My mom’s father lost race horses in a barn fire. Never owned another horse.
Glad for this guy.
Actually, it was the trainer who lost 23 horses in a barn fire:
https://www.kentucky.com/sports/horses/kentucky-derby/article261214912.html
His trainer is Eric Reed, a longtime horseman who’d never trained a Derby winner. Before Rich Strike, he’d never had a horse in the race. In 2016, Reed’s farm, Mercury Equine Center, lost 23 horses in a barn fire. “They were heroes, the people who work for me,” Reed told the Herald-Leader that year. “They went above and beyond what I could even imagine anybody trying to do. We ran into the barn, the smoke was so black we couldn’t even see. The only thing you could see was the flames.”
I’m happy for him as well - this win has to be much more than ‘sweet’.
Good thing this didn’t take place in Baltimore. Torrential rains all night, all day for several days now. That horse would have needed a surf board to run here!