Kentucky Derby 2016 Winner: Paul Reddam's Nyquist Celebration, Reaction

The 2016 Kentucky Derby turned out to be a good race for Nyquist and his team, as they captured the Run for the Roses after taking the lead coming out of the far turn.   

Nyquist entered Churchill Downs as the betting favorite, getting 2.25-1 odds from Odds Shark. Jockey Mario Gutierrez ran a brilliant race, not pushing his horse too hard early in order to make that final push entering the final stretch. 

NBC Sports tweeted out the video of Nyquist's triumph:

Longines Equestrian provided a close-up image of Gutierrez's exuberant reaction after crossing the finish line with Nyquist:

Per ESPN Stats & Info, Nyquist became the eighth horse in history to win the Kentucky Derby with an unbeaten record (8-0). The records didn't stop there, as Ron Flatter of CBS Sports Radio offered an interesting tidbit of his own:

NBC Sports provided a glamour shot of Nyquist with the caption that will define the three-year-old forever:

One tradition of horses owned by Paul Reddam is they are named after notable Detroit Red Wings players, because he's a loyal fan to the historic NHL franchise. This year's Derby champion got his name from Gustav Nyquist, who is a forward in Detroit. 

Naturally, the Red Wings are well aware of Reddam's fandom and offered a celebration of Nyquist's triumph on Twitter:

Per TwinSpires.com, Reddam said "I'll have another" after the win. It's both a reference to his second Kentucky Derby win as an owner and the horse who provided him that previous glory, I'll Have Another, who won the first two legs of the Triple Crown before being forced to withdraw from the Belmont Stakes with an injury.

Being the betting favorite, no one would classify Nyquist's victory as a surprise. His trainer, Doug O'Neill, went beyond that when describing his nerves prior to the race, per Blood-Horse:

We can just assume O'Neill was talking about peak-era Kobe Bryant; otherwise, that sentence loses a lot of its weight.

O'Neill didn't stop there with his praise for Nyquist, saying on the NBC broadcast that in "any human sport, he'd be a top-notch athlete as well," via the Courier-Journal.

Expanding on those thoughts with NBC (via At the Races), O'Neill described his horse as if he were a human preparing for any major event on the horizon:

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin tweeted out a picture of himself preparing to give Nyquist's team the champion's trophy:

Photographer Heidi E. Carpenter captured a gorgeous image of Gutierrez and Nyquist making their way around the track after the race:

Even though Nyquist, Reddam, Gutierrez and O'Neill can bask in the glory of this victory, the pressure will only increase moving forward. The Preakness Stakes is just two weeks away on May 21, leaving little turnaround time in the quest for a Triple Crown. 

American Pharoah did ease some of the media pressure on horses to end the Triple Crown drought last year, but Nyquist's team will not let up after coming so close in 2012 with I'll Have Another, only to have an injury take it away.