I've watched every Kentucky Derby for the last 40 years or so. And the one I watched Saturday, well it was the most incomprehensible finish of them all. In fact, reflecting on it a bit, it's hard for me to come up with a bigger David beats Goliath sports outcome in my lifetime.
Let's work backwards on this miracle finish. Rich Strike, the winner of the race, got entered only because one of the entries backed out at the very last minute. Unlike most Derby entries, Rich Strike wasn't purchased at a yearling sale. Rich Strike was claimed for $30,000 last year in a race where literally every horse in the race was for sale. Rich Strike is the first Derby winner ever purchased through this claiming system. (By comparison, the 2nd and 3rd place finishers in the Kentucky Derby were purchased at sales for 260,000 and 170,000 dollars respectively before they'd ever run a race.) The horse's owner has owned fewer than 10 total race winning horses in his life. The horse's trainer has been in the business over 30 years and had won just one graded stakes race (the highest level of horse racing). And the horse's jockey has won a lot of races at small tracks, but nothing even remotely as big as the race he won Saturday riding Rich Strike. All of these men, and their horse, were seemingly WAY out of their league in this race. But - and here's the but we all need to pay attention to - the owner claimed the horse, the trainer trained it, and somewhere nearly every day of the week for years, the jockey was riding horses. Every day these men got up and went about life unknowingly creating the Kentucky Derby miracle that was coming their way. That is so important for us to see. A Kentucky Derby miracle didn't fall in their laps. These men and their horse created the miracle. When the horses at the front of the race went out faster than any Kentucky Derby horses had ever started that race, leaving them tired and with nothing left as they approached the finish line, Rich Strike was sitting near the back - fresh and ready - to write a miracle story. As we watched the story unfold - a horse literally coming out of nowhere to grab a victory in the most famous horse race on the planet - it was easy to believe it WAS a victory out of nowhere. But it wasn't. It came out of somewhere. Because the owner bought the horse. The trainer trained it. The jockey had rode horses in literally thousands of races. And the horse had spent a lifetime running. Between them, they'd spent decades and thousands of hours writing this miracle. In the aftermath of watching David beat Goliath, it's easy to start wondering; when is my David moment coming. When is my miracle going to fall into my lap. It's Monday. I think there's a better question to ask. What miracle story am I writing today? Am I living my life believing it's going to take a miracle for life to get better, or am I busy writing the miracle that I know will make it so? It is true. Some days miraculous circumstances do show up in our lives. But if we aren't ready for them, there will be no miracle. None. Being ready is always the main ingredient in a good miracle story. What can you do today to get ready for yours? Quit waiting for your miracle story; start writing it.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
February 2025
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