Eric Reed stood in the quiet of the Churchill Downs stakes barn, where Rich Strike —a feel-good chestnut with a coat of burnished copper—was contemplating the depths of his feed tub in a manner that would satisfy even the most brooding trainer. It was 10:13 a.m. ET, one day before the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1). They had just drawn in off the also-eligible list.
Confident in his horse but also a dreamer, Reed choked up just thinking about the opportunity to saddle his first Derby starter. It was a chance so revered, so delicate, plucked from the fortunes of others and placed gently into his 57-year-old hands. It was a precious gift he was overwhelmed to receive, and yet, he was ready.
Reed would never tell you he had a chance of winning the Kentucky Derby. That was too outlandish. He just knew he had a horse capable of running well—and if you don't swing for the fences, what are you even doing in this business?
For 32 hours and 49 minutes, pundits would question that belief. There would be one more night of relative anonymity, and then Derby Day dawned.
From final preparations to the walkover to the paddock, the horse known around the barn as "Ritchie" was discounted, ultimately sent off at odds of 80-1. But horses can't read the tote board, and on his journey from last to first, Rich Strike took that special something Reed could feel brewing just beneath the surface and put it on display for the world to see.
Watching the race unfold from the paddock, the lifelong horseman crumpled to his knees. He saw Rich Strike cut to the inside at the head of the stretch, and then—"I passed out," Reed said. "I don't remember what happened after that."
What happened was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement for a man whose heart has always been with the horses. Growing up the son of veteran trainer Herbert Reed, who stuck by his side through every step of Saturday's post-race melee, Reed has given his life to a sport at once beautiful and cruel, a heart-breaking, exhilarating, humbling, exhausting, rewarding, thrilling game.
"He's been going to the track with me since he was 6 years old, and that's no bull," the older Reed recalled during the post-race press conference. "He would go every day. And when he was 8, he could put a spider bandage on a horse, and most people don't even know what it is anymore.
"He said, 'I know what I want to do. I'm not going to college; I'm going to train horses,'" the elder Reed recalled. "And if you find something you love to do, you never work. And he found something he loved to do, and he's good at it."
"My dad gave me two horses and said, 'You want to be a trainer? Here's two horses. You're a trainer,'" Reed remembered with a grin. "And I've never called a person in my life and asked them to train a horse, ever. So every horse that I got was from referral or somebody that just wanted to give me a chance."
A lot of people had never heard of Eric Reed before Saturday. His lone graded stakes score came in the 2009 Lexus Raven Run Stakes (G2) at Keeneland with Satans Quick Chick. He took a run at the legendary Zenyatta and came up a neck short with Rinterval in the 2010 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes (G1).
"We've won a graded stakes—now two," he laughed.
More than wins have carried Reed and his wife, Kay, whose father and mother were horse trainers and whose great uncle Charlie Kurtsinger rode War Admiral to Triple Crown victory in 1937, through the years. Their resilience and determination, and the support of the racing community, kept them going in the aftermath of a tragic barn fire that claimed the lives of 23 of their horses in 2016.
MITCHELL: Fire Devastates Mercury Equine Center
"The next morning when we saw the devastation—because this happened in the middle of the night—I just thought of all the years and all the stuff we had done to get this beautiful farm," said Reed of his beloved Mercury Equine Center. "And to have this happen, that something might be telling me it's the end of the line...
"(But) my best friends were there in the morning to pick me up. And about the third or fourth day when people started showing up from states that didn't know who I was, they just saw the story—it let me know there's so much good out there. And then I had a few trainers that sent me texts. Some big trainers, the guys you know well, that told me, 'Don't let this take you out. And we'll help you. We'll get you horses, we'll get you clients. Whatever you need.' And that kept me going, and then I just decided that I wasn't going to let it take me out. And thank God, we're here today."
In the aftermath of victory, Reed couldn't blame the public for discounting him and his horse. That was logical, he said, more than the win that defied his wildest expectations.
"Small trainer, small rider, small stable," Reed said. "He should have been 80-1. But I've been around a long time, and I've had some really nice horses. And we knew what we had. I'm not telling you by any means we knew we had a Derby winner... (but) we knew we had a horse that was capable of running good."
"Eric easily undersells and overperforms, and that's kind of the way he goes about life," owner Rick Dawson added. "I said, 'Do you think we had a Derby horse?' He goes, 'Maybe.' I said, 'Well, let's get the calendar out, find the first Saturday in May, and back up from there.'... and Eric was incredibly calm and convincing... and so I trusted Eric to always tell me the truth. Sometimes that wasn't good news, but I knew it was always the truth, and I can deal with that. That's the relationship we've built, and here we are."
