Presented by CORSO ITALIAN STEAK.
This Day In Sports…May 7, 1988:
Caldwell native Gary Stevens, who got his horse racing start at Les Bois Park while a student at Capital High in the late 1970s, rides Winning Colors to victory in the 114th running of the Kentucky Derby. It was the first of three victories for Stevens in the Run For The Roses, as Winning Colors became only the third filly ever to win the Derby. Stevens gave a demonstrative shout-out to Boise on ABC cameras immediately following the race.
In his previous Derby entries, Stevens had finished seventh with Tank’s Prospect in 1985, sixth with Wheatly Hall in 1986 and 10th with On the Line in 1987. But riding for trainer Wayne Lukas aboard Winning Colors, Stevens led wire-to-wire. “I’ve never experienced anything like I felt when I crossed the finish line,” Stevens said. “Wayne told me before the race that if I got the lead and I had the horse under me, to try and steal the race.” It was also Lukas’ first Derby win.
Stevens, of course, would go on to a Hall of Fame career, winning two legs of horse racing’s Triple Crown three different times. His closest call in his Triple Crown quest came in 1997, when he rode Silver Charm to victory in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. Both of those races were tight, as it was the closest Preakness in 65 years. Silver Charm came from behind to beat Free House by a head and Captain Bodgit by another head to duplicate his slim win at the Derby two weeks earlier. The third race was close, too, but Stevens’ bid for the Triple Crown would be dashed in the Belmont Stakes—narrowly—by Touch Gold.
But Stevens’ most amazing accomplishment came at the age of 50, when he won the Preakness Stakes after coming out of a seven-year retirement. He became the oldest jockey ever to win the Preakness—and the first grandfather to win a Triple Crown race—as he and Oxbow led wire-to-wire at Pimlico in a stunning upset over Orb, the heavily-favored Triple Crown contender. The victory was Stevens’ first in a Triple Crown race since 2001 and his ninth overall—he has three wins in each leg of horse racing’s fabled trilogy.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
