donald Trump. Neither group wants to be bothered with silly things like facts. They just want to raise hell and insult anybody who doesn’t like it.
So all last week you heard that Mohaymen and Creator were looking great on the track. That Gun Runner had improved since his victory in the Louisiana Derby. And so on and so forth, all the way through the field.
Heck, some geniuses even tried to make a case for Lani, the colt from Japan whose unusual training methods were the talk of the backstretch. Instead of workouts designed to give him a quick burst of speed, Lani went through leisurely gallops. After workouts, he stayed on the track instead of going back to the barn. And every time he got close to a female, well, suffice it to say it was obvious that Lani had one thing on his mind.
Perhaps the pre-Derby ennui toward Nyquist is another example of why Kentucky shoud be putting more money, not less, into higher education. We need more bettors who are smart enough to know potential greatness when they see it. We don’t need more bettors who couldn’t pick the brown Nyquist out of a lineup of grays.
Although based in California, Nyquist’s two most important victories before the Derby came in the East. First was a win in last year’s Breeders Cup Juvenile at Keeneland. That cinched the 2-year-old championship for him and stamped him as the early favorite for the 2016 Derby.
The second came when he went to Florida in late March to take on Mohaymen on the latter’s home court. The decision was both bold and pragmatic. By running in the Florida Derby, Nyquist was eligible for a $1 million bonus because he’s a product of the 2015 Fasig-Tipton horses-in-training sale. He ran his race on a slippery track while Mohaymen, who had wrested the favorite’s role from him, faded to fourth.
In the weeks between the Florida Derby and Kentucky Derby, Mohaymen’s fans talked themselves into believing the Florida Derby was a fluke and that their favorite would return to form in Kentucky. Although he far from disgraced himself with a fourth-place finish, Mohaymen also left Sheikh Hamdan el Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai still looking for his first Derby winner after years of spending millions at American sales.
About 90 minutes before the Derby, storm clouds blotted out the sun and dumped about 10 minutes’ worth of rain on the crowd. But it didn’t rain hard enough or long enough to impact the track. When the rain stopped, the humidity was gone and the sun shone bright again on our old Kentucky home.
When the horses came on the track, everyone turned right except Lani, who turned left. That meant that he would miss the traditional post parade. So while his 19 competitors were being introduced to the crowd, Lani stood in splendid isolation in the turn for home.
At 6:51 p.m., a full 17 minutes past the scheduled post time, the starting gate finally sprung open and released the restless field. In the early going, Gutierrez settled Nyquist into a stalking positive behind the leaders, who were killing each other in a speed duel. The fractions were a brisk 22.58 for the first quarter, 45.72 for the half, and 1:10.40 for three-quarters.
When the speedballs inevitably began to slow down after a mile in in 1:35.61, Nyquist charged to the lead coming out of the turn for home and took control of the race. Inside the last eighth of a mile, Exaggerator, winner of the Santa Anita Derby, and Gun Runner, winner of the Louisiana Derby, took dead aim on him and began cutting into his lead.
But Nyquist was as cold and hard as the ice upon which his namesake skates. He dug in and completed a virtuoso performance that should silence all the doubts and answer all the questions, at least until the horses gather in Baltimore for the May 21 Preakness, second jewel in the Triple Crown.
“He will not allow any other horse to pass him,” Gutierrez said. “He’s the kind of horse that always has something left for whatever comes to him late.”
Only once has racing had Triple Crown winners in back-to-back years – Seattle Slew in 1977 and Affirmed in ’78. But judging by what Nyquist showed yesterday, it could happen again. If so, it would be sweet redemption for Team Nyquist. On the morning of I’ll Have Another’s Belmont, the colt came down with a fever and had to be scratched, a most unsatisfying ending to his run to glory.
In keeping with long-standing Derby custom, the Governor of Kentucky presented the gold Derby winner’s trophy to the winning owner. Republican Matt Bevin, who won the governship last November, will always remember his first trophy presentation for the quip that Reddam couldn’t resist using.
Just as Bevin was getting ready to hand over the trophy, Reddam said, “We’ll have another.” It was a good line that Reddam could use again after the Preakness, provided that Nyquist runs as well at Pimlico as he did at Churchill Downs.
Oh, yes. One more thing. Nyquist the hockey player didn’t attend the Derby. He’s in Russia, playing for the Swedish national team. He texted with Reddam on Friday and wish him good luck.
The colt had plenty of that, of course. You have to have some luck to win the Kentucky Derby. But mostly he won because he was easily the best horse. In Derby 142, Nyquist proved conclusively that he’s the real deal. The only people still denying it must have missed the Derby due to too many close encounters with Mr. Jack Daniels and his friends.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby