Cherie DeVaux and Golden Tempo at her Saratoga barn, June 7, 2026. Photo by Teresa Genaro

Cherie DeVaux and Golden Tempo at Saratoga Race Course, June 7, 2027. Photo by Teresa Genaro

Cherie DeVaux doesn’t call Saratoga Springs her hometown. But that doesn’t preclude our community from claiming the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner as one of our own. 

DeVaux was indeed born in Saratoga, but her family moved away when she was a toddler. Even if she’s not a hometown hero strictly speaking, she does have deep ties to the area. Her family has horses on a farm just a couple of exits up the Northway from the track; she attended the University at Albany; her first job in horse racing came at Saratoga; and the late Chuck Simon, her friend and mentor, hails from the Spa City. So there was a pretty big cheering section when jockey José Ortiz piloted the DeVaux-trained Golden Tempo to another perfectly timed come-from-behind victory in the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga Race Course on June 6, making DeVaux, yes, the first female trainer to win two legs of the Triple Crown.

Now, DeVaux didn’t set out to be the first woman to do anything, and her road to Thoroughbred racing’s biggest stage wasn’t a straightaway. Her father trained harness horses; her brothers drove them. She and her sister Adrianne, who’s also now a Thoroughbred trainer, both grew up barrel racing. But a life at the racetrack was nothing that she’d ever considered. 

“Back then, I wasn’t a horse racing person,” she says. “I was a horse girl.”

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