The 2013 Risen Star Stakes undoubtedly falls into the first category.
Ive Struck a Nerve entered the $400,000 Risen Star Stakes at Fair Grounds on February 23, 2013 with just one win from eight starts. He had competed in stakes competition four times previously and had shown some promise with his best effort per second in the Sugar Bowl Stakes, a six-furlong sprint two months earlier. The Yankee Gentleman colt, trained by Keith Desormeaux for Matt Bryan’s Big Chief Racing, entered the Risen Star after a fourth-place finish at Fair Grounds in the Lecomte Stakes, in which he was defeated by 13 ½ lengths at odds of 33.90-1.
However, the people closest to Ive Struck a Nerve had not lost confidence.
“Every time this horse has gone a long way, he’s had some kind of problem,” Desormeaux said Blood horse after the race. “Matt and I talked about it several times that we just wanted a clean distance trip, and if he was beaten by fourteen lengths again we were prepared to stop trying.”
Ive Struck a Nerve was not defeated again by 14 lengths. Instead, he pulled off one of the greatest upsets of the century and rewarded the trust of his connections with astonishing odds of 135.20-1.
Ive Struck a Nerve, the last of the twelve runners and wide early under jockey James Graham, shot six wide into the stretch and closed with a sustained charge to beat second-place Code West by a nose in a four-horse overall finish. Not only did he pull off the huge upset, Ive Struck a Nerve beat a damn good field in the Risen Star: Third-place Palace Malice went on to win the Belmont Stakes and fourth-place Oxbow won that year’s Preakness.
It was the kind of victory that brought tears of joy from its owner.
“As long as I live, I will relive this race again and again,” Bryan told BloodHorse in the immediate aftermath. “We’ve been waiting for a clean ride on this horse, and today we finally got it. Once he was free on the outside, we went crazy.”
Unfortunately, the Risen Star was Ive Struck a Nerve’s last race. An ankle fracture knocked him out of the Louisiana Derby and out of the 2013 Kentucky Derby trail. Ive Struck a Nerve was at stud for one season with three foals in that crop and no winners; He was subsequently castrated, but his name is forever etched in the history books of horse racing. On February 23, 2013, Ive Struck a Nerve shocked the world – okay, maybe a little exaggeratedly – in the Risen Star Stakes with one of the sport’s most unthinkable upsets.
Editor’s note: Keith Desormeaux and James Graham team up with another longshot in the Risen Star of 2026: Colt Forty Seven.
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