Pictured (from left): Gary Dunlap, Ryan Cook, Rick Dawson, Scott Wilson, Eric Reed, Jack Willoughby, Ken Tyson and Pete Sherrow.
Louisville,
Ky.
Kentucky Derby winners come and go, but the memories are
forever. So are tattoos commemorating it.
Owner Rick Dawson, trainer Eric Reed and five others on their
team got themselves inked Saturday with some form of 21, which was the number
Rich Strike wore when he scored at 80-1 odds May 7 in the Kentucky Derby. They
did it hours before the colt’s return to racing at Churchill Downs in the Lukas Classic (G2).
“Eric brought it up that we ought to get some team label,” said
Dawson, who races horses under the business name RED TR-Racing. “So we did the
team tattoo. Of course, 21 seemed to be the appropriate symbol of our group,
and everybody loved it.”
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Dawson had the 21 put on his hand. It was surrounded by roses, the
likes of which Rich Strike won after scoring the second biggest upset in the
pari-mutuel history of the Kentucky Derby. Reed and some others on the team
went just for the number, mostly on their hands but some on their shoulders and
one woman at the top of her back.
“Pete Sherrow brought us together,” said Reed, referring to the mutual friend who introduced him as a young man to Dawson, the owner of the Redsky Land
oil and natural-gas company in Oklahoma. “The three of us have a bond.”
It was not like this was going to be an easy sell. Neither Dawson,
66, nor Sherrow, 83, ever had been tattooed.
“Pete’s from a generation where you don’t get one unless you’re
in the Army,” Reed said. “I said, ‘I think we should all get a 21 like blood
brothers. It’d be for us. We would take it to our graves.’”
The group poured into Zoe’s Tattoos & Piercings about three
miles north of Churchill Downs around lunchtime Saturday. Suddenly, the four
people in the shop were focused on creating a celebratory memory for team Rich
Strike. Word of mouth got more than a few people inside to see what was
happening.
Tattoo rookie Dawson said it did not hurt a bit. At least not
yet.
“I hope it doesn’t,” he said. “There’s a vibration, and the new
equipment is pretty good. I would have never, ever done this before, but now it’s
a very special reason, so what the heck?”
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