While advocates for Breonna Taylor continue to encourage people to #SayHerName, their wishes recently came to fruition.

On Thursday, a female horse named Breonna beat five other stallions at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, just ahead of the May 1 Kentucky Derby.

The horse galloped to the finish line under jockey Corey Lanerie and is owned by JS Stables, LLC. Breonna Taylor’s family attorney, Sam Aguiar, owns and operates the thoroughbred horse racing company with his wife Janelle. 

Aguiar said his wife was responsible for naming the triumphant filly after Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville native who was fatally shot by police in her home last year. 

“My wife named the filly Breonna because she was beautiful, strong and resilient,” Aguiar said according to The Courier-Journal. “She’s tough and has swagger. But to those closest to her, she’s also loving and kind. That was Breonna Taylor as well.”

The 3-year-old horse, which Sam’s wife, Janelle Aguiar, received as a gift from her husband for Christmas 2019, won under rainy and muddy conditions in a six-furlong race, surpassing a competitor in the home stretch of the contest. 

Janelle took her pride to Facebook, sharing how exciting it is to have one of their horses win, and especially this year. 

“Any time we win a horse race is exciting… But it takes it to a new level when you name your horse Breonna in honor of #BreonnaTaylor, the horse wins at Churchill Downs on Derby week, and you hear so many people #SayHerName,” she wrote on Facebook.

Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, responded to Janelle’s post, writing, “Always bet on Breonna.” 

In May 2020, Palmer, grief stricken, told The Washington Post how she just wanted justice for her daughter.

“I want justice for her,” Palmer said. “I want them [people] to say her name. There’s no reason Breonna should be dead at all.”

Taylor was an EMT aspiring to become a nurse. She was shot at least eight times by police who were carrying out a botched, no-knock drug warrant. 

“(Breonna Taylor) was just getting on the right path and getting things together and had dreams and aspirations,” Janelle Aguiar said, according to The Courier-Journal. “And I think that just really touched my heart, that that could have been me, that that could have been any young girl.”

The Aguiars’ plan to donate the $10,000 earnings to the Breonna Taylor Foundation, which her family created as a non-profit organization in 2020. 

Taylor’s legacy is also continuing in more ways than one: a new Louisville art exhibition dedicated to her and entitled “Promise, Witness, Remembrance,” debuted at the Louisville Speed Art Museum. 

“I was in awe just at the thought that people who don’t even know her take time out of their day to draw something of her … even just as simple as her name,” Palmer said about the exhibit, which she insists is “filled with her spirit,” NPR reported. “And to see it all come together is just a blessing.”  

“For some people, and maybe some outlets, this topic is trendy. And for a lot of the artists, and obviously the families affected, this is perpetual. This is permanent,” Hank Willis Thomas, one of the artists featured in the exhibit told W Magazine. “We don’t want this to just be a passing phase. We’re still just at the beginning of the diagnosis of issues like institutional racism. That’s also part of the reason why we make the work: We want future generations to have the locus and to be connected and to understand that the struggle continues.”