Running for the Roses, the Record Books and His Father

Kendrick Carmouche has a chance to become the first Black jockey in 119 years to win the Kentucky Derby. But mostly he would like to win for his “Pops.”

Kendrick Carmouche’s education began when he was a little boy sitting alongside his father as they drove in the pre-dawn mist through southwest Louisiana. They talked balance, pace and soft hands. They talked horses. Sylvester Carmouche was a jockey. A good one. He won nearly 700 races at big-time tracks like the Fairgrounds in New Orleans and Louisiana Downs near Shreveport. As Kendrick was growing up, however, the Carmouches were vagabonds, traveling to bush tracks cut from sugar-cane fields and fronted by honky-tonks with names like The Quarter Pole and Cajun Downs.