As for Dick Francis, I grew up on his mysteries, handed on to me by my horse-loving mother one by one as they came out each year — but I never knew the 1956 Grand National story. It sheds such light on his protagonists, who were often washed-up jockeys trying not to be embittered by injuries, failures or other strokes of ill fortune that had sidelined them from promising racing careers. No wonder Francis wrote those characters so convincingly — he was speaking from his own painful experience. AesopFan, thanks for the hilarious Francis plot proposal. Now, all I ask is that you rejigger the ending a little, so that Rich Strike and his humans somehow turn out to be the good guys after all.

https://news.yahoo.com/oklahoman-rick-dawson-bet-eric-032714029.html

Rich Strike is Dawson’s first Derby horse, the first, too, for jockey Leon and trainer Eric Reed. On Saturday they accomplished a feat veterans sometimes work for decades to achieve and never do.

Dawson aspired for years to own horses, he said, but it took a round of golf to get him in the game.

[friend of a friend of a friend connected him with the trainer]

“I got in it because I loved it, and it was interesting. It was fun,” Dawson said. “I was at a point in my life where I had the time and the energy, wanted to go to the farm, wanted to go — and I learned the business. And Eric was so great about teaching me. If I asked him a stupid question, he didn’t say, ‘That’s a stupid question.’ He would just — he would give me a great answer and truthfully, and I would learn from that. And that’s how we built what we built.”

On Saturday, what they built made history in the Derby, an upset for the ages given Rich Strike’s history.

Reed claimed him for Dawson’s RED TR-Racing after a $30,000 maiden-claiming race at Churchill Downs.
“We actually tried to claim another horse in that race as well and we got out-shook,” Reed said.

The claiming race was Rich Strike’s only win before the Derby.

In five races since, he’d finished third twice, fourth once and fifth once.

Rich Strike wasn’t supposed to be in the Derby, but a late scratch from D. Wayne Lukas-trained Ethereal Road opened the door.
…
“We always thought if we could just get in — just give us a shot. We’re getting better. We love to go long. Mile and a quarter, it was right in our wheelhouse.”

That’s how it looked Saturday, in a dazzling run that Dawson hoped for but couldn’t have predicted.

“I’ve never, ever felt that life puts a cap on what you can do and there’s nothing you can do to change it,” Dawson said. “I’ve never believed that. I always thought, ‘I’m as smart as the next guy. Maybe I can figure it out, maybe I can’t,’ but I always kept trying. And here we are.”

https://horseracingsense.com/what-is-a-claiming-race-maiden/

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/horses/kentucky-derby/2022/05/06/ethereal-road-scratched-kentucky-derby-2022-rich-strike-draws/9673112002/
Written before the race, but doesn’t tell WHY the horse was withdrawn; the story did indicate what the jockey intended to do, which was exactly what happened.

“Get a good break and work over to the inside,” Reed said of plans for breaking from the No. 20 post. “Start picking them up midway on the backstretch and then pass them all before the finish line.”

https://news.yahoo.com/trainer-eric-reed-nearly-lost-003657147.html
“Trainer Eric Reed nearly ‘lost everything’ in a barn fire. Now he’s a Kentucky Derby winner”

A Lexington-based trainer, Reed entered the Derby with just one graded stakes win in his career.

The win came six years after a devastating fire caused by lightning killed 23 horses at his Mercury Equine Center in Lexington.
…
Only 13 animals made it out of the fire alive.

“When we drove up on that that night, I told my wife, I said, ‘We’ve probably lost everything,'” Reed said. “By the grace of God, the wind was blowing in a direction that kept it from getting to the other two barns. The next morning when we saw the devastation, because this happened in the middle of the night, I just thought of all the years and all the stuff we had done to get this beautiful farm and have this happen, that something might be telling me it’s the end of the line.”

Instead, Reed was touched by the large number of people who came out to help in the aftermath of the fire. Many were friends. Others were strangers who had seen the story.

Several high-profile trainers, who Reed did not name, reached out with promises to help him find clients and horses in the aftermath of the fire.

“I think that kept me going,” Reed said. “Then I just decided I wasn’t going to let it take me out. Thank God, we’re here today.”

As Reed struggled to make sense of the improbable win, he stood alongside his father, Herbert Reed, a former trainer who never reached the heights his son just had. Herbert was a former assistant trainer under Mack Miller, who won the 1993 Kentucky Derby with Sea Hero.

“If you find something you love to do, you never work,” Herbert Reed said. “He found something he loved to do, and he’s good at it. I’m as proud as I can be of him.”

The chances of Reed even having a horse in the field were astronomical.

The trainer of Ethereal Road, D. Wayne Lukas, had won the race four times with 49 career starts, second-most of any trainer. Reed, meanwhile, does not even have a Wikipedia page.*
…

“I never thought I would have a Derby horse,” Reed said. “I never tried to go to the yearling sale and buy a Derby horse. I just wanted to buy my clients a horse that would keep them happy, have some fun and make a little money. If we got a good one, terrific. This was never in my thoughts.”

That approach to racing is one that Francis cites approvingly in many of his books.

*He does now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Reed_(horse_trainer)

Also, buttressing the relationship of oxygen as a significant factor in winning:

https://www.horseracingnation.com/news/The_Tremendous_Size_of_Secretariat_s_Heart_123

He had the breeding to be a great race horse, but he also had something that made him more powerful and unique. His heart was more than twice the size of an average horse.

In Pure Heart, originally published in the June 4, 1990 issue of Sports Illustrated, Bill Nack reports the words of Dr. Thomas Swerczek, who performed the necropsy that discovered just how big Secretariat’s heart was.

“We were all shocked,” Swerczek said. “I’ve seen and done thousands of autopsies on horses, and nothing I’d ever seen compared to it. The heart of the average horse weighs about nine pounds. This was almost twice the average size, and a third larger than any equine heart I’d ever seen. And it wasn’t pathologically enlarged. All the chambers and the valves were normal. It was just larger. I think it told us why he was able to do what he did.”

https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2021/11/17/how-horses-qualify-for-the-kentucky-derby/

https://pennhorseracing.com/stories/how-does-a-horse-qualify-for-the-kentucky-derby/

This one gives some interesting odds –
https://www.americasbestracing.net/lifestyle/2021-how-horses-qualify-the-kentucky-derby-beginners-guide
“When you hear that winning the Kentucky Derby is a once-in-a-lifetime event, that’s a literal statement. Only 3-year-old Thoroughbreds are eligible to run in the big race, so the competition is fierce and a second chance at glory isn’t coming next year. Look at it this way: This year’s Derby contenders were all born in 2019. There were 19,295 Thoroughbred foals (aka baby horses) born that year, and only 20 horses can run in the Kentucky Derby. That means that there’s about a one in a thousand chance that any given Thoroughbred born in 2019 will make it to the 2022 run for the roses, and a one in 19,295 chance of winning. If you’re a horse owner, there’s literally a better chance that you’ll win an Oscar at some point than score a victory in the Kentucky Derby this year.”

Rich Strike’s story may win an Oscar too, if someone takes up the challenge to make a movie about him.
BTW – is that a great name for the horse or what?