Yesterday I got the perfect trip in the American Turf. Today I got the opposite in the Kentucky Derby.

It wasn't exactly a bad trip, per se, but things just didn't really go our way and I'm not sure exactly which reason to pinpoint, but there are a bunch of them, that's why I finished sixth with Lookin at Lucky instead of winning. I'm a little disappointed because I thought I had the best horse and when you're riding the early favorite you feel like you should win, but he just didn't help out a lot today.

First time on the sloppy racetrack is asking a lot of them too. I got bounced the first couple of jumps from the No. 3 horse and he got up on his feet and traveled well for about six or seven jumps and all of a sudden he just stuck his feet in the ground and hesitated. When he stuck them in the ground, I sat down on him because I didn't know what was going on. By then, I started to figure out what he was doing. By then I knew I was in trouble, because you can't do that in this race, going into the first turn. You can't give up that ground.

I felt like if I could have stayed where I was, in behind Willie Martinez on Noble's Promise, I would have been in OK shape. But we got shuffled back and even though he started picking up horses, he wasn't doing it real willingly. I didn't expect that; I figured that if I got shuffled back he would start to pick them back up. Then all of a sudden we picked off most of the field up and started splitting [horses]. He started putting in an OK run and I thought, if I can eyeball something, he'll come home. But when we turned for home, at about the eighth pole, he flattened out.

There are a bunch of variables: the 1 post, the mud, he's never had this much stuff [flying] in his face, and the distance of 1¼ miles. There are other reasons; there were too many things going on today. I got bumped two or three times and that's when I got worried, riding past the stands for the first time, going into the first turn. He wasn't real willing to help me the first sixteenth of a mile and take some of it. After the first turn he wasn't willing to take much.

Of course, congratulations go out to the winning connections, but it's still a disappointment because I had a lot of faith in the horse and things just didn't go our way this afternoon. We live to fight again, and hopefully he comes out of the race OK. He's a better horse than he showed today, and I think everyone knows that.