Equal opportunity at the Kentucky Derby
Where billionaires and Arab sheiks mingle with lesser Backstreet Boys and B-movie actresses with three names, and all that stuff about how every horse can win turns out to be sorta true.
By King Kaufman
May 3, 2002 | LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- What I don't know about horse racing would weigh down the moon, but at the moment that's not a problem. Nobody else knows anything, either. The morning-line favorite in the 128th running of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday is Harlan's Holiday at 9-2. They've been printing the early odds in the race program since 1949, and never has a favorite had such long odds.
So as I wander around the barns on the back side of Churchill Downs at dawn Thursday morning, I'm not the only one who's looking for information, though I may be starting from the greatest position of ignorance. With such a wide-open field -- 20 horses, six or eight more than the maximum allowed in most races in America -- and no colt having established himself as dominant in the prep races, reporters are looking for angles and horse players are looking for clues.
"When you have 20 horses, you never know," trainer Bob Baffert tells a gaggle of scribblers. "It mixes it all up."
Baffert has two horses entered: War Emblem, at 20-1, and Danthebluegrassman, a 50-1 shot who finished last in the Santa Anita Derby and whose last-minute entry Wednesday ruffled some feathers in the camp of Windward Passage, who was bumped. When more than 20 horses are entered, the field is narrowed down to the 20 with the most earnings in graded stakes races. Windward Passage was 21st. His owners, some of whom had flown here from California for Wednesday's post-position draw, didn't find out he wouldn't be racing until five minutes before the draw began.
Baffert defends the late announcement, which followed weeklong speculation that the horse would be withdrawn, to reporters: "All I read about is all these horses are so bad," he says, "and that doesn't do the owners any good, so don't talk about it. All they [the media] see is, they look for the bad things in a horse. They don't see maybe he didn't get a chance to run." Baffert says Danthebluegrassman looked so good in workouts this week that he decided to "throw out" the Santa Anita Derby, which he says was just a bad day for the colt.
"If you owned this horse and you saw the way he worked, you'd want him in this race," he says. "He's doing good right now. Not last week, not next week. Right now. There's 20 horses in the Derby. Anything can happen. Take a shot."
Anything can happen. That kind of optimism, reminiscent of the everybody's-tied-for-first pronouncements of baseball managers during spring training, is rampant during Derby week, as evidenced by these headlines culled from the top of the Thoroughbred Times Web site at a randomly chosen moment Tuesday afternoon: Day says inexperienced Buddha handling challenges "beautifully"; McCarron right on the money in Came Home workout; Proud Citizen sharp in early morning move; Saarland finishes well in first work over Churchill strip; Medaglia d'Oro turns in impressive morning drill.
Never is heard a discouraging word.
Meanwhile, over by the backside rail, most of Louisville's radio and television stations are broadcasting live. Thomas Meeker, the president and CEO of Churchill Downs Inc., surveys the scene with me. "The backside is the great equalizer," he says. "All these people" -- perhaps 100 people other than those in the media are milling around, watching the horses, eating doughnuts, taking pictures -- "I mean, you've got millionaires, billionaires, floating around. Princes, Arab sheiks."
And actor and former University of Louisville linebacker Matt Battaglia, who's making the rounds, talking up an annual party he co-promotes that benefits a local cancer center.
"It's the best party in town Friday night," he says, then lists the Hollywood not-quite royalty who will attend, including James Caviezel, Jerry O'Connell, Shannon Elizabeth, two of the lesser Backstreet Boys and just about every actress in Hollywood with three names: Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Rachael Leigh Cook, Melissa Joan Hart, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the whole bunch.
Battaglia's nice when I tell him I've never heard of him ("That's OK, I'm not a household name yet -- I'm the only face I don't know"), so I'll tell you that he's got a Steven Seagal movie coming up called "Half Past Dead," and maybe he'll get famous and let me come to his party next year so I can meet Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Louisa May Alcott.
Next page: Here's my scientific method for picking a winner. You can use it, too
