How faith and grit helped Cherie DeVaux earn her place in Kentucky Derby history

(CNN) — In the moments before the Kentucky Derby began, two incredible women – one stepping off the grandest stage in horse racing and another about to step onto it – strode together to Churchill Downs’ paddock.

Donna Brothers, a former jockey with 1,130 career wins, was working her final race as a commentator on NBC’s coverage of the Derby. As the pageantry kicked into high gear, she walked with Cherie DeVaux – the daughter and granddaughter of horse trainers – to discuss her family’s legacy and her first-ever start in the Kentucky Derby.

When Brothers asked DeVaux what it would mean to make history as the first female trainer to win the Derby, DeVaux said she couldn’t conceptualize such a thing as the duo walked together, but then turned the moment around on Brothers.

“Women like you are what made it easy for me and, by the way, my career started 22 years ago at Churchill and I’ve always admired and respected you and it is an honor that you get to do your last walkover with me,” DeVaux told Brothers.

It seemed like a nice compliment at the time, a nod to Brothers’ historic role in the sport as DeVaux readied to watch her long-shot horse, Golden Tempo, run for the roses. It ended up being a passing of the torch for women in horse racing.

DeVaux’s 24-1 underdog ended up being the horse draped in roses with an incredible come-from-behind victory that saw him and jockey José Ortiz charge from dead last after three-quarters of a mile to waltzing into Churchill Downs’ winner circle. The weaving, lung-bursting charge down the home stretch will be long remembered as one of the most impressive kicks in Derby history – and it was just the way his trainer drew it up.

“He’s a dead closer. And the thing that the Louisiana Derby really solidified (was) that he was getting there, from the eighth pole (to) home. If he had a little bit extra, extra ground, he was going to make it,” DeVaux said. “So, you know, it’s just one of those things. We just have to have faith in the process, faith in the horse and faith in Jose. Lot of faith. Gotta have faith.”

Operating on faith

Faith is what got DeVaux to this history-making point, the trainer of the horse that wins America’s most famous race.

Though her family has long been involved in racing, she was planning to become a doctor. She was studying pre-med in college when she found herself in need of a job and gravitated toward her family’s business.

“My mother says, ‘Well, there’s a farm across, and all you have to do is walk the horses. And that’s how I started,’ DeVaux told reporters. “And then I thought, ‘Well, I can ride them.’ And I had this advisor my last year, and she’s telling me to take organic chemistry, which no pre-med student wants to take. And I just looked at her, I said, ‘No, I’m gonna go work on the racetrack. And she’s like, ‘Are you sure?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll just go see how it works.’”

She worked under the tutelage of Chuck Simons for six years in upstate New York at Saratoga Race Course before moving to Chad Brown’s operation at the same track.

She eventually came to a crossroads in her career, DeVaux said. That’s when the next moment of faith came.

“In the summer of 2017, I was kind of at a crossroads in life, and he told me that I owed it to myself to at least try, and he had the faith in me, and he saw what I didn’t see and believed in me,” DeVaux told NBC after the race, referring to her spouse David Ingordo, who helps owners purchase thoroughbreds that can go on to win races such as the Derby.

He just told me, ‘Just give it three years. Let’s just give it three years and see if it works out.’ And I could always go and do something else,” DeVaux said.

Safe to say – after racking up more than $32 million in earnings since obtaining her license in 2018 – it worked out.

A run for history

DeVaux knew her horse was a “dead closer.” Ortiz put it a different way.

“We always knew this horse had a lot of ability, but he’s very lazy,” the jockey told reporters afterward.

Maybe the nicer way to say that is Golden Tempo is a slow starter. In a shrunken Derby field – only 18 horses took off after The Puma was scratched on Saturday morning and Great White flipped over on his way to the starting gate, tossing his jockey and being scratched by race officials – Golden Tempo was at the very back about three-quarters of the way through the race.

Dead last going into the final turn. And then he woke up.

Starting multiple lengths behind the next closest horse, Ortiz and Golden Tempo started weaving their way through the field. As the pack broke up and the pace started to drop, Ortiz guided Golden Tempo to the outside and suddenly the horse had a ton of room to operate.

But even as the crowd roared and Golden Tempo had no one blocking his path, there were still 11 horses ahead of him. Then he kicked.

In a split-second, Golden Tempo passed the main chasing pack. As Renegade – guided by Ortiz’s brother, Irad Ortiz Jr. – looked to have the race there for the taking, Golden Tempo suddenly turned up on his right flank.

That set off a sprint between the two horses and the brothers riding them, striding toward the finish line. In the end, Golden Tempo won by that most official of measurements in horse racing: A neck.

“It’s just (an) ability you have. Been riding here now more regularly, and I know the track better, and I know this track point that I had to make my move today. I think I time it right,” Ortiz said after the race.

Not exactly a one-and-done

When Golden Tempo crossed the finish line, DeVaux said she blacked out.

NBC’s cameras caught her wildly hugging her family, her team, anyone who was in close proximity. In the post-race interviews, she was clearly overwhelmed by the moment – her horse’s run, the history of the race and now her place in it.

“I honestly don’t know,” DeVaux told NBC when asked what the moment means to her. “I’m just I’m glad that I could be a representative of all women everywhere, that we can do anything to set our minds to.”

After the adrenaline of the winner’s circle faded and she reached the relative calm of the press conference, DeVaux joked that – for the first time in this Derby cycle – her plans were going to be upended.

“I couldn’t believe it. None of us really can believe it. There was a joke that I’m going to be a one-and-done, but now I think I have to do this again,” she said.

The hard-scrabble life in horse racing attracts a certain type of person. There are absurdly early wake-up times, an enormous amount of time surrounded by horse manure, incredible effort invested in protecting and prodding enormous animals who having their own ideas on how they’re going to perform on any given day. It’s a tough life and Cherie DeVaux said she hasn’t really given a lot of thought to her newly found status as a trailblazer for women in the gritty world of training thoroughbreds.

“Being a woman or my gender has never really crossed my mind in this journey of mine,” she said. “I have to say – the race track’s a tough place. It’s a tough place if you’re a man, it’s a tough place if you’re a woman.”

But she always carried that quiet faith – the belief that things will work out. And that tough life on the backside of race tracks, whether Saratoga, her home at Keeneland or Churchill Downs, has given her a mental strength that reflects in her work.

Golden Tempo’s win is a victory for DeVaux’s team, her family, the horse’s owners and Ortiz. But it’s also a win for women looking to make history.

“The thing that really has become apparent to me is that not everyone has the same constitution as I have mentally,” she said, “and it really is an honor to be able to be that person for other women or other little girls to look up to.

“You know, you can dream big and you can you can pivot, you can come from one place and make yourself a part of history.”

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