1 of 4 | Mystik Dan (R), ridden by Brian Hernandez, Jr,, wins the 150th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday. Sierra Leone (L) came in 2nd and Forever Young (C) was 3rd. Photo by Pat Benic/UPI | License Photo
May 4 (UPI) — Mystik Dan held on through the last lawns to win a wild, three-way fight to the wire in Saturday’s 150th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, with Blue Grass Stakes winner Sierra Leone 2nd and Japan’s Forever Young 3rd.
Third in the Arkansas Derby in his last begin, Mystik Dan got the dive on the field with an inside relocation at the leading of the stretch and opened up a daytime lead with a furlong to run.
But the 2 primary competitors, bumping and grinding, kept coming, and it took the picture surface cam to different them at the surface.
Louisiana Derby winner Catching Freedom completed 4th and Japan’s worldwide racing image was burnished as its 2nd entry, T O Password, reported 5th.
Mystik Dan, a Goldencents colt is qualified by Kenny McPeek and was ridden by Brian Hernandez Jr.
The trainer-jockey mix likewise won the Grade I Kentucky Oaks a day earlier with Thorpedo Anna. It was just the 4th time in the 150-year history of the races that a fitnessinstructor hasactually saddled the winners of both the Derby and Oaks in the verysame year.
“I’m actually proud of that,” McPeek stated. “But what are you gonna do? You just choice one horse at a time.”
The surface was so tight that Hernandez believed, however didn’t understand, that Mystik Dan had won.
“The longest 2 minutes I’ve invested in my life, waiting for them to hang that number up,” he stated. “It was amazing when we hit the wire, however I wasn’t sure if we won, so it was rather a rush to sit there and wait for it.
“I constantly informed myself I was neverever going to action into the Derby winner’s circle upuntil I might do it on the back of a horse. Now, to be able to live that dream … I was a 6-year-old kid, riding my bike around my grandparents’ farm, informing them all that I was going to win the Kentucky Derby some day — and here we are.”
Starting from the No. 3 gate in a field o