Rich Strike's stunning Kentucky Derby win is the ultimate palate cleanser for a troubled sport | Opinion

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The trainer with the blue jeans and garish red jacket was so stunned, he fell to the ground in the paddock at Churchill Downs. The groom ran onto the track, barely able to breathe. The owner was dabbing at a cut on the left side of his face, afraid that it had burst open in the excitement.

And 147,294 people on the racetrack and millions more around the world had been thunderstruck by an 80-to-1 longshot that didn’t have a spot in the Kentucky Derby until Friday and hadn’t shown anything in his six-race career that suggested he belonged on the same racetrack with the best 3-year-olds in the sport. 

“I was praying for ninth,” said Shelby Reed, the daughter of trainer Eric Reed, who has been around horse racing long enough to know the difference between crazy dreams and what actually happens on race day. And yet, on one of the most shocking Derby Days in the 148-year history of this race, the impossible happened. Rich Strike, a horse that Eric Reed and owner Rick Dawson claimed out of a cheap maiden race last September for $30,000 and got a place in the far outside starting gate Saturday mostly by dumb luck, won the Kentucky Derby.