LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In a development that caught virtually everyone off guard except the horse, the trainer, and one extremely lucky gambler in Baton Rouge, Golden Tempo surged from dead last to win the 2026 Kentucky Derby on Saturday, handing trainer Cherie DeVaux the distinction of becoming the first woman in the race’s 152-year history to train the winner.
Golden Tempo, listed at 23-1 odds before the race, was described by commentators as “not the horse you’d pick” and “genuinely running the wrong direction for a while there.” Then, somewhere around the final turn, the horse apparently reconsidered and won by two lengths.
“We always believed in this horse,” said DeVaux, clutching a garland of roses and what appeared to be several years of vindication. “We always believed in our strategy. We always — okay, even we were a little surprised by how last he was in the beginning.”
The victory marks the eighth consecutive year the Derby favorite has failed to win, a streak that Churchill Downs officials are calling “unprecedented,” oddsmakers are calling “expensive,” and conspiracy theorists are calling “not a coincidence.”
Adding to the storybook quality of the result was the fact that the top two finishers were both ridden by the Ortiz brothers — Jose Ortiz aboard Golden Tempo and Irad Ortiz Jr. on runner-up Renegade — marking the first time in the race’s history that siblings finished one-two. Their mother, who reportedly watched from the stands, described the result as “wonderful” and also “not a surprise, I raised them.”
“This is historic,” said racing analyst Harvey Brennan on the post-race broadcast. “A first-time female trainer, a 23-1 shot, the Ortiz brothers going one-two — this had everything. If the winning horse had also been, I don’t know, wearing a hat, we’d be out of adjectives.”
DeVaux, a French-born trainer who has worked in American racing for over a decade, was asked at the post-race press conference whether winning the Derby as its first female-trained champion felt surreal. She said it felt like the culmination of enormous effort, sacrifice, and a very specific kind of stubbornness that she declined to name but which journalists in attendance recognized immediately.
Asked what the horse’s secret was, DeVaux said Golden Tempo “likes to see what everyone else is doing first before he commits.” Industry insiders noted this is also a valid description of most successful venture capitalists.
Golden Tempo will next run in the Preakness Stakes, where he will presumably start near the back and then win anyway, leaving another generation of racing fans with the creeping suspicion that they have been watching this wrong the entire time.
Globe News Daily editorial note: We would like to remind readers that betting on horses is entirely legal, widely practiced, and reliably expensive. Golden Tempo was 23-1. We say this only to be helpful.
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