I was watching the Kentucky Derby on Saturday with friends at a restaurant when the place went absolutely nuts.
Golden Tempo — a 23‑1 longshot most of the room had written off before the gates opened — had just come from dead last to win the 152nd Run for the Roses. As the pack thundered into the final turn, he wasn’t even in the camera frame. Then jockey Jose Ortiz found a seam, and the horse threaded through the field like it was standing still, catching the favorite Renegade by a nose at the wire.
Watch this. The overhead view tells the whole story:
Two minutes and two seconds. From last to first. Most people in the room had given up on him. The crowd — the experts — the odds — had all called the race long before it was actually run.
Cherie DeVaux trained that horse. On Saturday, with her very first Derby runner, she became the first woman in 152 years to win the Kentucky Derby. Afterward, asked how she did it, she said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: “He’s a dead closer. We had to have faith in the process, faith in the horse, faith in Jose. If he had extra ground, he was going to make it.”
And later, when asked about her own journey, she said, “Not everyone has the same constitution as I have mentally.”
Constitution. That’s the word.
The Race We’re Actually Running
The Apostle Paul was a closer. He didn’t start fast. He started as Saul, persecutor of the church, the last man on earth you’d have picked to spread the gospel. Then he ran. Through shipwrecks, beatings, betrayal, and imprisonment. He didn’t peak at the eighth pole. He didn’t win on talent. He won on constitution.
When Paul wrote his last letter from a Roman prison, he didn’t say I started this race fastest. He said: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
That’s a closer’s epitaph. The kingdom Jesus described doesn’t reward sprinters. It rewards finishers. The last shall be first, and the first last. The tortoise outlasts the hare. The 23‑1 longshot in the back of the pack wins the roses.
The whole Christian race theology is dead‑closer theology. Don’t peak at the start. Don’t panic in the middle. Trust the wire.
The Constitution To Hold The Line
Here’s the thing about being a closer: nobody can see you finishing strong while you’re still in the back of the pack. The crowd has moved on. The favorites are getting the cameras. The smart money has already cashed out. You’re running alone, in the dust, with no evidence that any of it is going to add up to anything.
That’s where most people quit. That’s where the standard cracks. That’s where the constitution gets tested.
DeVaux’s horse didn’t know he was at 23‑1. He didn’t know he was in last place at the eighth pole. He didn’t know that 152 years of Kentucky Derby history said his trainer wouldn’t be allowed in the winner’s circle. He just kept running. He found the gap. He hit the wire.
The trainer’s job — and the leader’s job — is to keep the faith when nobody else can see what you can see. To hold the line on the standard when it would be easier to fold. To trust the runner, trust the process, and trust the wire.
The Benediction
DeVaux said something else after she won, and it’s the line I want you to carry into your week: “You can dream big, and you can pivot. You can come from one place and make yourself a part of history.”
You don’t have to be the favorite. You don’t have to lead at the half. You don’t have to win every cycle. You just have to keep running. Hold the standard. Trust the wire. Be a dead closer.
And here’s the part nobody tells you: your golden years aren’t the wind‑down. They’re the stretch run. They’re the moments when the favorites have used up their early speed, the crowd has stopped watching, and the runner who paced herself is finally allowed to open up. The whole race was the setup. Now is when you run at a golden tempo.
I see this every day in our tremendous tribe. Many of you are in your third or fourth careers, serving in ways that continue to use your gifts to bless others. You’re not slowing down. You’re finally running the way you were always meant to run — with everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve survived, everything you’ve built. That’s not late. That’s right on time.
The horses that win the Derby don’t peak at the eighth pole. They peak at the wire. That’s the design. That’s the whole point.
The race isn’t over until you cross the line.
Knock ’em alive.
— TT
1 comment
jeremy
We need to believe in ourselves no matter what is going on. Christ believers know when they are at peace, no stress by themselves or when a crowd is watching them, they will feel a peace that overpowers all understanding. This is a powerful, awesome feeling. I feel this a lot and the most impossible things happen that you just cannot explain, except that God had a hand in the solution.