Who is the Kentucky Derby female trainer? Meet Cherie DeVaux

The name Cherie DeVaux now belongs in the most exclusive ring of Kentucky Derby history: that of winning trainers. By guiding Golden Tempo to victory in the 2026 Run for the Roses, she became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner in 152 runnings, a breakthrough that rewrites both the sport’s record book and its symbolic ceiling.

DeVaux’s achievement is especially striking because it arrives not in a symbolic cameo, but in the full glare of the sport’s centerpiece. The Kentucky Derby has resisted the “first woman trainer to win” headline far longer than many expected, and her win with Golden Tempo is a quiet, powerful statement that the barn‑side glass ceiling at the sport’s highest level has finally cracked.

From pre‑med to the paddock

DeVaux’s journey was never a straight line to Churchill Downs. A native of Saratoga Springs, New York, she grew up around racing but initially pursued medicine, studying pre‑med in college. That path, however, collided with a different kind of calling when she took a stable‑worker job for trainer Chuck Simon at Saratoga.

She stayed with Simon for about six years, then moved to the operation of Chad Brown, one of the most respected trainers in modern Thoroughbred racing. Over roughly eight years with Brown, DeVaux rose from assistant to a key figure in the barn, including a central role in the carefully managed comeback of champion Lady Eli after serious laminitis kept her sidelined for more than a year.

Along the way, she earned her trainer’s license in 2018, launched her own stable in the spring of that year, and sent out her first winner, Traveling, at Gulfstream Park in March 2019. The foundation was laid under two of the sport’s most demanding mentors, and it gave her a crash course in handling top‑level pressure without ever losing the work‑hands style she learned in the tying‑stall.

The rise to Derby level

DeVaux’s independent stable grew quickly, and so did her reputation. Golden milestones soon followed:

• First stakes win: Gam’s Mission in the Regret Stakes (G3) at Churchill Downs in 2021, her first taste of graded action at the Derby track.
• First Grade 1 win: She Feels Pretty in the Johnnie Walker Red Natalma Stakes (G1) at Woodbine in 2023.
• Breeders’ Cup breakthrough: More Than Looks captured the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Mile (G1T) at Del Mar, a victory that cemented her status among the elite and labelled her a rising force in the young‑trainer landscape.

Behind that list lies thousands of training decisions: early‑morning gallops, injury‑management calls, equipment tweaks, and the daily grind of balancing budgets, connections, and horses’ form. By the time Golden Tempo entered the Derby picture, DeVaux had already built a track record of turning solid horses into graded‑stakes winners without the massive payroll some rivals wield.

The 2026 Kentucky Derby and a vow kept

The Derby assignment with Golden Tempo was DeVaux’s first shot at the Run for the Roses, and she had articulated what it meant in simple, audacious terms during Derby week:

“The only thing I want to do in my career is be the first female to win a Kentucky Derby,” she told LEX18.

She also framed the race less as a gender‑binary moment than as a personal benchmark:

“I don’t really look at it as male versus female. I just try to do the best I can, but in the back of my mind, just to be a strong role model.”

That duality runs through the story of women in racing: the desire to be evaluated purely on merit, and the awareness that success will inevitably inspire others who see doors open that once seemed bolted shut.

Before DeVaux, only 17 women had ever saddled a Derby starter, and only Jena Antonucci had managed to train a Triple Crown‑race winner (with Arcangelo in the 2023 Belmont Stakes).

DeVaux’s own family background is steeped in the Standardbred world: her relatives have long been involved in harness racing, and her brother Jimmy DeVaux is both a driver and trainer. That lineage gives her a deep, almost cultural familiarity with the track‑side life, even as she chose the Thoroughbred path.

Why Golden Tempo’s win matters beyond the roses

Beyond the obvious historic imprint, first woman trainer to win the Kentucky Derby, Golden Tempo’s victory amplifies several quietly important themes:

• Small‑stable success: DeVaux’s barn is not among the biggest in the sport by numbers or payroll, yet she has consistently punched above her weight at major meets, from the Breeders’ Cup to the Derby.
• Women in the backstretch: The Derby ecosystem is already full of women: jockeys, exercise riders, vets, broadcasters, and stewards. DeVaux’s win gives visible weight to the idea that the trainer’s role is not a closed fraternity.
• Role‑model effect: In interviews, she emphasized that success requires a willingness to fail, saying, “Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. You have to be willing to fail to be able to succeed.” That message will resonate far beyond the paddock, reaching girls who might otherwise see the trainer’s path as abstract or unattainable.

A new chapter in Derby lore

DeVaux’s win is only her first in a Triple Crown race, but it lands at the top of the pyramid: the Kentucky Derby remains the sport’s most iconic stage, and being the first woman to win it embeds her name in the sport’s present and future.

The fact that Golden Tempo’s victory came in a 152‑horse Derby era, with a descendant of a long line of Derby winners, wraps the human moment in the full pageantry of the race.

Now, the question shifts from whether a woman trainer can win the Derby to what other women will follow in Cherie DeVaux’s hoofprints. The path is no longer hypothetical; it is real, documented, and now televised in the glow of the Churchill Downs roses.

SportsLigue