“This Kentucky Derby, whatever it is–a race, an emotion, a turbulence, an explosion–is one of the most beautiful and violent and satisfying things I have ever experienced.”
John Steinbeck
The Derby in 1902 appeared to be a festive and elegant affair, as shown in these two vintage postcards.
With horse racing as a sport continuing its decades old steep decline in the public imagination as well as in bottom-line ratings….does the Kentucky Derby truly still stand among the great, must see, sports events in this nation? Does it mean anything, to anybody, anymore?
Below are two of my favorite articles on the Derby. The latter one includes my all time favorite quote on the Derby, a brief but powerful description by Pulitzer prize winner, John Steinbeck in the 50’s.
They capture the essence of what I think makes the Derby unique among the major events — it embodies history as no other. A thread of history runs through the Derby that ties the elegance and refinement of sporting in 1902 through today.
Sports Illustrated
No place like Churchill Downs
Of all the sporting events I attended, Derby was No. 1
Posted: Thursday May 3, 2007 5:09PM; Updated: Friday May 4, 2007 1:21PM
In 2005 I set off on a quest to attend what were in my mind the 10 ultimate sports events (Super Bowl, Daytona 500, Final Four, Masters, Kentucky Derby, Wimbledon, Wrigley Field, Ohio State-Michigan, Lambeau Field and Opening Day at Fenway). The adventure resulted in a book, Fanatic: 10 Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die, which comes out this month. Below is part of the chapter depicting my trip to the Kentucky Derby (my favorite of the 10 events), where I was joined by my wife, Karin, and two good friends of ours, Kevin and Tara.
The day is grand, sunny and beautiful, about 83 degrees, with big puffy clouds floating by. The atmosphere is something like going to a football game in your best church clothes. There’s a sense of sophistication and formality, and yet we’re outside, we’re drinking, and the air is filled with excitement. Thus far we’ve lunched, seen notables — Richard Branson, [former] Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Tice — and people-watched.
The best perch for this proves to be a small balcony overlooking the paddock area, which is three times as jam-packed today as it was yesterday. This is the Derby as advertised. The brave men who’ve strayed from the blue blazer and khakis dazzle with red sport jackets, green trousers, linen suits, and plenty of seersucker, occasionally even accompanied by a bow tie and a straw boater. The women are a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes and hats, from tame wide-brimmed straw ones to outsize, crazy things that force other people to duck every time the wearer turns around.
One woman goes by sporting a number with a long line of black feathers attached. “Oh, my,” Tara says, “someone got a hot glue gun for Christmas.” Karin, to her dismay, spots a woman wearing the same dress as she. “Well,” offers another lady standing near us. “As long as she’s down there and you’re up here, it’s not a problem.” On our other side I listen in as one woman tells another conspiratorially, “She bought a $600 hat from Neiman and her husband told her no way. So she took it back and traded it in for one that cost four hundred.”
Back in our seats, we sip ceremonial mint juleps and place bets on the next race. I’d say the flavor of the drink is not what I expected, but I didn’t really have any expectation of what it would taste like. I just assumed it would be good. Why else would it be such a hallowed tradition? Truth is, the mint julep is a bit of an acquired taste, neither sweet nor smooth nor necessarily tasty. I persist, though, because it’s the Derby and I’m going to drink a mint julep, dammit, which I suspect is exactly how the tradition has survived.
Having grown bored of the hat watching, the women strike out to find a gift shop. As the race starts, Kevin and I are standing casually. Through turn one we start to yell for the 5 horse, on whom we’ve plunked our dough. Down the backstretch we start to stretch and crane and rise up onto our toes. Finally we jump onto our chairs to get a better view of the horses rumbling out of the last turn and into the homestretch. The 5 horse is running third. The entire crowd has risen and the level of noise ratchets up in a mishmash of contradictory wishes, prayers, and enthusiasms. I’m yelling “Go 5, go 5,” while Kevin has opted for something a little less cliche but that makes up for its unorthodoxy with an admirable simplicity and straightforwardness: “Run faster,” he screams. “Run faster!”
Perhaps Kevin should have been more specific, because it is the 7 horse that runs faster, leaving us outside the winner’s circle. In the denouement of the race, a ripple of chatter runs through the stands as winners share the news of their good fortune and everyone else recounts their near misses. There are no lingering hard feelings, though, because there are still races left to be run, including the big one, which lends a feeling of anticipation.
And there are still plenty of icy beverages and the whole grand, flamboyant sweep of Churchill Downs on Derby Day. Kevin and I sit back down. I take a long bitter sip of my julep. Kevin goes for his beer (he ditched the julep) and looks around for someone with a lighter for his cigar. Karin and Tara return and we all delve into our racing forms so we can get our money down for the next race. After spending the day alone yesterday, it’s great to have them all here. None of us knows much about horseracing, but we have fun figuring it out together.
The pace is a pleasant one, with leisurely 30 or 40-minute intervals between races, during which we can chew over the last run, talk about our kids, make dinner plans for the following month, scan the racing form for the next race, and place our bets. As post time approaches, there’s a gradual buildup of tension, people run off to get their bets in, hustle back to their seats, begin to rise and stretch to get a peak at the horses as they are paraded out to the starting gate. Then the bell rings, the gate bursts open, and there follows a minute of pure excitement. Thus the afternoon passes in a combination of pomp and circumstance intertwined with laughter and beer and loud yelling at distant thoroughbreds. We win some, we lose some. We make friends with the people around us. It is, I think, one of the most pleasant afternoons I’ve enjoyed in many years.
But there’s also an odd undercurrent that reminds me of being a kid on Dec. 24. No matter what I do and how much fun I have, there is always the specter of a bigger moment waiting. The anticipation of the Derby hovers over everything. And like Christmas Eve, it makes things more exciting and delicious but it also produces the sense that everything else is just prologue. Everything builds toward the moment that has brought us here to start with.
Finally, it’s Derby time. The horses are walked out from the barns on the far side of the track, then paraded before the grandstand and into the paddock area. This, I’m told, is one of the Derby’s three great moments, along with the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home” and the race itself. I must say that as the horses go by they appear even more majestic than usual, like gladiators. Maybe it’s the sudden weight of the actual event, in which fortunes and glory and, for the creatures themselves, limb and life are on the line, but whatever it is, it makes me feel for the horses in a way I never have before. The conversation percolates. Around me people strain to look, pointing, studying, discussing how the animals look and move. Notes are made. A few minutes later, the post call trumpets through the sound system (bump, bump, bump, bump ba-da-dump, ba-da-dump ba-da-dum) and there is a final surge toward the betting windows.
The voice on the PA asks everyone to rise for the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home.” What follows is a bit of surreal comedy. There is a band set up across the track and the lyrics to the song come up on a large screen opposite the grandstand. A pixilated ball bounces over the words, but there’s no music. Everyone’s standing and waiting for the song to start; they have no idea it already has. Some distant strains of music from the band finally make their way back over the crowd noise. A few people catch on and try to jump in with the lyrics, but they can’t hear the melody, so the result is some disjointed chanting spread through the crowd. There’s a swell on the final lyric and the words “my old Kentucky home” approach something like audible level, and then the song is over. Everyone is sort of looking at one another and laughing a little bit. What is supposed to be a stirring tradition has been a complete farce. I guess once upon a time everyone who came to the race knew the words to this song, but now it seems almost no one does.
The moment passes, though, and they begin to load the horses into the gates, and a roar goes up from the crowd. I glance to the infield, which is packed in a way I couldn’t have dreamed of yesterday. All day long people have been filling in the vast open spaces, laying blankets, pitching tents, hauling coolers and even little step stools and platforms to stand on. Thousands of them push forward to find a spot at the chainlink fence that surrounds the oval, looking like prisoners pining for their emancipation.
The horses are in and set, everyone is on their feet, and many, including us, stand on their chairs — a tricky proposition because you have to hold yourself high enough to see over everyone else, but low enough to see around the various poles and beams and under the pipes hanging down from the ceiling. I have the sense that everyone is leaning just the slightest bit forward. On my past visits to the track, the races themselves have provided jolts of excitement, mostly when my horse had a shot at finishing in the money, but I’ve never experienced anything like this. I can feel the anticipation of 156,435 people who’ve been waiting all day for this moment; it presses down like hundreds of millions of dollars stacked on the roof.
At last the gate clicks, the crowd surges, and the horses charge down the frontstretch in a burst of swerving and flying dirt and jel-lybean-bright colors catching the light. They career into the clubhouse turn and around into the backstretch.
I’m all in on Flower Alley, a strong finisher who went off at 41-1, so I’m happy to see that he’s not burning himself out early at the front of the pack. As the horses head down the backstretch we shift our focus to the Jumbotrons across from the grandstand. In what seems like a heartbeat the horses are going into the stretch turn, and the pack is tight. It’s anyone’s race, and into the final stretch, Flower Alley is there in a pack just behind the leaders. He’s in the perfect position to kick on the jets and go. “Hit it!” I yell. “Go!”
At that moment we are no longer a crowd. We are a collection of individuals, isolated in our respective dramas, fully concentrating on our singular dreams, represented by a 1,200-pound animal charging over a 400-yard stretch of dirt that hasn’t been anything but a place for horses to run for 130 years. Nobody cares who’s next to him or in front of him or beside him. I am the guy who bet on Flower Alley. Kevin is the one pulling for Afleet Alex. Even Karin, standing right next to me, has laid her money on a separate horse and is enveloped in her own sphere of hopeful urging. There is a tunnel-vision focus on the track and the sounds of people yearning. “Flower Alley!” I yell. “Flower Alley, Flower Alley, Floweralleyfloweralleyfloweralley,” and then finally, “Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” as he fades down the stretch.
In the end it is the mottled colt, Giacomo, a 50-1 longshot who rallies to jump ahead in the final yards. As he does, people throw up their hands, toss their stubs into the air, fall back into their seats. They turn to one another, suddenly remembering they’re not alone, to relive some moment of “if only” conjecture. There are gestures of despair and disappointment everywhere and isolated scenes of celebration, and yet the atmosphere remains buoyant. The residual electricity pulses through the crowd. We are again united. We are the people who have come to the Kentucky Derby. The struggle is individual, the experience collective.
From Fanatic: 10 Things All Sports Fans Should Do Before They Die by Jim Gorant, published by Houghton Mifflin, June 2007. For more information go to jimgorant.blogspot.com
Most exciting two minutes? Derby proves it every year
You cannot count on every football or basketball game to go down to the last two minutes with any attendant drama — and, in fact, most don’t. You cannot count on a dramatic bottom-of-the-ninth scenario in every baseball game. You cannot count on every golf tournament coming down to the 72nd hole, every boxing match coming down to the 15th round, every hockey game going into overtime.
The Kentucky Derby is the ultimate two-minute drill. It’s Joe Montana against the Bengals with the clock running out — every year. With everything riding on it.
It is now or never for every horse in the race — a single dash at immortality, a mile-and-a-quarter cavalry charge toward history. Unlike John Elway in the Super Bowl or Roy Williams in the Final Four or Phil Mickelson in a major, there are no second chances at the Derby. Thoroughbreds are only 3-year-olds once.
Win and your name is memorialized on the paddock walls of Churchill Downs for as long as the place stands. Lose and you’re assigned to the small type of the race charts, on your way to eternal anonymity.
But it’s not just the suddenness or the stakes. It is the steady build to a razor’s-edge climax — three years of dreaming, four months of 3-year-old racing, several weeks of final preparation, then many tense hours of anticipation on race day.
And after an explosive 120-plus seconds, it’s all over.
Consider, first, the sheer numerical odds against winning the Kentucky Derby.
There were 34,642 thoroughbred foals born in 2004 in the United States. First they had to survive, then they had to learn how to run.
Of that group, 10,390 went to the racetrack as 2-year-olds.
Upon turning 3 in January, a total of 450 were nominated to run in the Triple Crown races.
Now, after winning enough money in graded stakes races and staying healthy in a sport rife with injury, 20 are entered to go to the post Saturday at 6:04 p.m. ET. That’s 4.4 percent of all those nominated, and .05 percent of all those foaled three years before. Even among the elite animals carefully and expensively bred with an eye toward winning the roses, it’s an astronomical long shot. In Kentucky alone, there were 9,815 foals born in 2004.
And, of course, only one will win, becoming the most famous horse of his generation.
And then you coax them up to race day, through a spring of steadily escalating anticipation. Some of these animals have not run since March, so their connections have had nothing to do but daydream about this race for up to eight weeks.
The anticipation for the Derby mounts when they saddle the horses an hour before post time.
Even the connections of the most recently raced Derby horses have had at least three weeks to think about it. It’s not like other sports, in which you play again in a few days or a week — or, at the Super Bowl most of the time, two weeks.
Race day itself teems with nervous energy. The morning routine starts for the trainers and animals before dawn, but the big race isn’t until after 6 p.m. There are hours and hours to kill, amid 150,000 partying people.
When they finally call the horses to the post for the Kentucky Derby on the backside, you can feel the pulses jump and adrenaline surge. Then walking with the horse over to the paddock for saddling in front of the full grandstand and under the Twin Spires is a huge rush. Yet even then, there’s an hour before they run the race.
When they finally put the jocks on the horses and parade them past the grandstand and play “My Old Kentucky Home,” it’s serious sweaty palms time. Then they load ‘em in the starting gate and, for a palpitating couple of seconds before the gates burst open, it’s all right there in the balance.
Everything thereafter is critical.
One wrong move and you’re cooked. That’s the other huge difference between this and other sporting events, along with the once-in-a-lifetime nature for the animals: there is zero margin for error. In football, you can fumble, punt, throw interceptions and make a comeback. In basketball you can get down 15 and come back.
In a two-minute event, it either all goes perfectly or you lose. You stumble at the start, it’s over. You get squeezed back or fanned wide in the traffic jam on the first turn, you’re done. You push the pace too fast, you’re gassed too soon. The importance of racing luck cannot be overstated.
And with the largest field of the year in American racing and all the money and prestige on the line, the in-race pressure on the jockeys, many of them scantly educated and inexperienced, is immense. With adrenaline coursing through their veins, they must balance the running style of their own horse with the pace scenario unfolding around them, forming on-the-fly judgments that can make or break their careers. It takes a special jockey to perform at his best in this cauldron of tension.
More than that, it takes a special horse. The jock must put him in position, and then the animal’s talent, fortitude and gene pool must carry the day in the final furlongs.
Most times, we don’t fully grasp what’s transpiring until it’s right in front of us down the stretch, and 150,000 people are roaring and somebody is winning the thing.
When the leaders come off the turn and into full view of the grandstand, raw emotions will surge. It will take roughly 24 seconds for the winning colt to cover the final quarter-mile sprint into history, and it will be a life-altering (and mood-altering) moment for the winning connections.
Last year, the payoff came for Barbaro, with jockey Edgar Prado and owner Roy Jackson.
Old people will behave like giddy children. Models of decorum will lose it. Pillars of society will scream themselves hoarse. Men worth hundreds of millions of dollars will exult over a winning purse not worth nearly as much as the richest races in the world.
Because there is no price tag on winning the Kentucky Derby.
And then the emotional trap door swings open beneath your feet — it’s over almost as soon as it began. No other sport boils down its highlight moment to something so brief and irrevocable.
When it’s done, you can almost feel the emotional sag in the majestic old edifice. It’s such a long lead-up to such a short event that it really fits the definition of breathtaking.
But don’t just take my word for it. This is part of what John Steinbeck wrote after seeing the Derby for the first time, in 1956, a race won by Needles:
By the time this is written, there will be few people in the nation who will not have seen the race on television or heard it on radio, and they will all have felt to some extent the bursting emotion at Churchill Downs. Every step of the great Needles will have been discussed–how he dawdled along trailing the field for two-thirds of the course, then fired himself like a torpedo past the screaming stands and the straining horses to win while the balloon of tension swelled and burst and it was all over.
Now there is a languor. Over a hundred thousand hearts are more spent than Needles’ heart, and some of them split and their owners on the way to the hospital or the morgue.
I am fulfilled and weary. This Kentucky Derby, whatever it is–a race, an emotion, a turbulence, an explosion–is one of the most beautiful and violent and satisfying things I have ever experienced. And I suspect that, as with other wonders, the people one by one have taken from it exactly as much good or evil as they brought to it.
What an experience. I am glad I have seen and felt it at last.
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