Kentucky Derby star Cherie DeVaux hopes Golden

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — The Belmont Stakes is less than 34 hours away, and Cherie DeVaux is feeling burdened.

Not about the race. DeVaux has completed what she will be able to do to put together her 3-year-old colt, Golden Tempo, for Saturday’s third leg of the Triple Crown. Questions about post place, observe bias, even the rising menace of doubtlessly extreme thunderstorms before the night post time (4:04 PDT, Fox) are brushed apart because, as she said, those are all out of a coach’s control.

No, it’s her make-up bag.

She forgot to deliver it with her to Saratoga Race Course and she has a Fox Sports TV interview scheduled proper after she finishes talking with a reporter inside her small workplace adjoining to Barn 83.

“I have to be on national TV, and I have not a stitch of makeup on right now, all the while having to try to make sure I enter my horses and not forget and mess that up too badly,” DeVaux said, smiling. “So it’s been a lot.”

But DeVaux just isn’t complaining, because it’s been a lot since 7:10 p.m. EDT on May 2, the precise time Golden Tempo crossed the end line first in the Kentucky Derby. And those 35 days have been crammed with many great experiences.

The coolest?

“We won the Derby,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything cooler than that.

“There have been a lot of really neat opportunities,” she added. “A lot of different people have reached out. But you know, just the whole experience itself.”

Winning the Derby adjustments anybody’s life, but it’s magnified when you make historical past, as DeVaux did by turning into the first feminine coach to win the world’s most well-known horse race. It started a whirlwind that included more than 65 TV interviews and dozens upon dozens of textual content messages and telephone calls.

And, honestly, there was one expertise that, for a faculty softball participant and lifelong New York Yankees fan, exceeded the others.

“I did get to throw the first pitch out at a Yankees game, which I thought was amazing,” DeVaux said. “To stand on the field and look at the cheap seats [where I sat] when I was a kid. … And I’ve had much better seats in recent times, but to really sit there and have that dichotomy of that was where you started and this is where you are, was really a profound feeling.”

Kentucky Derby successful coach Cherie DeVaux and jockey Jose Ortiz throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium on May 7.

(Ishika Samant / Getty Images)

Technically she’s back home for the Belmont, which is being run at Saratoga for the third and closing 12 months while Belmont Park is rebuilt. But she has few recollections of Saratoga as a little one; the household moved to Florida when she was 9 and she lived there until she was 19. Much of her household, including her dad and mom and a number of siblings, live in the world, though, and DeVaux, who spends most of the 12 months in Kentucky, said she’s been ready to get pleasure from some time with them this week.

The big query is whether or not her large cheering part will probably be ready to have a good time another victory. Handicappers are more than a bit pessimistic. Saturday’s Daily Racing Form has 1-2-3-4 choices by 19 specialists, and not one chosen Golden Tempo. Just two picked him second and 5 had him third. The consensus was he wouldn’t end in the top 4.

His probabilities in Kentucky had been aided by a fast tempo that drained out the front-runners, and on paper the Belmont figures to be run at a more reasonable tempo, which doesn’t always help a late-running horse. But he’s a colt who relishes the gap and he has improved his Beyer Speed Figure with every start.

DeVaux is happy for the race, clearly, but she’s also keen for this “season” to end. She is aware of life will never be the same as it was before May 2, but she’d like to slow down a bit, in half, so she will be able to benefit from the feeling of successful the Derby.

“I couldn’t prepare myself,” said DeVaux, who had never had a Derby starter. “I didn’t really think about winning the race. I thought Golden Tempo was going to run really well. I thought he would hit the board, … but I never allowed myself to think that he would win and what that would look like.

“And I’m one of those people I want to think about, you know, we win the race, what does that look like? But I was just so excited to be at the Derby and I wanted to just really be present, that it really didn’t cross my mind what would happen if we won the race.”

Golden Tempo’s coach Cherie DeVaux holds her nephew while talking to reporters after successful the Kentucky Derby on May 2.

(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

Others weren’t ready, either. DeVaux was carrying one of her nephews on her hip immediately after the Derby, and some people watching on TV immediately praised her for being a working mother. One downside: She doesn’t have youngsters of her own (her husband has full custody of a teenage lady).

“Can I just not be a really good horse trainer that did something really profound and amazing in a short amount of time after I had to work my rear end off for it?” DeVaux said. “Like, why can’t that just be the story?”

Etc.

The Belmont is the thirteenth race on a 14-race card that begins at 8 a.m. PDT. The first seven races will probably be on FS2 before coverage shifts to Fox at midday (the Belmont show begins at 1). A separate handicapping-oriented show will air from 1-4:30 p.m. on FS1.

There are 5 Grade 1 races scheduled, including Bob Baffert’s Nysos against Michael McCarthy’s Journalism in the Met Mile (2:32 p.m.) and Baffert’s Crude Velocity against DeVaux’s Englishman in the Woody Stephens (1:52 p.m.). The Belmont is slated to start at about 4:10 p.m.