Maybe now is the time. No trainer has had the winning horse in both the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby since Ben Jones accomplished the feat in 1952.
Jones served as the co-trainer with his son, Jimmy, on Oaks winner Real Delight. He was the trainer for Derby winner Hill Gail.
Kenny McPeek will get a chance to join Jones on Saturday after his filly Thorpedo Anna defied the sloppy track covering 1 1/8 miles in 1:50.83 to capture the $1.5 million Oaks at Churchill Downs. She won going away by 4 3/4 lengths.
McPeek was one of seven trainers — including Chad Brown, Brad Cox, Todd Pletcher, Steve Asmussen, D. Wayne Lukas and Bill Mott — with entrants in both the Oaks and Derby.
Now he’ll need Mystik Dan to win the 150th Run for the Roses to etch his name in history. He’ll have to beat considerably bigger odds Saturday.
“I think we could pull this thing off,” McPeek said.
Who’s to say he can’t after McPeek conquered his own shortcomings in the Oaks.
Three times McPeek came up just short of winning the Oaks starting with Take Charge Lady in 2002, followed by Daddys Lil Darling in 2017 and Swiss Skydiver in 2020.
Those close calls may have kept his demeanor from being too enthusiastic outwardly as Thorpedo Anna entered down the stretch with a 2-length lead over Just F Y I. McPeek’s reaction never changed as he eyed his filly headed for the finish line, saying his thoughts weren’t focused on being caught from behind.
“The last eighth of a mile I was just (thinking), ‘Don’t fall down,'” McPeek joked. “I was pretty confident throughout the race, especially with the way she was sitting underneath Brian (Hernandez Jr.), he didn’t have to hustle to get her there.”
The race unfolded much like McPeek predicted beforehand when he instructed Hernandez. McPeek told him that, on paper, Fiona’s Magic might “eyeball” her for a stretch, but there wasn’t another filly with the speed to really challenge her.
Thorpedo Anna’s performance was so dominant that McPeek’s mind has already drifted to what’s next for her. He said there aren’t a lot of options considering the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan for 3-year-old fillies at Pimlico Race Course no longer makes sense.
He’s confident enough to run her against the colts and said he has considered entering her in the Preakness Stakes. It’s up to the owners — Brookdale Racing, Mark Edwards, Judy Hicks and Magdalena Racing — to ultimately decide, but the Oaks win ensures they will have that conversation.
“We have a bit of a phrase at Brookdale Racing, we say ‘In Kenny We Trust,’ because he has that unerring knack of finding these horses really on the cheap side and turning them into superstars — as he has with this one,” said Jamie Wilson of Brookdale.
Just the fact that the focus is back on the competition itself is a victory for the horse racing industry. This time last year, a cluster of horse deaths at Churchill Downs, some of which never had a conclusive answer to why they died, cast a pall over Pretty Mischievous and Mage wins in the 2023 Oaks and Derby, respectively.
And since the COVID-19 pandemic, frankly, it seems like every year there’s just been some distraction that has dictated a negative narrative.
A quick timeline includes: The establishment of the Horseracing Integrity Safety Authority (HISA) to govern the sport and subsequent battle to discredit it with lawsuits picked up in 2022. Medina Spirit’s disqualification for a failed drug test in 2021 to the pandemic forcing the move of the First Saturday in May 2020 to the first Saturday in September.
McPeek has never won the Derby before, finishing second with his first Derby entrant, Tejano Run, in 1995. But 24 hours ago, he’d only finished second in the Oaks. Now Mystik Dan is a special performance away from making the right kind of history for the sport and putting McPeek into an exclusive category of trainers.
“He’s shown he can run from the inside, like he did at Oaklawn in the Southwest (Stakes),” McPeek said. “In the Arkansas Derby, we were hung in the outside post. So, look, I think we can pull this thing off. That would be pretty awesome.”
Awesome for McPeek and for the sport itself.
Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Rare Kentucky Derby, Oaks 2024 sweep possible for trainer Kenny McPeek
