In all five of his major championship victories, Brooks Koepka has displayed an impressive ability to run away and hide from the pack. Fitting, then, that the horse Koepka is a co-owner of would share similar traits.
Givemefive, a horse Koepka owns along with Smash GC teammate Graeme McDowell, ran away and hid from the pack on Monday, winning a hurdles race by a staggering 18 lengths at the Warwick Racecourse. The four-year-old Holy Roman Emperor gelding, who was 2-1 to win, dominated the 5-4 solo favorite Orchestra:
Neither Koepka nor McDowell were on hand in England, but they were both watching back home in Florida and celebrating the victory in a group chat:
Harry Derham, the horse's trainer, said that the boys were buzzing after the dominant effort.
“Graeme, Brooks and Daniel Gambill (other part owner) are great guys and they were all watching the race in Florida," he said. "My WhatsApp has been going mad with messages after that."
The victory secured Givemefive's spot in a race called the Fred Winter at the Cheltenham Festival this March, though now Derham has bigger aspirations for it. Tuesday is the deadline for entries into the JCB Triumph Hurdle at the same festival, and Derham is strongly considering entering Givemefive into that race.
"I need to think about it. To run in the Fred Winter he needs to have another run," Derham said. "If he didn’t need to have another run then I would almost certainly run him in the Fred Winter. He took two weeks to get over the last run, and I can’t imagine he has had an easy race there, even though he has won. I’m not going to commit to anything now, but it is a nice problem to have."
We have no idea what any of this means but what we do know is it's certainly not bad to be Brooks Koepka, or Graeme McDowell, these days. And by the way, McDowell got in on this horse because he lost a closest-to-the-hole bet to Derham at a Pro-Am. Talk about winning at losing, folks.
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