#US RACING: WATCH HOT ROD CHARLIE WIN THE LUKAS CLASSIC STAKES

NOTE: VIDEO REPLAY BELOW ARTICLE

Hot Rod Charlie fought back and won the Grade 2, $500,000 Lukas Classic by a head. Jockey Tyler Gaffalione was reunited with him. They will be together in the Breeders’ Cup Classic next month for trainer Doug O’Neill.

But that was not the story Saturday at Churchill Downs. The real tale was the one of a loose saddle that undid what would have been another storybook upset for Rich Strike. It was nearly a disaster for jockey Sonny León.

“Sonny said the saddle loosened to the left,” Rich Strike’s trainer Eric Reed told Horse Racing Nation. “He said, ‘I started to lose my balance. The saddle slipped over and made me lean to the left.’”

A head-on replay showed León hanging on for dear life as he slid to his left, sideswiping Hot Rod Charlie in the fight to the finish.

“If that doesn’t happen, we win the race,” Reed said.

So it was that Rich Strike, the horse whom critics branded an 80-1 fluke of a winner in the Kentucky Derby, acquitted himself again after narrowly missing second place in the Travers (G1) and getting a 105 Beyer Speed Figure, according to Daily Racing Form.

In his first start against older horses, the only 3-year-old in the race blazed past all his rivals with a stretch run down the middle of the track. Not inside horses as had been his wont. And he had the lead late. Rich Strike (9-2) was going to win the race.

Until the saddle slipped. And until Hot Rod Charlie (6-5) said not so fast.

“He hooked the toughest horse he ever ran against,” Reed said. “He ran on the outside the whole way. … It’s so bittersweet to lose that way, but Doug’s horse is a warrior.”

Not to forget Hot Rod Charlie, himself critically viewed as a horse who could compete but not find a way to win the big one. Third by a length in the 2021 Kentucky Derby. Second in a toe-to-toe fistfight with Essential Warrior in the 2021 Belmont. A threatening second but unrequited against Country Grammer in this year’s Dubai World Cup (G1). Too late with a kick that left him third to Life Is Good and Happy Saver last out in the Whitney (G1).

Oh, Hot Rod Charlie was that fluke, too. He was a 94-1 runner-up, missing by three-quarters of a length against Essential Quality in the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Hot Rod Charlie was clocked at a winning time of 1:49.77 on the fast, main track.