A special story unfolded another chapter to remember on Sunday as Carson’s Run rumbled through the stretch to win the Grade 1 Saratoga Derby.
Already a Grade 1 winner as a 2-year-old in 2023, Carson’s Run is named for Carson Jost, who was born with the extremely rare genetic disorder, Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. Resulting from a partial deletion on the short arm of chromosome 4, the syndrome causes severe mental and physical disabilities. He is confined to a wheelchair and is largely unable to communicate.
Carson’s father, Wade, is a former West Point classmate of WPT CEO Terry Finley. Wade decided to become part of a West Point Thoroughbreds partnership in 2023 with the hope of honoring his beloved Carson, and Terry agreed to name this chestnut son of Cupid after him.
Stretching out to a mile and three-sixteenths in the Saratoga Derby for trainer Christophe Clement, Carson’s Run tipped outside at the top of the lane and kept finding more for jockey Dylan Davis, who scored his first-ever Grade 1 win at Saratoga.
“Who would ever have thought a horse by Cupid would win a Grade 1 going a mile and three-sixteenths,” Finley said. “I guess that’s the beautiful thing about the partners and in particular David Ingordo our bloodstock agent. We go to the sales and we have the freedom to take shots and to buy horses that other people don’t buy. That’s a beautiful thing. Often times they don’t work out, but when they work out like this there’s a sweetness to this business that you can’t match in anything else in life that you do.”
Carson’s Run banked $330,000 in victory to improve his career bankroll to $719,529.
“Great race, very good ride from Dylan,” Clement said. “He knows the horse very well, he has been working him many, many times the last two months. He is a little bit peculiar. He had a very funny start at Aqueduct in the spring, so we have been working on it. Very good ride – he was trailing the field, but they were going plenty fast enough. Obviously, he loved the ground, and he finished well. When he is right, he has a spectacular turn-of-foot like he showed today.”
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