In Kentucky Derby & Oaks wins, Hernandez makes like Bo-Rail

Louisville, Ky.

It was not a long reach for Brian Hernandez Jr. to find the inspiration for the rail rides that led him to his historic Oaks-Derby double last week. It was right there both physically and spiritually in the same spot he has had for 20 years in the jockeys room at Churchill Downs.

“I came here to Kentucky in 2004, and I’m actually in Calvin’s corner,” he said. “Shane Borel, his nephew, he’s been our valet for the last 20 years, and he had Calvin all those years.”

Hernandez was talking, of course, about Calvin Borel, who won the Kentucky Derby three times in four years. Riding Street Sense in 2007 and Mine That Bird in 2009 and Super Saver in 2010, Borel took that devil-may-care path that left barely a breath of air between his left leg and the rail.

Bo-Rail. That lyrical nickname inspired by an ominous barrier that would be Borel’s conduit to his 2013 induction into the Hall of Fame.

“When I started riding, my brother put cones in the middle of the shed row and I’d say, ‘What the hell you doing that for?’ ” Borel said in a story retold seven years ago by Ted Lewis for the Louisiana Sports Writers Association. “He said, ‘That’s how far you’ve gone. You lose so much ground.’ I realized after that, I’m going to start staying a little bit closer to the fence. The rail is the quickest way from start to finish.”

Hernandez emulated that ground-saving tactic twice last week on Thorpedo Anna in winning the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks and the next day on Mystik Dan in Kentucky Derby 2024.

It had been 15 years since any jockey had won the Oaks and Derby with just one night’s sleep in between. That was Borel in 2009, when he was 42, riding Rachel Alexandra to a 20 1/4-length Oaks runaway that exceptionally was not on the rail and Mine That Bird to a 50-1 Derby upset that very much was.

“Watching Calvin’s Derby rides, that was actually one of the things I did when I rode Mystik Dan was I went back and watched,” Hernandez, 38, said at the Churchill Downs stables the morning after the 2024 Derby. “I watched Mine That Bird first, and I said, yeah, that’s not the trip we’re going to get, because he was too far back. Then we went back and watched the Super Saver trip (in 2010). I was like, you know what? That’s the trip we need.”

The resemblance was uncanny.

From post 4 in the pre-2020 double-gate setup, Borel hustled Super Saver to the rail in the first 100 yards before settling into sixth place going past the wire for the first time. From post 3, which is in almost exactly the same spot on the track as the old 4 thanks to the new 20-stall gate, Hernandez was maybe 150 yards along when he tucked Mystik Dan into his rail trip in eighth place into the clubhouse turn.

Both horses were relaxed up the backstretch. Both were sixth at one call and then fourth at the next. Other than a move around no. 12 Conveyance in the second turn, Borel and Super Saver never came off the rail, taking the lead for good in the last 300 yards.

Like a passenger in a hurry to catch a connecting flight, Hernandez took the more direct route with Mystik Dan. They squeezed their way through the narrowest of gaps at the end of the second turn to get past no. 12 Track Phantom, ridden by Joel Rosario, before opening a two-length lead that dwindled to just a nose at the end.

“I was watching those horses to the outside,” Hernandez said. “The thing about a race like that is everybody starts making their moves. They started stacking, stacking, stacking, stacking, and we were just sitting there waiting. The minute that Joel moved just a half a step to go meet those horses, I was like we’re shooting through. We did that. He tried to come back down, but by then, Mystik Dan was already through there and on top of the fence.”

It was almost like Hernandez was asking himself what would Calvin Borel do?

“You can’t be scared,” Borel said 14 years ago. “If I can’t do it my way and get the job done, that’s when I’m going to retire.”

Borel, 57, who has been in and out of retirement, has had just 17 rides this year, mostly in his native Louisiana. He had one Friday night, finishing seventh in an optional-claiming race at Evangeline Downs. Attempts to reach Borel this week to compare his rides with Hernandez’s came up short.

Those old Borel videos from 14 and 15 years ago still speak volumes. So does the strategy they inspired for Hernandez.

“From watching those races and watching guys like Calvin that have been successful in (the Derby), he learned quickly that you just don’t worry about what everybody else is doing,” Hernandez said. “Ride your own horse. That’s what we did (last Saturday). We rode our own horse, and he was the best horse.”

That sounds easy enough, but video and still photos showed Mystik Dan getting pinched by Track Phantom. Imagine squeezing through the closing doors of an elevator, except this was with unrelenting horses weighing more than a half-ton each going about 30 mph carrying men who were wearing little more clothing than a motorcycle rider.

“He doesn’t run in the 1 hole. He runs in the half hole. He could paint the fence while he’s going.”

That was what trainer D. Wayne Lukas told The Associated Press about Borel in 2010. He just as easily could have said the same thing about Hernandez last week in the Derby.

And there was that fence, which has some give nowadays for safety. Yeah, sure. Just like the guard rail on a freeway.

“He’s going to save the boots, because they have got the paint from the rail on them,” Oaks and Derby-winning trainer Kenny McPeek said.

Those really are hold-your-breath moments. Maybe even cringe-worthy. In a single word, ballsy.

“You’ve just got to go for it,” Hernandez said, deflecting the praise for his courage. “We went into (last Saturday) thinking we had a really good horse. I told myself going into the race I’m going to roll the dice and see if I can get through along the fence. That was our game plan all along. I talked to Kenny all week long. We both said it. We drew the 3 hole, so we’re just going to roll the dice. We’ve kind of made a career out of it the last few years. Let’s go ahead and see if we can do it on the biggest day of our lives.”

It was more than just a vicarious roll for the Gasaways, the owners from Arkansas who paid $10,000 to pair Goldencents with their Colonel John mare Ma’am. They were watching their homebred 3-year-old baby go through a veritable wringer.

“Nothing spooks this horse,” Sharilyn Gasaway said afterward. She had an hour to resume breathing.

For this roll of the dice, none of the connections wanted to see Hernandez come up craps.

“This is typical Brian,” McPeek said. “He knows what to do out there. I always had a world of confidence in him. Rarely second-guess anything he ever does.”

“It takes the trust in the whole group I think more than anything,” Hernandez said. “I’m fortunate enough to where I was riding for Kenny and the owners, and they trusted in me to let me do a daring trip like we had. The biggest thing is we had the horse that trusted us, and he went through a couple tight spots that he never even thought twice about. I pointed him to a couple spots around there, and he was like no problem and shot right through. It’s just a big, team effort more than anything.”

Hernandez was seconding what McPeek said and echoing what Borel said in 2007 and 2009 and 2010. At the same time he was validating what McPeek has said for years in his unwavering endorsement of Hernandez, who has parlayed an Eclipse Award as 2004’s top apprentice jockey into a 2,565-win career that also includes a 2012 Breeders’ Cup Classic victory on Fort Larned.

“I put Brian on horses on a daily basis,” McPeek said. “Good horses and average horses, and he does a good job on every one of them. I have rarely come back and said that was horrible. And then I’ll get outside the box, and maybe I will go to Saratoga and I will ride some other riders and go, boy, I miss Brian. I miss Brian, because he doesn't make very many mistakes.”

McPeek suddenly realized he was saying all this last Saturday night in a roomful of cameras and microphones, some that were streaming him live in the blush of the first Oaks and Derby successes for him and for Hernandez.

“I don’t want you to write that at all,” he said, provoking laughs. “I don’t want anybody to know how good Brian is. But I guess the cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it?”

Just like it was for Borel less than a generation ago.

Now it is on to the Preakness in Baltimore for Mystik Dan. And Hernandez. And company.

“It’s going to be exciting,” he said. “We were talking about that last (Saturday) night. My parents, they came in town for Derby from Louisiana. I asked them (Sunday) morning are you guys going to make the trip to Baltimore? They were like, ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ Everybody we were at dinner with last night, ... they all want to make the trip. We’re hoping to make a party of it. We’ll see if we can keep this party rolling.”