The jockey who wins the Kentucky Derby earns 10% of the victor’s purse. Last year, Brian Hernandez Jr. made $310,000 for booting Mystik Dan home first in a scintillating three-horse photo finish.

Yet the cash may not be the most-appreciated perk for a Derby-winning rider.

On Kentucky Derby night, the Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse in Louisville reserves a table for the jockey who has won the Run for the Roses. Since he did not have to ride again for four days after the Derby, that meant, for one night, Hernandez was freed from the austere diet of a jockey.

So Hernandez dined on “Oscar style” filet mignon, and shared lobster mac and cheese and mashed potatoes with his party.

“I was kind of able to let loose,” Hernandez recalled last week.

That feast shared with family and friends put the cap on the signature weekend of Hernandez’s riding career to date. Long a respected, if unheralded, rider in Kentucky, Hernandez, 39, not only won the 2024 Derby, the prior day he also rode the star filly, Thorpedo Anna, to victory in the Kentucky Oaks.

Two exemplary rides made Hernandez only the eighth jockey to win the Derby and the Oaks in the same year.

Hernandez hopes to make more memories this year at Churchill Downs. The jockey is slated to ride Take Charge Milady on Friday in the Kentucky Oaks and Blue Grass Stakes winner Burnham Square on Saturday in the Kentucky Derby.

If you’ve ever wondered how life changes for a jockey after they win the Derby for the first time, Hernandez can now tell you.

In a lot of ways, nothing changes.

In some ways, a lot does.

Worthy of the Derby stage

For different reasons, the rides Hernandez turned in last year in the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby were both masterful.

On a muddy track in last year’s Oaks, Hernandez sent Thorpedo Anna immediately to the front. It seemed bold, since, to that point in her career, Thorpedo Anna had never been asked to race from the point.

Thorpedo Anna proceeded to lead at every call and won the Kentucky Oaks going away by 4 3/4 lengths.

The following day in the Derby, Hernandez had Mystik Dan forwardly placed along the rail as the race turned for home. As the pace-setting Track Phantom tired, Hernandez guided Mystik Dan through a minuscule hole on the rail — and into the race lead.

That aggressive move saved just enough ground to allow Mystik Dan to hold off the hard-charging Sierra Leone and Forever Young at the wire to win the Kentucky Derby.

“It’s brilliant, one of the best rides in Derby history,” Kenny McPeek, the trainer of Mystik Dan and Thorpedo Anna, said this week. “As you notice from the sky view (of the race), there was no hole there, and (Hernandez) went through it anyway. It was a brave move. I mean, he showed no fear.”

NBC Sports horse racing reporter Kenny Rice says the ride by Hernandez on Mystik Dan “was mistake-free to win a race that would not have been won had he made even one mistake. Easily one of the best Derby rides of the past 20 years.”

Kentucky Derby a childhood dream

For Hernandez, winning the 150th Kentucky Derby fulfilled a youthful ambition.

A native of Lafayette, La., Hernandez grew up around horse racing. His father, Brian Sr., was also a jockey, riding from 1989 through 2014.

As a little boy, Brian Jr. would dress up in his dad’s jockey gear. “It was always too big for me, so I had to put the underwear on over the pants, so they’d stay up,“ Hernandez said.

Once in jockey’s attire, Brian Jr. would ride his bicycle around his grandparents’ farm while pretending he was riding in — and winning — the Kentucky Derby.

“They took a photo of me saying, ‘One day I’m going to win the Kentucky Derby,’” Hernandez said.

Once Hernandez decided to follow in his father’s professional footsteps, he soon matriculated to Churchill Downs. There is a long history of Louisiana-born jockeys excelling on the Kentucky racing circuit.

In 2004, Hernandez won 243 races — still his career high — and the Eclipse Award as Outstanding Apprentice Jockey. After that hot start, Hernandez had moments of acclaim, most notably winning the 2012 Breeders’ Cup Classic aboard Fort Larned.

The overall arc of Hernandez’s career, however, became more that of a reliable stalwart than a star.

There were those in the racing industry who thought Hernandez had a higher ceiling. One of those was Frank Bernis, an assistant horse trainer who, in 2010, became a jockey agent.

“(Hernandez) was doing OK, but I always thought he should do better than what he had been doing,” Bernis said. “And then it just so happened that I needed a jockey and he needed an agent at the right time, and we came together.”

The gift of Thorpedo Anna

Since April 2012, Bernis has handled the book for Hernandez. That helped launch the magic of last May for the jockey because Bernis built a strong relationship with McPeek, who began to put Hernandez on his horses.

Says McPeek: “I can’t remember how it all came about, but (Hernandez) started riding for me, and we immediately had success. And then I realized that he made very few mistakes, and that that is the key to it all.”

For all the attention the ride by Hernandez on Mystik Dan in last year’s Kentucky Derby received, it was the horse he rode to victory in the Kentucky Oaks that ultimately defined the jockey’s 2024.

Including her victory in the Oaks, Thorpedo Anna won six of seven races last year, ending with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Her only loss, a second against colts in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga, was impressive in its own right. Thorpedo Anna was voted the Eclipse Award as 2024 Horse of the Year.

Having a chance to ride a horse as talented as Thorpedo Anna is “the ultimate goal,” Hernandez said. “Becoming a jockey, you wake up every single morning and you start getting on these horses, and you just hope, one day, you find one as good as her.”

Life of a Kentucky Derby winner

Those around him say the success of 2024 has not changed Brian Hernandez Jr.

“He’s a ‘steady as it goes’ kind of guy,” McPeek says. “His work ethic’s the same, his attitude’s the same. He hasn’t changed.”

Bernis, the jockey agent, says success has not caused Hernandez to leave behind those who have long been with him. “We’re pretty much on the same (racing) circuit that we always go on,” he said. “We have our established business, and we’re going to be loyal to our people for the most part.”

What has changed for Hernandez is the amount of people interested in him. On the day we spoke, Hernandez had just filmed a Ford commercial. In the weeks leading up to this year’s Derby, he estimated he was averaging three media interviews a day.

Hernandez reports that having won Kentucky’s two most visible horse races in the same year does not diminish one’s appetite to do so again.

“Once you do it, you want to do it every year,” Hernandez said. “Once you reach the pinnacle of your sport, you want to get back to it.”

A year after his Oaks/Derby double, Brian Hernandez Jr. is hungry for more.

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