Derek’s Dealer Saw a Winner

A daily look at probable Kentucky Derby favorite Brother Derek, the winner of the Santa Anita Derby. Today, Times staff writer Robyn Norwood talks by phone to Utah horse dealer John Brocklebank, who named the colt after his business partner’s son, Derek Tillotson, who is on a Mormon mission in Armenia for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I’m not LDS, so I’m the one who messed up on the name. I knew they address each other as brother, like Brother Tillotson. For a missionary, probably the correct way would be Elder Tillotson.

But like Craig, his dad, said, that just doesn’t have the same ring to it as Brother Derek.

The reason I named the horse after him was the horse trained like a champ from the beginning. The first time I met Derek, he got up on a roof, and my wife and I were walking by a swimming pool that was only eight feet deep, and all of a sudden this kid comes flying off the roof with a twist and a flip. That’s pretty much how Brother Derek is.

I’m what you call a pinhooker. I buy and sell young horses as race prospects. I basically draft kids in the ninth grade and by the time I’m done, the pro scouts pick them up from me. Hopefully, you get lucky and sell them for more than you paid. We paid $150,000 [for Brother Derek], and I thought the horse would bring a million, a million and a half at the sale. He went for $275,000.

There was a vet who didn’t like his throat, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything the matter with his throat now. I’m just glad, with the hand Dan Hendricks has been dealt, he and Cecil Peacock ended up with the horse.

With Derek on a mission, there are limits on who he can communicate with and when. He said Armenia has about three horses in it, so the Derby is not really a thriving conversation piece there. I received a letter from him the other day. I think he’s just tickled pink.