Kentucky Derby: 8 one-hit wonders since 2000

Editor's note: An earlier version of this report included Giacomo among the Kentucky Derby winners who never had another win. Giacomo won the San Diego Handicap in 2006.

The Kentucky Derby is the Holy Grail of racing, and this is the time of year when the frenzy peaks. The preps are over, the future bets are down, and the obsessive overanalyzing is in overdrive. There’s no cure for Derby fever, and there won’t ever be herd immunity.

“There’s just something about the Derby,” six-time winner Bob Baffert has said. “Winning the Triple Crown is great, but the Kentucky Derby is still the most important race. To me, the Derby is the bar.”

Few would disagree, but Derby glory can be fleeting. Two weeks later at Pimlico, the bloom often is off the roses. During this century, eight Derby champions never again stood in a winner’s circle.

Always Dreaming, Nyquist, Orb, Super Saver, Mine That Bird and Monarchos were a combined 0-for-27 after triumphing in Louisville. Barbaro and Country House never raced again, so they get asterisks. Here are the sagas of those eight one-hit wonders:

Country House (2019)

Career: 7: 2-2-1, $2,120,175

“Well, I never thought I’d see that,” Travis Stone said after announcing the first on-track disqualification of a Derby winner. Neither did anybody else. Country House, who had been 1-for-6 lifetime, was hardly bothered when front-running Maximum Security veered out approaching the stretch. The 65-1 shot just was in the right place at the right time to earn an undeserved place in history after the weirdest Derby of them all.

The racing gods immediately turned upon him, like the thousands who booed during the trophy presentation. Country House began coughing a few days later, then lost his enthusiasm for training, and never was seen again. The Derby usurper was not missed.

Strange but true: Because the pandemic postponed the 2020 Derby until September, Country House holds the record for longest reign as “champion.”

Always Dreaming (2017)

Career: 11: 4-2-2, $2,415,860

He entered the Derby 3-for-3 as a 3-year-old, so it was no shock that this colt gave longtime collaborators John Velazquez and Todd Pletcher their second Derby wins and their first together. Far more unexpected was Always Dreaming’s eighth-place flop as the 6-5 Preakness favorite, beaten nearly 14 lengths.

Pletcher, who rarely runs on two weeks’ rest, was philosophical. “It was just that he put so much into the Derby that it wasn’t meant to be,” he said. “We’ll savor the Derby victory. To me, it felt like I really needed that second one.”

There were no more golden moments for Always Dreaming. He never got his mojo back, losing his next four races before being retired in September 2018.

Nyquist (2016)

Career: 11: 8-0-1, $5,189,200

All things seemed possible for Nyquist after he cruised as the 2-1 Derby favorite. The 2-year-old champ was 8-for-8, the eighth undefeated Derby hero and the first since Big Brown in 2008. American Pharoah swept the Triple Crown the year before, and there was optimism about an encore.

Nyquist got the rock-star treatment during Preakness week, when tour groups tried to get a glimpse of him in his stall. Minutes before the race, fans yelled “See you in New York!” to trainer Doug O’Neill.

They wouldn’t. Mud-loving Exaggerator, the Derby runner-up, took the Preakness on a sloppy track while the 3-5 Nyquist lost second by a nose to long shot Cherry Wine.

“It’s a bummer to lose,” O’Neill said. “I had been envisioning a Triple Crown story here.”

Nyquist skipped the Belmont and ended his career as an also-ran in the Haskell (fourth) and Pennsylvania Derby (sixth).

Orb (2013)

Career: 12: 5-0-3, $2,612,516

Orb’s last-to-first splash through the slop was a feel-good story on many levels. It was a Derby breakthrough for the Phipps clan, the first family of American racing, and trainer Shug McGaughey. The Phippses had bred and raced champions since the 1920s but were 0-for-11 in America’s Race, so these pillars of the racing establishment became sentimental favorites.

“I feel absolutely wonderful,” patriarch Ogden Mills “Dinny” Phipps said. “It’s really the culmination of horse racing.”

Unfortunately, it was the last hurrah for the streaky Orb, a slow developer who didn’t break his maiden until his fourth start. He came to Louisville on a four-race winning streak and never finished first again. He was fourth in the Preakness, third in the Belmont and Travers, eighth in the Jockey Club Gold Cup and didn’t race as a 4-year-old. He retired sound to Claiborne Farm, and to his connections he’d done more than enough.

Daisy Phipps Pulito shared a peak experience in the winner’s circle with her father.

“I knew just what my dad was thinking,’’ she told me. “‘I did it. I got it.’ ‘’

Super Saver (2010)

Career: 10: 3-2-1, $1,889,766

A ground-saving trip along the muddy rail under Calvin Borel got Pletcher off his 0-for-24 Derby schneid. Borel’s third Derby score in four years was a first that guaranteed his 2013 election to the Hall of Fame. It meant even more to Pletcher, who would join Borel in the Saratoga Springs shrine in 2021.

“It feels awfully good,” Pletcher said. “Everyone kept saying there was one out there with our name on it, but we didn’t take anything for granted.”

Super Saver wasn’t expected to win – he paid $18 – and came up short the rest of his career. Like Pletcher’s Always Dreaming in 2017, he ran eighth in the Preakness. Super Saver was fourth in the Haskell and 10th in the Travers before going to stud. He distinguished himself by producing divisional champions Letruska and Runhappy, who is off to a fine start as a stallion.

Mine That Bird (2009)

Career: 18: 5-2-2, $2,228,637

Any list of the least likely Derby winners must have this New Mexico-based gelding at or near the top. Like Secretariat and Seabiscuit, he was the inspiration for a movie – “50-1,” which were Mine That Bird’s odds in his shining moment.

The script was based on reality, which was much stranger than fiction. Obscure trainer (Chip Woolley), a former bull rider in rodeos, vanned him from Sunland Park, near the Mexican border, to Louisville. Not many Derby runners ride 1,500 miles hitched to a pickup truck. Nobody comes from last, 21 lengths behind, in a field of 19 to score by 6 3/4 lengths, the biggest romp since 1946. Churchill master Borel found a small opening along the muddy rail in mid-stretch, and Mine That Bird shot through “like a little deer,” as jockey Mike Smith said. Win price: $103.20.

“It’s a tough game,” Woolley said. “I never thought I’d get here. (But) if you don’t dream of winning the Derby, you have no business training Thoroughbreds.”

Maybe Mine That Bird shouldn’t have been 50-1. He had a fine distance pedigree – sired by Belmont champ Birdstone – and was Canada’s 2-year-old champion. But coming off a fourth-place finish at backwater Sunland Park darkened his form, and few second-guessed themselves for not betting him.

Mine That Bird never won again, going 0-for-9, but he had an outstanding Triple Crown – second in the Preakness behind super filly Rachel Alexandra, third in a Belmont he might have won if not for Borel’s premature move. He was retired to a ranch in Roswell, N.M., the UFO capital of the world, appropriate for a horse who came out of nowhere.

Barbaro (2006)

Career: 7: 6-0-0, $2,302,200

The story of Barbaro could not have been sadder, and it broke a million hearts. After dominating the Derby by 6 1/2 lengths to improve to 6-for-6, he broke down early in the Preakness, shattering three bones in his right hind leg. Perhaps he hurt himself by breaking through the gate before the start.

He looked like a potential Triple Crown winner. What might have been.

“During the race, he took a bad step, and I can’t really tell you what happened,” Edgar Prado said. “I heard a noise about a hundred yards into the race and I pulled him right up.”

On the viewing stand outside Pimlico’s press box, I was directly above Barbaro when the leg gave out. I cringed. I’m sure I was among the first to see what had happened, because there was a delay of a second or two before the shocked crowd moaned as he staggered to a stop.

If Barbaro had been anything but an undefeated star, he almost surely would have been put down on the spot. He underwent a series of operations at New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa., and the leg eventually healed. Unfortunately, he developed laminitis, a painful, often crippling hoof condition that makes it difficult to bear weight, and he was euthanized on Jan. 29, 2007.

“At a moment like this,” co-owner Gretchen Jackson said, “grief is the price we pay for love.”

Monarchos (2001)

Career: 10: 4-1-3, $1,720,830

This 10-1 shot’s brilliant time was partly because of a souped-up track, but going 1:59.97 in the Derby is dazzling. The only faster winner was Secretariat – 1:59 2/5 in 1973, when Sham went in 1:59 4/5.

John Ward, a third-generation trainer, got the prize that eluded his father, uncle and grandfather, completing an 85-year family quest. “Being a Kentuckian, the best part of it is you are doing it in front of your peers,” Ward said. “They’re the people you have grown up with.”

Monarchos didn’t come close to his 4 3/4-length Derby runaway in the Preakness (third) or Belmont (sixth). He ran only once more, finishing third in a Gulfstream Park allowance, and was retired the next January after suffering a tendon injury.