A California horse, I’ll Have Another, owned by a Philosophy professor at Cal State L.A turned financier, J. Paul Beddam, and trained by Santa Monica resident, Douglas O’Neill, won the Santa Anita Derby earlier this season and won the Kentucky Derby by 1 ½ lengths this afternoon.

A favorite, Bodemeister, took the lead early and held it until I’ll Have Another streaked by him in the last moments of the legendary race.

Beddam, a Canadian by birth, took his doctorate in philosophy at USC. In the 1990s, he traded teaching for finance and founded Ditech, a mortgage company, which he sold to General Motors in 1999. He now runs Cash Call, a loan company.

He got hooked on horse racing as a teenager and has horse farms in California and Kentucky.