Big mission for Derek is to win Derby

For more proof positive that success is possible no matter how humble your start, look no further than Saturday's 132nd running of the Kentucky Derby.

At 3-to-1 odds, Brother Derek — a bay colt named for a Mormon missionary — is favored to win this year's Derby. If he should manage to prove the experts right, it goes without saying that he would be the first horse to wear roses at Churchill Downs who once lived in the racehorse dorm at the Salt Lake County Equestrian Center at 114th South and 22nd West in South Jordan.

"You could say he started out a little bit like Rocky," said John Brocklebank, the horse trader who bought Brother Derek at a yearling auction sale in Kentucky in September of 2004 for Utah horseman Craig Tillotson. "That's nothing against the Equestrian Center, a real nice facility, but the particular barn we train out of you'd call the slums in the thoroughbred world."

The horse spent seven months at South Jordan, living in one of about 80 stalls set aside for racehorses while running like the wind and amazing the handful of horse people looking on.

He was so fast Brocklebank decided to name him after Craig Tillotson's son, Derek, currently serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Armenia, even though he knew that could be a jinx.

"Usually when you name them after a close friend or family member, that's the kiss of death," he said. "But this horse just radiated class, and I think so much of Craig's boy, he's an absolute class kid, that I did it anyway."

And there did prove to be a bit of a jinx, if you want to call it that, when Brocklebank took Brother Derek to auction in California in March of 2005 and sold him for $275,000.

The sale marked a nice return on Tillotson's initial investment — Brother Derek had been purchased for $150,000 — but the horse was so classy Brocklebank thought he might fetch $1 million or more.

But that was before Brother Derek descended into what Brocklebank calls "the gossip category" because of rumors about a bad vet's report.

On top of that, there was the fact that a horse sold the year before named Swizzlestick had been sired by the same father, Benchmark, and after selling for $600,000 had been such a bust he became known as Fizzlestick.

And spending the winter in Utah wasn't exactly a plus.

Brocklebank could only shake his head about the bargain he was setting loose on the thoroughbred circuit.