{"id":769977,"date":"2026-05-03T07:47:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T07:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/769977\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T07:47:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T07:47:18","slug":"great-white-is-fine-after-throwing-his-jockey-and-getting-scratched-late-from-the-kentucky-derby-national-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/769977\/","title":{"rendered":"Great White is fine after throwing his jockey and getting scratched late from the Kentucky Derby | National News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) \u2014 Great White is doing well after flipping before the Kentucky Derby, throwing his jockey and getting scratched minutes before the Triple Crown race, trainer John Ennis said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe&#8217;s perfect,\u201d Ennis told The Associated Press after the race, which was <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/kentucky-derby-winner-14da4af938ae3a3201f4d17a80d052c0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won by Golden Tempo<\/a> to make Cherie DeVaux the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/kentucky-derby-women-cherie-devaux-5fb28bae12768b1a6012eaf720617047\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first female trainer<\/a> with a Derby champion. \u201cVery fresh. (The incident) took nothing out of him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The big gray gelding who weighs roughly 1,370 pounds was spooked by something while he and the other horses were waiting to get walked into the starting gate for the opening race of the Triple Crown. He threw off rider Alex Achard, who walked away under his own power.<\/p>\n<p>The track veterinarians scratched Great White and prevented Achard and Ennis from entering the Derby for the first time. Ennis confirmed Achard was also doing well afterward.<\/p>\n<p>Great White flipping caused a delay to the race, which was supposed to start just after 7 p.m. Because of how long it took, horses who had been loaded into the gate had to be backed out.<\/p>\n<p>Golden Tempo had not yet gone in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you load into the gate, you don\u2019t want to back up,\u201d jockey Jose Ortiz said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t in there yet, so I was very happy. My guy wanted to put me in. (I said): &#8220;No, no, no. He\u2019s going to be scratched. Don\u2019t put me in.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ortiz, who passed brother Irad aboard Renegade to win the race by a neck, did not think the situation made much of an impact on the race. But he knew Golden Tempo was ready.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeems like a pretty clean break,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be loaded and back off. I would hate that. I think the horse is ready. His mind is ready to go. When you put him in, he knows he\u2019s going forward. As soon as you back him up, then everything changes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Great White only got into the field Wednesday after <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/kentucky-derby-silent-tactic-6a9d14750aa1464f5b70e1a617f7c285\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Silent Tactic was ruled out<\/a> because of a foot injury.<\/p>\n<p>AP horse racing: <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/horse-racing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/horse-racing<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) \u2014 Great White is doing well after flipping before the Kentucky Derby, throwing his jockey&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":769978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[40074,315718,23125,23124,10310,40076,40078,40080,40077,40079,10309,40081,40072,1571,62,40075,67,132,68,286858,286857,10308,40071],"class_list":["post-769977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-eric-crawford","tag-great-white-kentucky-derby-scratch","tag-horse-racing","tag-kentucky-derby","tag-kentucky-news","tag-local-college-sports","tag-local-high-school-sports","tag-local-pro-sports","tag-louisville-college-sports","tag-louisville-high-school-sports","tag-louisville-news","tag-louisville-pro-sports","tag-louisville-sports","tag-national","tag-sports","tag-tom-lane","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wdrb-kentucky","tag-wdrb-louisville","tag-wdrb-news","tag-wdrb-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}