Can anything good come out of Yuba City?

Ask the owners of California Chrome, the three-year-old colt that just won the Kentucky Derby.

It’s a Cinderella story covered in a blanket of Kentucky roses. Two hard working couples, the Martins from Yuba City, California and the Coburns from Topaz Lake, Nevada with a dream to own a racehorse. They bought an $8,000 dollar mare and paid $2,500 dollars to breed her to an unknown stallion. Then they hired a seventy-seven-year-old small-time trainer, Art Sherman, now the oldest trainer to ever win the derby, and the rest is horse racing history. “I said a little prayer, and it came true,” said Sherman. “I said I hope he’s another Swaps.”

When Swaps– also a California bred racehorse– won the Kentucky Derby in 1955, Sherman was the eighteen-year-old stable hand caring for that colt.

Like their trainer, Sherman, the Martins and Coburns know who they are: the little guys. Running on dreams, not derby millions. Their purple and green–their wives favorite colors–racing silks have a donkey on them, and DAP blazes down California Chrome’s purple and green head gear. The DAP name was born when the couple bought the mare, Love the Chase, and a groom at the stables said, “Whoever buys that mare sure is a dumb a@$.” So the couple named their one horse show: Dumb A@$ Partners, DAP for short, thus the donkey on their jockey, Victor Espinoza’s back.

The forty-one-year-old Mexican-born Espinoza broke down in tears in the wake of California Chrome’s win, using his moment in the spotlight to highlight his association with City of Hope, a children’s cancer hospital in Los Angeles where he donates ten percent of his earnings and visits the children there.

Everything about this story resonates with our hearts.

Why?

Could it point to another story we all know by heart?

A lowly stable birth? Nobody parents? A ridiculous donkey?

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” 1 Corinthians 1:27.

Lowly shepherds worshiped him.

Fishermen loved him.

The poor flocked to him.

And the leaders of the day nailed him to a cross.

But this didn’t end the story.

I understand how hard it is to believe…

Been there: offended by the Bible, turned off by Christians,  thirty-three years of doing life my way.

Until my marriage crashed.

And my health crashed.

And my heart crashed.

And then I bet it all on a humble Savior who won the race for me.

I never thought a Kentucky derby racehorse could come out of Yuba City. Voted the worst place to live in 1985 by Rand McNally. Technically, the chestnut colt now known as the “Rock Star of Racing” was born and raised in Coalinga, California. The dreamers who bred him live in Yuba City. Once a quiet farming town. Now, still a great place to raise a family and grow peaches.

And a dream.

Co-owner Coburn calls California Chrome the people’s horse. “I do believe he’s that, like Seabiscuit. He became the people’s horse in the depression because he was the little guy kicking the big guy. We’re doing that in the same kind of way.”

I don’t follow horse racing. Dubbed the “Sport of Kings” but California Chrome has stolen my heart. His Run for the Roses on Saturday was a dream come true for the little guys.