Trainer Todd Fincher was standing in the corner of the stakes barn reserved for Preakness Stakes contenders on the Laurel Park backstretch, laser-focused on the horses as they circled to cool out after morning training.
Somewhere in the procession, his colt The Hell We Did ambled under a black and white cooler hanging on him slightly askew. The trainer raised his hand to stop the hotwalker and horse to balance the cooler out over his back, and sent him along, the same way he has for the colt's mother and siblings for years.
The family has taken Fincher to some of the sport's highest peaks, all racing as homebreds for Joe Peacock Sr. and Jr. The Hell We Did's dam, Rose's Desert, was a seven-time stakes winner in her native New Mexico and cleared over $625,000 on the track. Her son Runaway Ghost had the points to run in the 2018 Kentucky Derby after winning that year's Grade 3 Sunland Park Derby before being removed from contention for the classic due to injury.
Her more famous son, Senor Buscador, is the sixth-highest-earning North American-born Thoroughbred of all-time, tallying a lucrative win in the G1 Saudi Cup and in-the-money efforts in the top-dollar Dubai World Cup and Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes, en route to a bankroll of more than $12.9 million. He is now in the early seasons of his stud career at Lane's End in Kentucky.
It was the eight-figure earner who inspired the name of Fincher's latest member of the family aiming for a place in the history books.
"Joey's father, he owned Rose's Desert, and the family is involved, but it always ran in (the elder Peacock's) name," Fincher said. "He was getting pretty old, and Rose's Desert was having her babies, and Runaway Ghost had already been around, so Mr. Peacock told them, 'You guys can start naming the foals,' so they did a family deal where everybody submitted a name.
"One day, they come up with a name for the colt and they went into Mr. Peacock's (the elder) office and said, 'Well, we named that horse.'
'"What'd you name him?'
"They said, 'Senor Buscador.'
"He goes, 'The hell we did.'
"So that's how his name came about."
Though the Saudi Cup winner and the Preakness hopeful share a common mother and origin story, Fincher said the two sons of Rose's Desert – Senor Buscador by Mineshaft and The Hell We Did by Authentic – fork in opposite directions from there.
"Every single one of them's had different personalities," he said. "It hasn't been any two alike. Different way they travel, different way they act. They've all been separate individuals. Other than being good racehorses, they don't really carry the same traits.
"They're both playful," Fincher continued. "Senor Buscador was a little meaner. This one (The Hell We Did) will nip at you, but he's just playing. The other one would really bite you. But they're young colts, you know? They're feeling their oats."
Even more astounding about the differences between the two brothers is their opposite personalities as compared to their mother, a serial people-pleaser.
"She was just perfect," the trainer said. "Whatever you asked her to do, she'd do. She was really very insecure when she was young, very sweet, and then she got her confidence as she went on."
The Hell We Did will be ridden by jockey Luis Saez in Saturday's Preakness Stakes; the same rider who piloted the colt to a second-place finish in his most recent start, the G3 Lexington Stakes on April 11 at Keeneland, where he pressed the pace throughout and was outkicked as the wire approached to finish 2 1/4 lengths behind winner Trendsetter.
It was the colt's first start away from the Southwest, after breaking his maiden at Remington Park in October, running second in the Zia Park Juvenile Stakes to finish his 2-year-old campaign, then starting his sophomore term with a 13-length drubbing of a Sunland Park allowance field in March.
The 1 1/16-mile Lexington was a massive test in class and distance for The Hell We Did, marking his first try in graded stakes company and his first race at a distance longer than six furlongs.
Even though he didn't win, Fincher felt as though The Hell We Did passed a major test at Keeneland, and the horse put himself in an able spot to face another test on Saturday.
"He was not ready to do what he did (in the Lexington)," Fincher said. "He had been on layoff, and he had won a six-furlong race where he never got out of a high gallop. He didn't have to lay down and run. He didn't get much out of that race at all, and then a month later, we're shipping to Keeneland and going a mile and a sixteenth, and he's up on the lead. He took all the pressure, and he got tired, but he was supposed to, so he got a lot out of that race. So now, we should be moving forward."
This story was originally published by Paulick Report on May 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Paulick Report as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
