The son of Protonico went off as the race's favorite, broke fast, and led at every call to win the one-mile stakes under jockey John Velazquez.

The field of six broke cleanly from the gate, with Velazquez hustling Medina Spirit to the lead, followed by Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby winner Rock Your World on his outside and Reddam Racing's Team Merchants third. Through a first quarter in :22.52 and a half-mile in :46.92, Medina Spirit maintained his front-runner status, with Umberto Rispoli and Rock Your World close, never allowing the Bob Baffert trainee to be more than a three-quarters of a length ahead. They stayed 1-2 into the far turn, as both Rock Your World and Team Merchants loomed to Medina Spirit's outside entering the stretch.

Coming out of the turn, Rock Your World drifted out slightly, causing Team Merchants to veer into Stilleto Boy and forcing the latter to steady before running on down the center of the track. Rock Your World could not gain on Medina Spirit, who tenaciously hung on to his lead throughout the stretch run, flashing under the wire in front. Rock Your World was second, with Stilleto Boy third and The Great One fourth.

The final time for the one-mile Shared Belief Stakes was 1:37.29. Find this race's chart here.

The inquiry sign went up not long after the finish as the Del Mar stewards examined the action coming out of the far turn into the stretch when Team Merchants veered into Stilleto Boy. Because Team Merchants finished behind Stilleto Boy, the stewards decided not to make any changes to the order of finish. Medina Spirit was not affected by the inquiry.

Medina Spirit paid $3.80, $2.40, and $2.10. Rock Your World paid $2.80 and $2.20. Stilleto Boy paid $3.80 to show.

“It went the way we wanted it. Once I made the lead into the first turn, I felt better. He was moving well. When he got on the backside, his ears went up and he was really cruising. When a horse would come to him, he'd pick it up on his own. When we got to the quarter pole, I said 'Let's go; time to pick it up.' And he was right into it. He finished strong and the gallop out was strong, too. He can build off this race,” Velazquez said after the Shared Belief.

“It's a relief. A Shared Belief relief,” Baffert told the Del Mar media office after the race. “It's good that the fans were here for the showdown. I did not have any intention of running him in this race until a couple weeks ago. I started thinking about it, figuring it couldn't come up that tough. Then (son) Bode said, 'You know Rock Your World's running there?' For what this horse has gone through he's such a game horse and I wanted to run him here and see if he likes Del Mar. I've never had a Derby winner come back and win here so that's a first. He looks good and John (Velazquez) said he feels better than ever. There's still some good racing for him out there. We're waiting for the process to happen.”

Bred in Florida by Gail Rice, Medina Spirit is out of the Brilliant Speed mare Mongolian Changa. He is owned by Zedan Racing Stables, who purchased the 3-year-old colt from Whitman Sales for $35,000 at the 2020 Ocala Breeders' Sales Company July Two-Year-Olds and Horses of Racing Age Sale. With this win in the Shared Belief, Medina Spirit has three wins in seven starts in 2021, for a lifetime record of 8-4-3-1.

Additional stories about Baffert's Kentucky Derby positive and ensuing legal battles can be found here.

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But in the Grade 1 classic at Churchill Downs, the colt who cost $1,000 as a short yearling, by an under-appreciated sire and out of a mare who was given away, bucked the odds, flattened the probabilities, and looked like several million dollars as he led from early 'till late and won the Kentucky Derby by a half-length from Mandaloun (Into Mischief).

On pedigree, Medina Spirit is not poorly or even quite obscurely bred. Neither could it be said that his parents are trend setters in bloodstock, at least not until the first Saturday in May.

The colt's sire is the beautifully pedigreed Protonico, a dark bay son of leading sire Giant's Causeway out of the A.P. Indy mare Alpha Spirit, a daughter of Chilean champion and U.S. G1 winner Wild Spirit (Hussonet). The latter won a trio of G1s in her homeland for owner-breeder Haras Sumaya, which also bred Alpha Spirit and Protonico, and in the U.S., Wild Spirit won the G1 Ruffian, was second in the G1 Apple Blossom and Personal Ensign.

Protonico's race record likewise was nothing to sneer at. A three-time winner at the Grade 3 level, the son of Giant's Causeway stepped to win the G2 Alysheba at Churchill Downs in 2015 as a 4-year-old. In addition, he also ran second in the G1 Clark Handicap at Churchill at three and was third in the G1 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont at five.

Perhaps the prejudice against “turf horses” put Protonico in the wrong category, even though he could make a good claim as one of his sire's best dirt performers.

The colt represents the Storm Cat branch of Northern Dancer through the former's best stallion son Giant's Causeway, and this is the second year in a row that a descendant of Storm Cat won the Kentucky Derby after Authentic last year, who comes from Storm Cat through Harlan, Harlan's Holiday, and Into Mischief.

Whereas agent Gary Young was charged with finding his client a Protonico, and Medina Spirit was the result, the dam's side of the Derby winner's pedigree wasn't a commercial model either until her son began racing.

From the first crop of the Dynaformer stallion Brilliant Speed, Mongolian Changa was a big, scopey yearling who appealed to trainer Wayne Rice, and he purchased the filly for $9,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October yearling sale in 2015. Racing only at two, Mongolian Changa won a maiden special at Presque Isle in August of her juvenile season and earned $25,970 in six starts.

A reported bowed tendon having ended the filly's career at that point, Mongolian Changa was sent to Protonico at Taylor Made Farm in 2017, and Gail Rice bred the Kentucky Derby winner from the mare in 2018. Then as part of a divorce, Rice sold the colt as a short yearling for $1,000 to Christy Whitman, who brought the colt back as a 2-year-old in the June sale of horses in training last year that was postponed to July due to the pandemic.

At that sale, Medina Spirit rocked his three-furlong breeze in :33 flat and earned the highest BreezeFig at the distance last year for his performance at the sale. Neither the time nor the fig brought a rush of buyers to Whitman's barn, but the dark brown colt is a study in how a horse should look when breezing. The breeze video can be seen here.

Gary Young, as agent, acquired the colt for Amr Zedan's Zedan Racing Stables. Zedan had wanted to buy a juvenile by Protonico because he's good friend to the owner-breeder of Protonico, Oussama Aboughazale.

Aboughazale owns Haras Sumaya near Santiago, Chile, and is a primary player in the drama that brought Medina Spirit into being and to prominence. In addition to urging his friend to purchase a Protonico 2-year-old, Aboughazale bred and raced the sire, as well as the dam and second dam.

Although at least one Grade 1 victory is nearly a requirement for a term at stud in Kentucky, the owner of Sumaya Stud wanted his horse to stand in Kentucky and backed him each year with mares. That is a difficult push commercially, however, and the horse stood his first season at Taylor Made Farm, where Medina Spirit was conceived, then stood his second season in 2018 at Darby Dan, and has since been resident at Castleton Lyons on Iron Works Pike north of Lexington.

Castleton's farm manager, Pat Hayes, said that the farm had received more than two dozen requests for seasons in the two days after the Kentucky Derby, and breeders are clearly not having trouble identifying Protonico now that Medina Spirit is a household name.

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“It's kind of fun, now people are coming up to Taylor and saying, 'Oh your mom, she bred a nice horse,'” Rice said, laughing. “I just can't ask for a dream to come true any better than this.”

Rice, who turns 60 this year, bred Santa Anita Derby runner-up Medina Spirit. The 3-year-old son of $5,000 stallion Protonico is out of the winning Brilliant Speed mare Mongolian Changa, trained by her former husband. While it isn't until the fourth dam that a stakes winner can be found on Medina Spirit's page, Rice — and small-time breeders everywhere — know that black type is just not the most important factor when it comes to how a horse will perform on the track. 

“The mare was just beautiful, even though she had no pedigree,” Rice said. “She bowed a tendon, but she was a really good racehorse. That's something that you know from the inside, but you can't see it on paper. When you have the animal in your hands, though, you can see it.

“I kept telling people, 'This horse can run!' Just his body and his leg, and the intelligent attitude he had, I always thought he was special.”

Medina Spirit is the first foal out of Mongolian Changa, and his entry into the world on April 5, 2018 wasn't nearly as smooth as Rice would have preferred. 

“She was overdue and didn't build her bag of milk at all,” said Rice. “I was watching her thinking, 'She's gonna show signs, get her milk, and be all good.' Then one afternoon I drove in the driveway and she was down in the field, and I saw feet sticking out!

“All I was thinking was, 'But she doesn't have any milk!'”

Luckily, Rice had prepared ahead of time. Her only other broodmare at the time, Scribbling Sarah, was a great milker with strong colostrum, so she'd frozen some of that when she'd had her foal a month before.

The new-to-the-world Medina Spirit got his first dose of colostrum courtesy the milk of Scribbling Sarah, and Mongolian Changa started to produce her own milk about four to five hours after delivering the colt.

Mongolian Changa lost her 2019 foal, and Rice ended up giving the mare away when she made the decision to get divorced later that year. Her colt, the future Medina Spirit, was sent to the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company Winter Mixed Sale, bringing just one bid for the bottom-dollar price of $1,000. The colt would later bring $35,000 at the OBS July sale in 2020 before heading to Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert.

Rice let him go; she really had no choice. She could only keep one horse at the time due to the divorce, and she'd decided on Scribbling Sarah since the mare's filly by Mr. Speaker brought $65,000 at the 2018 OBS Winter sale.

That filly, named Speech, would go on to win the Grade 1 Ashland Stakes at Keeneland in July of 2020, then ran third in the Kentucky Oaks held in September. Rice sold Scribbling Sarah right after the Ashland victory, but still has her 2-year-old colt by Unified and is pointing him to the OBS June sale this year.

Speech winning the Ashland Stakes under Javier Castellano

“His nickname is '9 and 4,' so I hope it comes true,” Rice said. “You gotta call it, you gotta speak it; you gotta speak it to have it. It's funny because his sister is Speed, (Niall) Brennan has the Upstart, named Uphold the Law (in training with Michael Stidham, won debut on March 18), and I named this one 'Disruptive.' He's a really fun horse and does little things that make you laugh, like dumping the water tank, curls his lip up when you touch him. He's just incredibly smart, really sweet, and nothing bothers him.”

Thinking back to the fact that Medina Spirit benefitted from the colostrum of a Grade 1 producer, before going on to become a Grade 3 winner himself, Rice is still a bit shell-shocked. 

“It's just crazy to think about,” she said. “I haven't had many broodmares in my whole career, only ever one or two at a time, just playing around. And to have this happen in back-to-back years? It's crazy.”

The daughter of a schoolteacher and a carpenter, Rice was born in Pennsylvania and actually went to school with her future husband. The pair met back up when she was 21 and she started learning about racehorses at Penn National, and has been hooked ever since.

The pedigree side of the business is especially fascinating, Rice said, though she enjoys being hands-on with the young horses as well.

“I love doing the matching,” said Rice. “I might need to make that my new business, but I also like to be outside! It just gets me excited to see the crosses, A.P. Indy here, Storm Cat, Unbridled… it's like craziness and it's nuts and then I don't sleep!”

Sleep will also be hard to come by next Friday night, before the Bob Baffert-trained Medina Spirit steps into the 20-horse starting gate for the 2021 Kentucky Derby.

“Maybe this is when the bridesmaid becomes the bride,” Rice joked, referring to Medina Spirit's trio of second-place finishes in graded stakes company. “If anybody can get him there, though, Baffert can.”

Medina Spirit (inside) fought off Roman Centurian and Hot Rod Charlie the length of the stretch to win the Robert B. Lewis Stakes

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