breeders

When Journalism enters the Del Mar Racetrack starting gate shortly after 5:30 p.m. Saturday, 363 days will have passed since he last won a race.

Anyone who watched the colt win six of eight starts — including the Santa Anita Derby, Preakness Stakes and Haskell Stakes — during the eight months leading up to July 19, 2025, might find that unthinkable.

Imagine being his primary owner.

“Yeah, it’s pretty hard to believe that a horse like him hasn’t won a race in a year,” said Aron Wellman, managing director of Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, which co-owns the 4-year-old son of Curlin. “Frustrating for sure.”

It’s not like Journalism has been disgraced during his four-race winless streak. Two of the races came when he was a 3-year-old facing older horses. His speed figures have ranked among the highest of his career. And five of the seven horses who finished ahead of him have won Breeders’ Cup races while a sixth captured two legs of the Triple Crown.

“You can understand how he might have found it hard to make his way into the winner’s circle,” Wellman said. “But it’s not for lack of ambition or lack of trying, or I don’t think any deterioration in his form, really. It’s just been a matter of circumstance, and hopefully he can get back in the win column on Saturday.”

Journalism, with jockey Umberto Rispoli, crosses the finish line to win the 150th Preakness Stakes in 2025.

(Rob Carr / Getty Images)

There’s no guarantee Journalism, the even-money favorite on the morning line, will win the $300,000, Grade 2 San Diego Handicap. But even with another past Breeders’ Cup winner (Full Serrano) among his five opponents in the 1 1/16-mile race, it’s unarguably the weakest field he will have faced since winning the Haskell last July at Monmouth Park.

In the last year he finished second behind Fierceness in the Pacific Classic; fourth behind Forever Young, Sierra Leone and Fierceness in the Breeders’ Cup Classic; third behind White Abarrio and Sovereignty in the Oaklawn Handicap, and third behind Nysos and Knightsbridge in the Met Mile.

Even with those defeats, as well as his runner-up showings last year behind Sovereignty in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, he has six wins, three seconds and three thirds in 13 starts, with earnings of nearly $4.6 million. Nothing to apologize for, but there’s also no question Journalism’s star has dimmed. He no longer is ranked among the top 10 older horses in the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn. weekly poll.

Wellman, though, believes Journalism is not done writing his story. A good performance Saturday, one in which he shows what the owner calls “the explosivity that we’ve seen in the past,” surely would make him one of the favorites for next month’s Pacific Classic. And his connections would like to give him another chance to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic, scheduled for Oct. 31 at Keeneland, before he goes off to stud next year.

“We haven’t lost any faith in him,” Wellman said. “I mean, he’s a horse that’s inspired confidence from Day 1, and put together a campaign last year for the ages. You don’t see many modern-day horses string together the type of races that he did, travel back and forth across the country multiple times, take on all comers and maintain elite performance, race in and race out.

“So, are we frustrated by the fact that he hasn’t won in some time? Absolutely. But when you compete at this level, you can’t play scared. You’ve got to continue to take on the best of the best, and no matter how much any horse or human has accomplished in this game, or in any sport, I think the best and the most driven athletes, equine or otherwise, feel as though you’ve constantly got to prove yourself.”

Perhaps reuniting with the jockey who was aboard Journalism during a streak of eight straight wins or runner-up finishes will provide a boost. Umberto Rispoli was replaced by Jose Ortiz before the Breeders’ Cup Classic, but the 37-year-old Italian is returning to the saddle Saturday. Rispoli, the leading jockey at last fall’s Del Mar meeting, has had his own rough stretch, missing five months of action after breaking his right ankle and leg in a January spill at Gulfstream Park.

“It was a difficult, difficult situation,” Wellman said, “considering the success that Umberto had on Journalism. It was hard on everybody for a lot of reasons. But the relationship speaks for itself between (trainer) Michael (McCarthy), our group, and Umberto.

“Obviously, Umberto holds Journalism himself in the highest regard and maintains an incredible rapport with the horse. It’s great to see Umberto coming back so strong off a serious injury, and we’re delighted to give him the opportunity to get back on Journalism. Hopefully they can find that magic again with the camaraderie that they share for one another.”

Del Mar underway

Del Mar’s annual eight-week summer meeting opened Friday, with racing normally held Thursday through Sunday. Post time is at 2 p.m. every day except closing weekend, Sept. 5-7, when it shifts to 1:30. Daily coverage is available on FanDuel TV.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Before Cherie DeVaux won a Breeders’ Cup race, before one of her horses won an Eclipse Award, before she became the answer to a Siri question — “Who was the first female trainer to win the Kentucky Derby?” — she faced the same problem as every new trainer.

She needed horses.

Fortunately for her, this was 2018 and she had just married David Ingordo, a leading bloodstock agent. Surely he’d bring her some top horses and DeVaux would be on her way.

Except … it took DeVaux 11 months to win her first race.

Cherie DeVaux, trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo, celebrates with her husband, David Ingordo, on Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.

(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

“That was 100% my fault,” Ingordo said. “We gathered up some horses of our own; we were totally self-funded. And the collection of horses I gathered up were yaks and llamas and sheep. They weren’t related to the equine species.

“I told her, ‘You should have divorced me for the effing horses I put in there.’”

Ingordo was telling this story Sunday, standing in the morning chill outside Barn 37 at Churchill Downs, where dozens of cameras and a few reporters were there to record every word his wife had to say, 12 hours after she made history.

“Good thing I don’t have social anxiety,” DeVaux quipped as she stepped in front of the throng.

She reported Golden Tempo, munching on some hay in his stall maybe 50 feet behind her, was doing well, two hours before he took a 70-mile van ride to DeVaux’s base at Keeneland. A decision on whether he will continue east next week to Laurel Park, temporary home of the May 16 Preakness, won’t be made for several days.

DeVaux said she celebrated with family late Saturday night, eventually getting to sleep at 1:30 a.m. and allowing herself to “sleep in a bit,” not rising until a whole four hours later. There were more than 800 text messages on her phone and she was thinking about what she was going to pack for a flight to New York, where she’s scheduled to appear at 7:30 a.m. Monday on NBC’s “Today.”

“I don’t know if the enormity of this has sunk in yet,” she said.

But DeVaux, 44, has never forgotten where she came from. She grew up in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., which is known for thoroughbred racing, but her family was involved in harness racing and she never wanted to be a trainer anyway. She was in college when most of her family moved to Florida, and she stayed behind to finish school. She needed a job to help pay tuition, and her mom told her there was a racetrack across the street “and all you have to do is walk the horses.”

Cherie DeVaux, trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo, is surrounded by media in the winner’s circle Saturday in Louisville, Ky.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

DeVaux’s plan was to go to medical school, but when an advisor said she had to take a class in organic chemistry, “I just looked at her and said: ‘No, I’m going to go work on the racetrack.’ She’s like: ‘Are you sure?’ and I was like, ‘I’m just going to see how it works.’”

Her first job was with Chuck Simon, who had worked for her father. She was 22 when she showed up at Churchill Downs.

“I was a wild child,” DeVaux said Saturday night. “Chuck saw I was going the wrong way and took me under his wing and made me be an assistant trainer, begrudgingly, because I was really enjoying the party life. But he kind of wrangled me in.

“He would be so proud. I am here because of him. Because he pushed me. He pushed my boundaries. He gave me direction when I needed it. And he was always proud of me. But I just think this definitely would have put him over the top.”

Holding one of the roses that came with Golden Tempo’s victory, she added, “And I can’t wait to drop one of these off at our old barn here.”

She did just that Saturday night before leaving the track.

Cherie DeVaux, trainer of Golden Tempo, looks on during morning workouts ahead of the Kentucky Derby on April 27 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

“It was really emotional,” she said Sunday of her stop at Barn 14. “You know, you walk up, and all the memories flood back of being there, and … it’s an honor to get to be able to do something, you know? It’s just a rose, but it meant a lot. That was where I first unloaded my car, and I thought, ‘OK, let’s do this.’”

DeVaux then worked several years for Chad Brown before making the decision to go out on her own. She said Ingordo told her to give it three years and if it didn’t work, she could do something else.

But Ingordo, who has been working in racing since he was 15, spending time with trainers such as Bobby Frankel and Bruce Headley and later his stepfather, John Shirreffs, said he knew it would work.

“I always say that talent and class are evident in horses and people very quickly,” Ingordo said. “And, you know, I’d watch Cherie and see her, and I knew her from her previous job. And I could watch … the one trainer’s name might have been on the headlines, but I saw who was doing the work. And I told her, ‘You’re too talented to be an assistant. And it’d be a waste if you don’t try it.’”

It did work. Slowly at first, but business picked up and DeVaux started winning bigger races. Her breakthrough came in 2023 when she had the likes of More Than Looks, Vahva and She Feels Pretty. The latter provided her first Grade 1 win in the 2023 Natalma at Woodbine, and the next year all three of those horses captured Grade 1 races, including More Than Looks in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Del Mar. Last year, She Feels Pretty won two more Grade 1s and was voted the Eclipse Award as top female turf horse.

She has a life away from the track as well, as much as any trainer can have. Ingordo has full custody of a 15-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, and he said, “Meeting Cherie was not only good for me, it’s been great for my daughter.”

As for making history, Ingordo said it wasn’t anything they talked about, and DeVaux “doesn’t sit there and go, ‘I’m a woman, hear me roar.’

“But at the same time,” he said, “she’s very cognizant of the fact this is a very male-dominated business throughout history. It’s probably a little chauvinist at times, if not more.

“And for her to do this. … You know, she’s not a one-hit wonder. The top 25 should be her domain, somewhere in there, for a long time.”