The 2015 Kentucky Derby featured one of the strongest top-to-bottom fields in recent memory, led by eventual Triple Crown winner and Horse of the Year American Pharoah.
Bloodstock editor Joe Nevills takes a look at where every member of the 19-horse field is today, eight years after the race. Some have gone on to prominent stud careers, some have ended up standing at stud overseas, some have gone on to succeed in fields outside of the racing and breeding industry, while others left us too soon.
This video is a compilation of a “Where Are They Now” series from the Paulick Report's TikTok account. We'll be doing special shortform video content on TikTok, with short visual features, opinions, and anything else that we can shoot with our phones that might be fun for racing fans to watch.
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Find out where the horses of the 2015 Kentucky Derby are in the video below:
The horse Red Route One's name is a reference to the Tom Clancy classic Soviet spy thriller Hunt for Red October. In the case of Red Route One, his path isn't much of a mystery. He's following the money.
Call it Hunt for Green September, as Red Route One returns to grass and Kentucky Downs in Franklin, Ky. – the site of his first victory – for Sunday's $1 million, Grade 3 National Thoroughbred League Dueling Grounds Derby at 1 5/16 miles.
Red Route One comes into the Dueling Grounds Derby off the best race in his career, closing from far back to win the $500,000 West Virginia Derby by three lengths. Cristian Torres has the return mount as Red Route One seeks improve upon his record of 3-2-1 in 12 starts, along with $1,045,025.
How long has the Dueling Grounds Derby been in the works?
“Since he broke his maiden last year,” said Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen, referencing a three-length victory last Sept. 5 in Red Route One's second start. “He's a very athletic horse. We liked him. He was a horse that obviously needed a distance of ground from the beginning, and our opportunities to run him two turns were on the turf. That was how it all started. He's a very good horse, and that's how he ended up here.”
Owned by Kentucky Downs and The Mint Gaming Hall co-managing partner Ron Winchell, Red Route One is in a field of a dozen 3-year-olds entered Tuesday for the Dueling Grounds Derby. A total of 14 3-year-old fillies entered the co-featured $1 million Dueling Grounds Oaks. Both the DG Derby and Oaks including $400,000 in Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund purse supplements for Kentucky-bred horses. The 12-race card also includes the $500,000 National Thoroughbred League Handicap, which includes $200,000 of KTDF money.
After his turf debut, Red Route One went back to the dirt and finished third in Keeneland's Grade 1 Breeders' Futurity. If he didn't do quite enough to get into the Kentucky Derby, his victory in Oaklawn Park's ungraded Bath House Row Stakes got him a free spot in the Preakness, in which he was fourth. After being well-beaten in the Belmont Stakes, Red Route One took a path with less resistance and won the West Virginia Derby at Mountaineer Park.
“His versatility has allowed both,” Asmussen said of running well on dirt and turf. “But his ability has made that money.”
Red Route One is a son of 2017 Horse of the Year Gun Runner, co-owned by Winchell and Three Chimneys Farm, and is part of the supporting cast on the stallion's unprecedented start as a sire. Gun Runner had a huge day Saturday at Saratoga with his daughter and 2-year-old filly champion Echo Zulu taking the Grade 1 Ballerina, his son Gunite taking the Grade 1 Forego and Disarm finishing second by a length in the $1.25 million Travers (G1) to become a millionaire.
Since his first crop hit the track two years ago, Gun Runner already has sired six horses that have won $1 million races. Red Route One is gunning to be his first to win a $1 million race on turf.
Todd Pletcher entered Grade 1 Belmont Derby winner Far Bridge, who was most recently third in the Grade 1 Saratoga Derby, along with Clever Thought.
Brian Lynch sends out Highway Robber and Anglophile, who finished second and third in a tight three-way photo in Ellis Park's Kentucky Downs Preview Dueling Grounds Derby. Other entrants: Saratoga Derby fourth-place finisher Battle of Normandy, California stakes-winner Wizard of Westwood, Delaware Park's Kent winner Really Good, Desert Duke, Lion of War, Just a Photo and Out of Deductions.
The Eddie Kenneally-trained Safeen heads the Dueling Grounds Oaks, coming into the 1 5/16-mile race off victory in the Grade 3 Pucker Up at Ellis Park.
Jonathan Thomas is running Santa Anita's Grade 3 Honeymoon winner Selenaia. Prominent Canadian trainer Kevin Attard is bringing in Woodbine's Grade 1 Natalma winner Last Call and maiden-winner Milagre Do Sol. Joe Sharp entered Ohio stakes-winner Soft Talk, Saratoga maiden winner. Others: Pucker Up third-place finisher Freydis the Red, Grade 3-placed Mrs. Astor, Bourbonette Oaks runner-up Flashy Gem, Allamericanbeauty, Sabalenka and Sun Bee. Louisiana-based Dashyns Dream needs a scratch in order to run.
The $500,000 NTL Handicap at a mile attracted a field of 10 older horses, including millionaire Field Pass, multiple stakes-winner King Cause, 2022 Kentucky Downs allowance winner Time for Trouble, multiple stakes-winner Fuerteventura and 2021 Dueling Grounds Derby winner Accredit.
Today HISA is introducing two additional safety precautions that will be in place for the remainder of summer meet at Saratoga Race Course.
HISA rule 2142(a)* requires all horses running under HISA's jurisdiction to undergo post-entry screening. This review occurs between the time the entry is taken and the time the regulatory veterinarians perform their in-person physical inspections on race day. This function is generally carried out by local regulatory veterinarians.
Going forward through the remainder of Saratoga's summer meet, a HISA veterinarian will perform these post-entry screenings to provide an additional layer of independent analysis to identify any horses that may be at increased risk of injury before a race.
Members of HISA's newly-formed Track Surface Advisory Group are now on-site at Saratoga to thoroughly review both the dirt and turf surfaces before live racing is scheduled to resume on August 30.
The Track Surface Advisory Group is comprised of seven experts in a broad range of factors that contribute to dirt, turf and synthetic surface consistency. In addition to on-site inspections, the Advisory Group will examine historic and pre-meet inspection data compiled by the Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory.
These steps are being taken to mitigate additional risk of equine injury in the short term as HISA continues to work with NYRA and the New York State Gaming Commission to thoroughly review the circumstances surrounding recent equine fatalities at Saratoga to inform additional interventions moving forward.
*HISA RULE 2142(a):
The regulatory veterinarian shall perform post-entry screenings of previous pre-race inspection findings of entered horses to identify horses that may be at increased risk for injury. The regulatory veterinarian shall review past performances, lay-ups (more than 60 days without a timed workout or race), last 30 days medical history, previous injury and lameness diagnostics, intraarticular corticosteroid injections, previous surgery, and individual horse risk factors.
Richard Ten Broeck, an Albany, N.Y., native who owned and promoted the racehorse Lexington, was as tenacious as they come. He had to be. For every triumph was an equal measure of tribulation.
After Lexington's last race in 1855, Ten Broeck traveled to Great Britain to become the first American to ever race American-bred horses there. He took with him his horses Lecomte, Pryor, and Prioress. He would have taken Lexington had the champion's eyes not failed.
The “American Invasion,” as it came to be known, turned out to be a bust. Recovering from the hellish voyage across the Atlantic proved difficult for the American horses. They arrived in England exhausted and ailing and saddled by the country's damp climate. Pryor eventually died of pneumonia, Lecomte of colic. Apart from England's chilly, wet weather, the American horses were trained for stamina, not speed that was dictating the English tracks. Races were shorter — about a mile, maybe two — not the four-mile heat racing American horses had been trained to run where they had ample time to ease into speed.
England's courses were an anomaly too. Instead of running on an oval that stretched in front of the grandstand — an American design that allowed patrons to see the entire race —England's courses crawled and sprawled over the hillside in odd formations like that at Goodwood where paths curved into loops resembling wires on a kitchen whisk, only to conjoin at an area known as “Accident Corner.”
Speed, shorter races, and the assault of unfamiliar terrain initially proved insurmountable for the American horses. They lost nearly every race that year.
Ten Broeck teetered on the brink of ruin until, oddly enough, he turned to his tried-and-true methods of heat racing in the 1857 Cesarewitch at England's Newmarket Racecourse. The Cesarewitch that year was the only time in its 183-year history that required a run-off to crown the victor. The problem was that race officials scheduled the run-off to occur at the conclusion of the day's races, two hours away. Ten Broeck's mare Prioress and her two British competitors did not return to their stables but instead, waited out the time at the track. To complicate matters, temperatures dropped as rain set in. Britain's two contenders stood unblanketed and unworked in the hours stretch. The old ways of bringing a horse around between heats had been all but abandoned by that country. But Ten Broeck himself wrapped Prioress in flannel and walked her to keep her muscles ready. By the time of the run-off, the British horses were frozen. Prioress, warm and refreshed, won by a length and a half. The total distance run in the 1857 Cesarewitch was four miles and four furlongs, the equivalent of an American heat race.
Earlier that morning, en route to Newmarket, the American turfman had dropped the last of his money on a 1000 to 10 bet for Prioress. After the race, he recovered north of $80,000.
Ten Broeck raced in Great Britain off and on for 20 years. Despite the setbacks of his initial year, he amassed $197,765 in purse winnings in just a ten-year span. That value today approximates $3,357,100. His learning curve was painful, but he paved the path for other American turfmen to race with success in Great Britain.
Work was not the only thing that consumed his days. While in England, Ten Broeck met and married a Louisville woman named Pattie Anderson. They eventually returned to her home city and onto a 536-acre estate she named Hurstbourne. Life was grand there, housed as they were in a Gothic-inspired marble and stain-glassed mansion. Yet all the grandeur of Hurstbourne paled compared to the racing trophies prominently displayed therein — one man's accomplishments, the only items of Hurstbourne that truly could tell a tale. While living in that sublime retreat, Ten Broeck lost his beloved Pattie to cancer. He isolated himself and led a simplistic life surrounded by Hurstbourne's garden sanctuary.
It was during this period of solemnity that Ten Broeck's life was again ineradicably altered. On August 8, 1874, he boarded a train in Louisville. Sitting next to him was a relative of Pattie's named Walter Whitaker, an insane man who had been temporarily committed to a mental institution for committing murder. After the train was underway, Whitaker started into a vitriolic rant with Ten Broeck about family matters. The two men started quarreling to the point that others looked up from their newspapers. At the next train stop, Ten Broeck, rattled and distraught, disembarked. Whitaker followed and aimed his gun, firing three times at Ten Broeck and missing. On the fourth time, Whitaker rammed the pistol's barrel into the center of Ten Broeck's forehead and pulled the trigger. Ten Broeck fell and lay motionless on the platform. Whitaker raised his pistol a fifth time, aiming for Ten Broeck's chest. People on the platform knocked Whitaker down, pinioning him to the ground. Others ran to Ten Broeck. Blood had already pooled around the back of his head. They lifted him and carried him to a nearby tavern where he was placed atop the bar. Someone ran to summon a doctor. Another ran to notify The Daily Courier Journal that Richard Ten Broeck was dead.
A doctor soon arrived, examined the wounds, and proclaimed that they were merely a flesh wound. The ball had run up over the skull, coming out at the back of Ten Broeck's head. A unanimous sigh of relief filled the room and all present settled back into their chairs, less on edge, and definitely in need of a drink. After some length of time, Ten Broeck awoke and began talking coherently to the tavern patrons. By then his friends had arrived to escort him home. They offered him a cigar, which he accepted, and helped him into the carriage. On Hurstbourne's back porch that evening they smoked cigars and imbibed an endless supply of juleps into the early hours of the next day. They undoubtedly talked about life, that crazy man Whitaker, and more than likely, a horse or two.
Love, or at least the idea of it, found Ten Broeck again. On April 28, 1877, he remarried to Mary Smith Newcomb, a woman 44 years his junior. The marriage produced one child, Richard Ten Broeck, Jr., but was plagued by mistrust, incessant arguments, and eventual abandonment by Mary. Estranged from his wife and son, Ten Broeck moved to California, chasing the horse racing scene that was booming in the west.
There he bought five acres in San Mateo, on the outskirts of San Francisco, and built a modest home he named “Hermitage.” In the kitchen, a small wood table with one chair functioned for meals. His bed propped against a wall in the same room. On a nightstand, books piled high telling of horse racing stories and statistics. The only grand items — fitted so oddly in this dilapidated structure — were the silver and gold racing trophies that had followed Ten Broeck his entire turf career.
Although he had bought a few horses, he did nothing with them. He chose instead to allow them to contentedly graze as he watched from the comfort of an oversized chair he had dragged onto the porch. From there he spent hours leafing through the sporting pages or writing “to do” lists for his hired help — lists he constantly revised. As quiet as his life had become, so uneventful and absent from important happenings, Ten Broeck was happy deep in that little valley on the planked porch of his Hermitage. Writing to an English friend, he said it was “a place where a man might live forever.”
The burdens of survival and financing Mary and his son soon set in. His once great wealth had now been depleted by his previously lavish lifestyle, years of high-risk gambling, and promotion of racehorses. To keep himself afloat he purportedly wrote turf opinions for The San Francisco Call. If so, he never affixed his name to the reports. Now, elderly and alone, and lacking funds to hire help, Ten Broeck cooked his own meals, washed his clothes on a scrub board, and tidied the home the best he could. One by one he sold his horses, taking them away from their meadow and walking them solitarily down the road. He still sat on the porch, but the smattering of newspapers no longer spread around the foot of his chair. His vision had clouded, and he found his way by fumbling and feeling for the sanctuary of familiar objects. He likely never read the sporting pages of the Call wherein his long-ago jockey Gilpatrick recalled Lexington: “He was a better horse than Boston, just because he was quite as rapid and had a good deal better temper. He was one horse in a million.”
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On June 27, 1892, at the age of 80, Ten Broeck stood alone on a street corner in San Francisco near the Palace Hotel. He held two books showing them to passersby who hurriedly brushed him aside as a lunatic panhandler. These were valuable books, he said, in which he had scribbled notes about how to race horses. Ten dollars, he mumbled over and over, just ten dollars. A fellow turf writer saw him there, approached him, withdrew the money, and gave it to Ten Broeck. Reportedly, tears welled in his eyes as he handed over the books, turned and walked away.
One month later on July 31, Ten Broeck ambled into an appraiser's store in San Francisco and arranged to have his racing trophies inventoried. The last of his valuables. Irreplaceable items. Surely these trophies could fetch him enough money to live for a year.
On August 2 in the late morning, Ten Broeck took off his coat, and folding it neatly, laid it on his oversized chair on the porch. He stepped inside his Hermitage and without closing the front door, lay down on his bed. At eleven o'clock in the morning, the trophy appraiser arrived, and seeing the coat on the chair and the door half open, called for Richard Ten Broeck. Hearing no answer, he entered the small home and found the turfman dead and cold, his hands crossed peacefully over his chest.
The pioneer turfman whose exploits once thrilled the American press was again recognized fondly and with appreciation. Articles appeared daily over a two-week span across the nation and in Great Britain. All from people who knew him, who chose to remember him in his prime, who wrote about his “unblemished character as a sportsman,” and who recalled with gratitude all his endeavors to elevate the sport of horse racing.
The Louisville Courier Journal wrote, “Richard Ten Broeck was a man who would hold on at any time against the frowns of fortune, and so he stayed until two nations were electrified by his victory in the Cesarewitch.”
The Charlotte Observer wrote: “He was easy, graceful, and erect in form and figure. He might have been a commander of an army or occupant of a throne for wherever he appeared he was easily the master of the situation.”
Eight days after his death, Ten Broeck's remains arrived by rail in Louisville. A single horse-drawn hearse delivered him to Christ Church Cathedral on South Second Street. The casket was placed under the rays shining down through the stained-glass dome and adorned simplistically with red and white carnations. There was no homage to his orange and black silks. No racing paraphernalia, silver trophies, or portrait of Lexington propped on an easel. What little funds remained Ten Broeck paid for his transport, funeral, and burial. He lay there alone.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, the sidewalk in front of Christ Church was barren except for the single-horse hearse. Inside, Rev. C.E. Craik walked to the pulpit and looked out at his audience. Despite the fact Ten Broeck's life and successes were so newsworthy, less than 30 people sat sporadically in the pews.
After the ceremony, the hearse took Ten Broeck to Cave Hill Cemetery. Pallbearers hovered over his casket and spoke parting words of their friend's integrity and courage, and, as Ten Broeck would have expected, a few humorous stories about his fantastic life.
At Cave Hill, the grave lies on a hill surrounded by incredible beauty. Higher up, directly behind his grave, stands a life-sized, bronzed elk, oxidized now to mint green patina. The elk was placed there on May 17, 1891, as a dedication to members of the local Elks Rest Lodge. The Shawnee Native American tribe call the elk “wapiti.” According to them, the wapiti symbolizes the courage to walk directly into another phase of life. To the Lakota tribe, elks symbolize endurance, perseverance, and strength. This bronzed elk stands majestic in frozen form, his head held high, boldly facing whatever has eternally roused his attention.
Author Kim Wickens
About the Author
Kim Wickens grew up in Dallas, Texas, and practiced as a criminal defense lawyer in New Mexico for twenty years. She subsequently turned her attention to writing, which she studied at Kenyon College, and has devoted the last several years to researching this book. She lives with her husband and son in Lexington, Kentucky, where she trains in dressage with her three horses.
Read more about Ten Brocek and his great horse Lexington in her book LEXINGTON: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse,available via Ballantine Books.
