'Anything can happen in a horse race': Owner finds fortune and healing at Santa Anita race track

ARCADIA, Calif. — Dylan Donnelly moved himself over the barn dirt to ensure his thoroughbred could hear the final piece of advice.

“Try your best,” Donnelly counseled, patting Kant Beat the Rock on his side. “And don’t get hurt.”

The exchange was rooted in the wounds horsemen at Santa Anita Park have endured through a three-year scourge of more than 60 racehorse deaths — including the disqualified winner of last year’s Kentucky Derby, Medina Spirit.

“I was very well aware, you know, that anything can happen in a horse race,” said Donnelly, a first-time owner.

For Donnelly, 30, the pre-race precaution meant something deeply personal, too.

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Because like racing, anything can happen in life.

“Yep," Donnelly said in acknowledgement. "I went to take a nap in the back of a motorhome, and I woke up in the hospital — paralyzed."

As the Kentucky Derby arrives, Donnelly is a reminder of how the sport can embrace longshots. He is a living tale of how a boy — whose love of horse racing began with $1 pick-three wagers and a $2 daily double — found the courage to lift himself from tragedy to the winner’s circle.

Grandpa’s guidance

When Donnelly was a child, both of his parents worked, so his grandfather Robert Penaloza watched him most days. Penaloza took Donnelly to Santa Anita Park three days a week, passing along betting and life advice to enhance the joy of watching the horses charge down the stretch.

Donnelly would get $20 each visit, and his routine was to choose three pick-three bets and the late daily doubles.

“Just so I could have action the whole day,” Donnelly said of his early betting strategy. “A lot of them didn’t hit, but I can remember hitting one when I was 11 for like $200 and, man, horse racing was in my blood ever since.

"I didn’t even have a choice.”

The tradition continued when Donnelly was able to drive himself. He timed family summer vacations to San Diego so they could swing by Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.

Tragic turn

On Thanksgiving weekend 2017, Donnelly was invited by a friend to hunt geese and pheasant in central California. As they returned home on Interstate 5 in an RV, he lay down next to his black Labrador retriever, Drake, in the back of the vehicle.

The rear axle broke while the RV was going full speed. The vehicle flipped several times across southbound lanes and the median. It came to rest on the northbound lanes of I-5.

The next thing Donnelly recalled was waking in a hospital room, unable to move his limbs.

One of his first bedside visitors was his grandpa, who sought to ease the heaviness of the occasion by bringing a comfort-reading companion the pair had shared for years: the Daily Racing Form.

“I remember him flipping the pages for me because at the time I couldn't move my arms or anything,” Donnelly said. “So, he turns all the pages for me, and then he made some bets for me.”

Donnelly fractured the C5 vertebrae in his neck. The injury was labeled “incomplete,” meaning the opportunity for recovery exists with numerous rounds of physical therapy.

For the first 27 days after the accident, Donnelly said he had no motion in his arms, legs, toes or fingers. One day, he put all of his mental energy into the thought of moving his left index finger.

“I could feel the signals from my brain going to my finger,” he said. “And it twitched.

“Everybody who was in there and saw it, broke down crying. You know, I was at a point where I wasn’t sure anything on me would move again. I’d gone from playing baseball to this … I couldn’t do anything. But after my finger moved, everything started coming back.”

Donnelly can now move both of his arms and, while right-side weakness caused him to adjust to writing with his left hand, he is still pushing himself to walk.

For now, Donnelly is in a wheelchair. But he can raise himself to stand while holding onto rails and can take steps with what he calls his “old-man walker.”

“I'm very lucky from the standpoint that I've always been a mentally strong person. Of course, I’ve had days after the accident where I was just like, ‘This is ridiculous.’ I was only 26 years old," he said. "I had a 6-year-old son who needed me; a wife I needed to support. It was a shock for me, for everybody who knew me. But I had a lot of good friends and a lot of family.”

An undisclosed financial settlement following the crash also helped the family navigate life.

And to bring some normalcy to his days, Donnelly returned to horse racing.

CHANGE OF FORTUNE

As his 82-year-old grandfather’s health seriously declined, Donnelly and his mother welcomed him into their Rancho Cucamonga home. When the 2020 Breeders Cup arrived, Donnelly was part of a small circle of bettors invited to watch the multi-race Super Bowl of horse racing at Santa Anita.

With a $7,500 buy-in, he entered a national Breeders Cup betting tournament. Donnelly came home after the first day of action pleased to inform his ailing grandpa that he was within the top 100.

“I’m going to make a run” at big money, Donnelly told his grandpa. There was little recognition from Penaloza, so a fretful Donnelly spent the night in a chair next to the man who introduced him to his favorite pastime as family members braced for his passing.

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On the second day of the Breeders Cup, Donnelly received a text from his mother.

His grandfather had died.

Should he race home or remain at their cherished gathering place, where they shared 25 years’ worth of visits?

To Donnelly, that was an easy decision. He stayed at the race track.

A string of winning wagers followed, bringing Donnelly to the final race — the Breeders Cup Classic. His friend asked him what he was going to do.

Donnelly responded, “I don’t know yet, but I know for a fact that whatever I play is going to win.”

He decided to make his bet an exacta wager, predicting the fittingly named Improbable would finish in second place and Authentic would win. Authentic’s jockey was John Velazquez, who pursues his fourth Kentucky Derby victory Saturday atop Messier. The winnings carried Donnelly to third place in the tournament, and the bonus money brought his total tournament winnings to a staggering $254,000.

“My biggest score ever,” he said. “On the day my grandpa died.

“Right when Authentic crossed the finish line, I just broke down in tears. I mean, I didn't stop crying for five minutes. Everything just culminated … he had to have been there with me.”

DOUBLING DOWN

Considering his newfound wealth, his love of horses and his improved health, Donnelly opted to use some of the winnings for a bucket-list pursuit: horse ownership.

After initially investing in one horse, he turned his profit into buying another one on his own. He spent $30,000 in May 2021 on Churchill Downs-based Kant Beat the Rock and enrolled in a California “ship-and-win” program that offers bonus money to incentivize bringing out-of-state horses to race on the West Coast.

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Upon inspection, Donnelly — and hired trainer Mike Puype — decided the horse was out of shape and slightly injured. It would require a layoff that ended up lasting eight months before he would be ready to train through nine workouts and eventually race.

They targeted a 6 ½-furlongs, $50,000 claiming race on turf April 1, and Donnelly hired veteran jockey Tyler Baze to take the mount.

“He’s got a good eye. He’s a good handicapper. He knows pedigrees and understands the business pretty well,” Puype said of Donnelly. “You have to run horses where they can win, or the game will destroy you financially. We’ve talked about that as he considers buying another, and I’ve told him, ‘Don’t rush. Desperation will lead you to bad things.’”

The patient approach brought Donnelly back to Santa Anita with a circle of about 30 friends to watch a race for the first time as an owner.

After the private chat with his horse, Donnelly doubled his bet to $1,000 for it to win at 9/2 odds.

“First-timers … you never really know what you have until the gate opens,” Baze said of Kant Beat the Rock. “Even during the race, I didn’t know what I had under me, but when he gave me a little … wow!”

Kant Beat the Rock was in fourth place as he reached the stretch, then made his move on the outside and surged to win by more than a length.

The mob of Donnelly’s shouting friends encircled him, hugging him so fiercely it appeared he was going to be knocked out of his chair. He hung on and broke down in tears with his mother, Eileen, as his wife, Megan, held his hand and rejoiced.

In addition to the $31,900 he won in purse money, Donnelly collected another $11,000 by betting on himself.

“You never forget your first,” Puype told Donnelly.

Baze was fortunate enough to not have a mount in the race right after his victory, so the jockey remained in the winner’s circle for several minutes with Donnelly.

“When I was considering his whole story after walking out of there with them, I got emotional,” Baze said. “This sport is special. While I’ve been in some big races, doing something magical for the little guys is powerful.”

Donnelly is betting on 12/1 choice Taiba in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. On Sunday — Mother’s Day — he’ll next send Kant Beat The Rock to run at Santa Anita.

“I’m most happy with myself for staying positive through all this, believing that stuff will work out,” Donnelly said. “That has to do with just not being afraid of failure. I know I'm gonna own other horses in my life and some of them are gonna be bad deals. They're not gonna win. I’m gonna lose money. This was more about the people believing in me — my wife believing me when I said, ‘Hey, I think we can make money doing this.’

He thought back to all of those previous days at the track, to his grandpa and to the survival and recovery that allowed him to live this day.

“It actually happened. The plan came together. The horse actually won — in his first race for me,” Donnelly said. “That buzz I had lasted three days.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Horse owner makes journey from tragedy to the winner's circle