A loud banging on the window woke Brian Hernandez Jr.
He was 7-years-old. He’d been sleeping in his dad’s pickup truck on the backside of Evangeline Downs, a one-mile oval track outside Lafayette, Louisiana.
A member of the ambulance crew had come to get the jockey’s kid. His dad had been in an accident on the track.
“He was laid out in the back of the ambulance with a broken leg,” Hernandez recounted. “I kind of grew up knowing the dangers of (horse racing).”
But it didn’t stop him.
He began riding bush tracks in rural Louisiana by age 9, and nearly 30 years later, he would build on those early experiences to become the first jockey to win the Kentucky Oaks/Derby combo since fellow Louisiana rider Calvin Borel in 2009.
There were no rules in those early bush track races. No stewards. No outriders. Completely unsanctioned.
“If you had a horse you thought was faster than the next guy’s, and you matched them up, you’d go out and settle it on the rack track,” Hernandez said.
Quarterhorse versus thoroughbred? Yep.
Little ponies versus small quarterhorses to the quarter pole? You betcha.
“You’re a young kid and wanted to ride horses,” Hernandez said. “You go out there, ride and hopefully you win.”
It was like a big party with a few horse races.
“They don’t do them anymore for insurance reasons now, but back in those days, it was a little different,” Hernandez said.
Several horsemen who spoke with The Courier Journal about Louisiana-born riders credited the bush tracks with instilling experience, toughness and bravery.
“There was nothing legal about it,” said legendary Louisiana jockey Robby Albarado. “You pulled up at your own risk.”
By the time bush track riders were old enough to ride in sanctioned races, “the stewards, the starters and the jockeys knew who you were,” Albarado said.
At 11, Hernandez started galloping horses in the morning for trainer Dale Angelle at his farm in Scott, Louisiana.
“That’s when we really started learning about horses and learning how to ride racehorses the right way,” Hernandez said.
By his senior year of high school, he’d gallop horses in the morning at the farm, then head to Evangeline Downs to gallop horses before going to Acadian High.
“Then my dad and I would jump in the car and drive the hour and a half to Delta Downs,” he said. “We’d race at night at Delta, drive back to Lafayette and do it all over again the next morning.”
He was 18 when Shane Sellers — who in his career won more than 4,000 races for over $122 million — spent some of the winter riding at Delta. He saw Hernandez riding.
“He said, ‘Hey after you graduate high school, just come up to Kentucky,'” Hernandez recalled. “‘I have you all set up with an agent. You don’t have anything to worry about.'”
That trip to Kentucky in the spring of 2004 would be the small-town Louisiana boy’s first time on an airplane. And it was a good time of year to be in Louisville:
“You’re an 18-year-old kid, and you’re going to Churchill Downs on Derby Week,” he said. “You’re excited to see what it’s all about.”
In his first year on the Kentucky circuit, as an apprentice jockey, he raced more than 1,000 times. But at the end of his apprenticeship, he struggled and nearly walked away from it all in 2006 to return to Duson, his small hometown just west of Lafayette, Louisiana.
Fortunately for trainer Kenny McPeek and the world of horse racing, the Louisiana boy decided to stay in Louisville.
A Run for Lilies and Roses
His Kentucky journey reached a pinnacle 20 years later, on May 4.
Hernandez was riding Mystik Dan on the rail along the turn for home when the moment he dreamed about since childhood appeared ― a chance for glory in the world’s most iconic horse race.
As 20 horses rounded the turn toward home in the 150th Kentucky Derby, Hernandez saw jockey Joel Rosario slightly fade to the right.
“I think Rosario was worried about a horse coming around him on the outside, and he tried to float a bit,” McPeek, Mystik Dan’s trainer, told The Courier Journal. “When he did that, Brian had space.”
Hernandez knew all Mystik Dan needed was a small gap to open and the 3-year-old would sprint through it.
“He’s that rare horse that you’re able to make different runs with him,” Hernandez said. “Then he turns back off … He’s almost like a car with 12 gears, where you can shift gears and he takes off.”
Hernandez could have made that move a millisecond later and ended up in sixth place — or worse, the rail. But at just the right moment on a Saturday in May, all his past experiences on the circuit told him this was it.
“When Track Phantom came off the rail a little bit, I called on Mystik Dan and he shot through there,” he said.
Not every jockey is going to make that move.
“No,” McPeek said with a smile and a slight shake of his head. “Only a Cajun jockey.”
Hernandez is again scheduled to be atop Mystik Dan for Saturday’s running of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course — the second leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown.
Two days, two wins
The Oaks-Derby double is a rare feat in horse racing.
It’s even rarer than winning the Triple Crown — the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes — which 13 horses have won.
Having the best horse at Churchill Downs’ back-to-back premier stakes races? That’s happened just 10 times.
When Thorpedo Anna went gate-to-wire to earn the 2024 Oaks win and Mystik Dan snagged the roses at Derby, Brian Hernandez Jr. was aboard the McPeek-trained horses, making him the eighth jockey to achieve the Oaks/Derby Double.
“We’re still going to show up and go to work every day,” Hernandez said. “It’s just now we have a little more recognition.”
The legacy of Louisiana
From Kentucky Derby winners like Kent Desormeaux to Eddie Delahoussaye, the legacy of Cajun jockeys is lengthy.
Take Hernandez’s namesake: His father finished his jockey career earning more than $13 million across 12,652 starts, according to Equibase.
“The list of stakes I’ve won with Louisiana jockeys is long,” said McPeek, who’s won 120 Graded Stakes, 45 by eight different Louisiana-born jocks. “Brian’s cut from that same cloth.”
Of those, 26 were by Hernandez, just since 2018.
“It’s not a complicated relationship,” McPeek said of Hernandez. “It’s no drama. We’re not going to change anything we did before or after. We’re going to keep it —”
McPeek motioned his hand flat in the air, his palm down, making a straight line.
“I like people that are steady,” McPeek told The Courier Journal.
That includes the senior Hernandez, his son said.
“Even still to this day, he’s going on 60 years old, and he still gets up seven days a week, gallops horses, works in the jocks room,” Hernandez said. “He never stops. … That’s all we’ve ever known is show up. Keep showing up.”
20 years in the making
The 38-year-old jockey stood outside the jockey room at Churchill Downs with a gold sharpie in hand, signing autographs five days after the 150th Derby.
He’s the same Brian Hernandez who rode Fort Larned for trainer Ian Wilkes to the 2012 Breeder’s Cup Classic.
He’s the same Brian Hernandez who rode Art Collector to victory in the 2020 Blue Grass Stakes, the first graded stakes victory for trainer Tommy Drury, the jockey’s close friend.
“Everyone just needs an opportunity,” Wilkes said. “It’s showing now that if you give him the opportunity how he can ride.”
Before a jockey can become great, he must first be an apprentice, known in horse racing as a ‘bug boy’ or ‘bug.’ When Hernandez’s apprenticeship ended, he struggled with racing. Albarado remembers Hernandez was about to leave Louisville behind for Lafayette.
What made him stay?
“I got lucky and picked up a few winners and decided to give it another shot,” Hernandez said.
He adopted Louisville as his hometown. Two years later, he met his wife, Jamie, a former assistant trainer to Steve Asmussen. They have three kids: Joshlyn, 9; Benjamin, 7; and Anabelle, 4. Their lives became horse racing, too.
He pulled up photos on his phone. In October, Jamie took the kids to race their ponies (at a sanctioned event) in Maryland.
He scrolled to a photo of Anabelle, atop a pony — her left hand holding the reins and a trophy in her right hand.
No one needed to explain to them why their dad was in a parade back in Louisiana last week or at the governor’s mansion or anything about the biggest race weekend of his career. It was the kind of weekend Hernandez’s agent, Frank Bernis, said you hope and pray for.
“You have to be so lucky to even get on those kinds of horses and for them to get in the race and then the fortune of the race,” Bernis, also a Louisiana horseman, said. “You never actually think you’re going to, but you’re out here every day working to have a chance.
“To win them both the same year, you don’t even dream that. You dream about winning either one. You never dream about winning both.”
Hernandez has waited for that chance since those days at the bush tracks.
He’s waited through all those early morning workouts the bettor never saw.
He’s waited since April 27, 2004: It was the second race of the day, the Tuesday before Derby. The weather was clear. The track was fast. And a 4-year-old thoroughbred was being asked to push the pace.
Two legendary Cajun jockeys were riding: Robby Albarado was aboard Rich Coins and Calvin Borel was on St. Martin’s Clock.
And a third little-known Louisiana rider was aboard a dark-brown horse trained by Pat Byrne.
It was the second day of Hernandez’s career at Churchill Downs.
He rode Cherokee Prospect for the win.
He’d do it again 20 years later to the week, in front of more than 100,000 fans, who never knew how long he’d waited.
Stephanie Kuzydym is an enterprise and investigative sports reporter, with a focus on the health and safety of athletes. She can be reached at skuzydym@courier-journal.com. Follow her at @stephkuzy.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky Derby winner Brian Hernandez began with Louisiana bush races
