Golden Tempo sees Cherie DeVaux make Kentucky Derby history

Golden Tempo got up in the final strides to make Kentucky Derby history at Churchill Downs, with Cherie DeVaux becoming the first female trainer to send out the winner of the ‘Run for the Roses’.

Last through much of the early exchanges, Jose Ortiz never panicked, giving chase to the well-fancied Renegade and his brother, Irad Ortiz Jr, who himself was at the rear after meeting trouble as soon as the gates opened but ate up the ground and looked like overcoming all the odds down the stretch.

That reckoned without Golden Tempo, however, who snatched victory to make Ortiz the ninth jockey to ever win the Kentucky Oaks and Derby in the same year, after his win aboard Always A Runner on Friday.

“I don’t have any words, I’m so, so happy. I’m glad I could be a representative of women everywhere and I want to say thank you to the team at Phipps Stable and St Elias Stable (owners),” DeVaux told NBC Sports.

“In the summer of 2017 I was kind of at a crossroads in life and my husband told me that I owed it to myself to at least try. He had the faith in me and he saw what I didn’t see and believed in me.”