Gator Football: Meanwhile, Back at Churchill Downs…Pushing the Pause Button.

Off and running on a picture perfect day at Churchill Duwns

When The Derby Gets In Your Blood

In my world as a young sportswriter, just breaking into what we lovingly called “The Toy Department,” the Kentucky Derby was not merely an assignment. It was a summons.

You started out covering high schools, learning how to write fast, spelled outlet names right and find the story hiding under a muddy jersey. Then, if you were lucky, you got the beat on the local college team. After that came the dreams: Maybe the Masters, maybe the Final Four, maybe the big fight. And somewhere high on that sacred list was Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May.

For me, the Derby was the first major event outside the Masters that made me feel like I had crossed over.

I loved every minute of the 16 Kentucky Derbies I was fortunate enough to see. The color, the noise, the horses, the hats, the brass bands, the smell of the barns and the sudden silence just before the gate opened. 

You don’t have to know a thing about bloodlines or fractions or Beyer figures to understand the Kentucky Derby. It explains itself in thunder.

And if I wasn’t already hooked by the time I got there, Secretariat finished the job.

That magnificent red horse did not just win the Triple Crown. He rearranged the imagination. His 31-length victory in the Belmont remains the most dominating performance I have ever seen in a championship event. Not a race, really. More like a revelation.

Maybe I was destined for this. I was a native of Ocala, the “Horse Capital of the World,” where names like Needles and Carry Back were not just printed in record books. They were part of the local gospel. When your hometown has Derby winners in its bloodstream, the Run for the Roses feels personal.

That is why I still watch, still care and still get pulled back in every spring.

I did not have the winner this time. Most of us didn’t. Golden Tempo came rolling home and gave trainer Cherie DeVaux a place in history as the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner. But even when your ticket is torn up, the Derby never leaves you empty-handed. There is always another story. Always another reason to look twice.

This year, one of them was a horse named So Happy, trained by Mark Glatt, whose Derby dream came only months after the death of his wife, Dena. A horse with a joyful name ca aarrying a brokenhearted man to the biggest stage in American racing. That is the Derby for you. It can be cruel and beautiful in the same breath.

The race lasts barely two minutes, but the stories live a lot longer.

That is what I learned as a young writer in The Toy Department. We thought we were going to cover games and races. What we were really covering was life — hope, grief, luck, courage and the occasional miracle wearing silks.

The Kentucky Derby still has all of that.  

And every May, when the horses turn for home and the crowd rises as one, I am young again, notebook in hand, trying to catch the thunder before it gets away.