The first half of the 1980s were extraordinary times in Kentucky: the Bluegrass State experienced unprecedented growth in the horse industry, a high-profile couple occupied the governor’s mansion, and opulence and excess characterized the state’s elite circles. The national profile of the Kentucky Derby continued to rise, the beneficiary of the glamour that was increasingly connected with the state and its horse industry during these boom times in the Bluegrass. By the turn of the century the Derby would be an annual goal for horse owners around the world in an increasingly global Thoroughbred industry. American media focused on tales of redemption and unlikely heroes at the Derby, again proving that the malleable identities of Kentucky and its Derby could adapt to—and affirm—the ever-changing notion of “American values.”
For Kentucky the Big ’80s began a month early, with the inauguration of Governor John Y. Brown Jr., in December 1979. Brown and his new wife, former Miss America and television personality Phyllis George, immediately raised Kentucky’s national profile by virtue of their many prominent social and professional connections. Brown had purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from Colonel Sanders in 1964 and had been involved in ownership groups of various professional sports franchises, including the Boston Celtics. During Brown’s tenure in office, he and George entertained scores of celebrities at the Kentucky Derby and Derby-related functions, adding some additional Hollywood-style panache to the event in an era of excess and materialism. Two of the Browns’ most famous guests were Muhammad Ali and Colonel Harland Sanders, two of the most recognized figures on the planet in the early 1980s, and both with strong Kentucky ties.
The Indiana-born Sanders began selling his famous chicken in the 1930s and was soon granted an honorary colonelship by Kentucky governor Ruby Laffoon in acknowledgment of Sanders’s culinary contributions to the Commonwealth. In 1952 the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in Salt Lake City. Today KFC’s corporate offices in Louisville are located in a giant antebellum-style mansion, and Colonel Sanders’s visage adorns over eleven thousand Kentucky Fried Chicken stores in more than eighty countries around the globe. When Brown and his partners purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from Sanders, the colonel was retained as a spokesman for the company and became the face of an international fast-food empire. After Sanders’s death at the age of ninety, Brown called the colonel “the best salesman we ever had” at the pre-Derby Kentucky Colonels’ Dinner in 1981.1 Whether Brown’s use of the word “we” referred to Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, or the state of Kentucky, his statement was probably correct.
In 1980 Louisville native Muhammad Ali attended the Derby as the guest of the Browns months before he lost the world heavyweight boxing title for the final time. “I’m bigger than the whole Derby,” Ali dryly told reporters.2 The “Louisville Lip’s” connection to Kentucky added to the state’s global fame, and his frequent presence at the Derby was a treat for celebrity spotters, adding both levity and gravity to the festival atmosphere. In addition to Ali and Sanders, other guests of the Browns at the Derby included Kenny Rogers, Barbara Walters, Waylon Jennings, and Walter Cronkite. In a culture that celebrated stardom, the Kentucky Derby held its place as an A-list event in the 1980s. Racing had attracted wealthy people and high society for centuries. But in the 1980s most of the celebrities who attended the Derby would not visit another race track all year, unlike in decades past, when racing had a much larger place in American society.
Part of the Derby’s appeal for decades had been that it provided the middle classes an opportunity to experience the “good life” while giving high society a chance to get close—but not too close—to the hedonistic behavior of the masses. In decades past, newspapers had published lists of society members who attended the Derby, including information on what fashion the women wore, seat location, and local hosts. But by the 1980s, American popular culture was much more focused upon actors, musicians, and athletes than faceless aristocrats. Society swells still showed up to the Derby, but celebrities from the entertainment industries received much more attention in the newspapers. Some of the celebrities made the trip to Churchill Downs as owners of Derby horses, including filmmaker Steven Spielberg, rapper M. C. Hammer, songwriter Bert Bacharach, Motown Records founder Barry Gordy, and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. These celebrities who were involved in the actual race were doubly effective in bringing attention to Louisville at Derby time.
The Derby had to some degree always been “glamorous,” but in the 1980s, Kentucky became glamorous in its own right, which only helped to raise the stature of the Derby. In 1985 Lexington, Kentucky, hosted the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, an opportunity typically reserved for much larger cities. Weeks later, an editorial in the Courier-Journal proclaimed, “It’s a giddy F. Scott Fitzgerald time, a flapper week for modern times” above an article about Derby Week festivities in Kentucky.3 They were certainly high times for the state’s horse community. Lavish parties at central Kentucky horse farms rivaled any in the nation. Robin Leach filmed a segment of his Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous television program at one of these parties, at which television personality Gary Collins said, “This must be what it was like before the crash in ’29. Everybody’s happy, there are no problems. It has a very unreal quality that takes you away from all the craziness in our day-to-day events.”4
This sense of glamour and giddiness in Kentucky equine circles in the early 1980s was fueled by the unprecedented boom in the Thoroughbred bloodstock market that had begun in the 1970s. The beginning of the boom could be partially attributed to a growing international presence at American horse auctions attracted by a weak U.S. dollar, and European interest in the offspring of 1964 Kentucky Derby champion Northern Dancer, whose son Nijinsky captured the English Triple Crown in 1970 and was later named “Horse of the Millennium” in a poll of British racing fans. By the early 1980s the market for top equine racing stock in Kentucky had reached astronomical levels. Fees for top Kentucky stallions’ services approached $1 million per “cover.” Yearlings were selling in Lexington’s Keeneland July sale for eye-popping figures, reaching a peak of $13.1 million for a half brother to Seattle Slew in 1985.
One of the key contributors to this boom market was the ruling family of Dubai, led by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. In 1983 Sheikh Mohammed paid $10.2 million for a horse later named Snaafi Dancer, who never raced and was practically infertile. The following year Mohammed spent more than $41 million on a handful of yearlings. The sheikh’s aspiration of establishing the most successful Thoroughbred operation in the world was part of a larger goal of promoting Dubai as a global tourist destination in the face of the fact that the oil reserves that had produced the immense wealth of Dubai and its ruling family were diminishing. Sheikh Mohammed was proud of the Thoroughbred’s Arabian roots, and had been a lifelong sportsman and equestrian. Excellence in Thoroughbred racing was one way he sought to raise the international profile of Dubai, located on the Persian Gulf at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. He had long-term ambitions of turning Dubai into an Arabian Hong Kong.
Seattle Dancer brought a world record $13.1 million as a yearling at the 1985 Keeneland July yearling sale. (Photos by Z.)
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. Sheikh Mohammed took the world of horse racing by storm and injected hundreds of millions of dollars into the industry beginning in the 1980s. (Photos by Z.)
In the late 1980s and 1990s, as the sport of Thoroughbred racing became increasingly international, the Maktoums dominated racing in England and won many of the world’s most important races, but the Kentucky Derby was a prize that eluded this most decorated family in racing, despite vast expenditures of time, money, and energy in pursuit of the roses. Since its initial foray into the sport, the Maktoum family has spent well over $1 billion on racehorses worldwide. For Mohammed the Derby was a race whose preeminent place both on the American racing calendar and in American culture made it an essential part of his larger goal of bringing international attention and glory to Dubai.
In 1992 Mohammed was part owner of the Derby favorite Arazi. The colt was French trained but had won America’s most important race for two-year-olds, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, the previous fall in spectacular fashion. Racing fans hoped that Arazi might be the next Secretariat. That year members of the international press showed up in record numbers to Churchill Downs: more than one hundred foreign journalists from nine different countries. A German film crew was on hand to shoot a documentary about the Derby, and the race itself would be broadcast that year in countries around the world, including, for the first time, Russia. Aired only months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian broadcast included advertisements for Kentucky, Louisville, and a cigarette company, and concluded with a Russian-language rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home” performed by the Louisville Chorus.
Arazi finished a disappointing eighth, but his performance did not deter foreign owners. In 1995 a horse with a Japanese owner, trainer, and jockey finished fourteenth in the Derby. “Make no mistake about it,” a journalist for the Courier-Journal wrote, “the Kentucky Derby no longer is as homemade as a bottle of bourbon. . . . A good interpreter has become as critical as a good set of binoculars” in a milieu where “a Japanese television network questions a Brooklyn horse trainer about the running ability of an English colt while a Canadian sports writer scribbles notes.”5
The racing world had become more international with the advance in transportation and information technology. But the internationalization of the Derby was more than just a product of these phenomena. A victory in the Kentucky Derby represented the ultimate achievement in American racing, but it also guaranteed a horse and its owner a place in American popular culture and public consciousness (not to mention the possibility of unfathomable riches as the owner of a Derby-winning stud horse in the breeding shed).
In 1999 Sheikh Mohammed returned to the Derby with a colt named Worldly Manner. At a press conference he pledged to win the Derby within four years. “If we fail this time, we’ll try again. That’s a promise,” Mohammed told the New York Times.6 Worldly Manner, for which Mohammed reportedly paid $5 million as a two-year-old, finished seventh. When asked what he and his horse had accomplished in the race the Sheikh responded, “The success is in this [Derby] atmosphere you see. We’ll be back, Inshallah. We’ll be back.”7
Mohammed, who raced under the name Godolphin Racing as a tribute to one of the original Arabian ancestors of all Thoroughbred horses, did not just want to win the Derby. He wanted to win it by training and preparing his horses in Dubai, a tactic that flouted conventional wisdom. He was convinced that his training facilities in Dubai were the finest in the world, and there was no better time or place to demonstrate his program’s efficacy than at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May. Mohammed had not insisted on winning other major American races in this manner. He had dozens of horses in training in the United States at any one time, but the Kentucky Derby was different.
In 2000 Mohammed returned to the Derby with two colts, China Visit and Curule. The horses’ trainer, Saeed bin Suroor, reiterated the operation’s commitment to achieving success at the Derby: “We win the biggest races in the world. The Kentucky Derby is a target for us. We need to win this. This is very important for us. It’s the biggest race in the world—one of the biggest. We need to win it.”8 They did not win, but finished a respectable sixth and seventh. When asked about his training strategy Mohammed asserted, “We can win from Dubai, and we will do it.”9
That year the Derby roses went to Fusaichi Pegasus, a colt purchased for $4 million at the Keeneland July yearling sale by Fusao Sekiguchi, who told Derby reporters through an interpreter, “When I laid eyes on this colt, I knew he was going to be a Derby winner.”10 Sekiguchi, a Japanese venture capitalist, had raced horses in Japan since the 1970s. He had been interested in American culture since American G.I.s occupied his hometown at the end of World War II. It was through the soldiers that he first became aware of the Kentucky Derby. After realizing success in Japanese racing in the 1990s, he set his sights on American racing and its ultimate prize, the Kentucky Derby. Sekiguchi’s entourage that accompanied him to the winner’s circle included three geishas carrying roses and paper parasols, symbolically emphasizing a Japanese victory in an American event.
Fusaichi Pegasus winning the Kentucky Derby in 2000. (Photos by Z.)
The reaction of one Japanese racing fan in Tokyo underscores the significance of a victory in the Kentucky Derby to a non-American. “Sure I’m happy,” Tsuyoshi Yamada told a reporter for the Associated Press outside a Tokyo betting shop after Fusaichi Pegasus’s Derby win. “But I’d be a whole lot happier if it had been a horse that had raced and proven itself in Japan.”11 Though “Fu Peg” was Japanese owned, he had been born, raised, sold, and trained in the United States, which in some ways reduced the symbolic significance of a Japanese victory in “America’s race.” By insisting on winning the Derby with a horse trained in Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed ensured that if he were to win a Kentucky Derby, his victory would be thorough.
Two years after Sekiguchi’s triumph at the Derby, Saudi prince Ahmed bin Salman won the race in wire-to-wire fashion with a horse named War Emblem. Prince Ahmed explained, “It’s a great achievement. This was important for me and it’s an honor to be the first Arab to win the Kentucky Derby.”12 “I love you guys in America,” the prince continued, in a line reminiscent of comments from northern American winners in the 1920s who praised the Kentucky “southerners” and the hospitality that they encountered in Louisville.13 Before the previous year’s Derby, in which Ahmed’s favored Point Given finished a disappointing fifth, the prince had admitted, “One of the great ambitions of my life is to win the Kentucky Derby. I have dreamed of it since I was a child.”14 Ahmed’s trainer Bob Baffert was also aware of his ambition: “The Prince wants to be the first Arab to win the Derby, and so does Sheikh Mo[hammed]. Let’s face it, for those guys, bragging rights are what it all comes down to, because they have more money than they’ll ever be able to spend. What they really want is the best horse, and that means winning the Derby.”15
Prince Ahmed had purchased War Emblem for a reported $1 million (a relative bargain in hindsight) only three weeks before the Derby, after the colt’s victory in the Illinois Derby. This last-minute acquisition rubbed some horsemen the wrong way. “Never in my life has a horse been given to me, ready-made, just sitting on a win like that,” said four-time Derby-winning trainer Wayne Lukas. Two-time Derby-winning trainer Nick Zito suggested that others around the racetrack had similar complaints about Ahmed’s trainer: “A lot of guys resent Baffert because he had enough [Derby] horses, then he had to go out and buy one.”16 War Emblem went on to win the Preakness Stakes and had a chance to win the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes but stumbled at the start and finished a distant fifth.
Victor Espinoza celebrates as he crosses the wire first in the 2002 Kentucky Derby aboard War Emblem. (Photos by Z.)
Prince Ahmed bin Salman (left) with Bob Baffert, owner and trainer, respectively, of 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem. (Photos by Z.)
To American and foreign owners alike, a victory in the Kentucky Derby represented an ultimate achievement in American horse racing. But the Derby took on added significance for foreign owners, who saw the race as part of Americana and took their own national pride to the starting gate and to the winner’s circle. English-born Michael Tabor won in 1995 with Thunder Gulch and later said, “I’ve always loved America, especially the vitality of the country and the people, and to me the [Kentucky] Derby is the greatest race of them all.”17 Tabor was an associate of John Magnier and his Coolmore Stud in County Tipperary, Ireland, the only serious challenger to the Maktoum family in terms of power and influence in Thoroughbred racing and breeding in the 1990s. In the fifteen years after Thunder Gulch’s Derby victory, Coolmore and its associates owned over a dozen Derby starters outright or in partnership. Some of Coolmore’s Derby horses traveled from Europe for the race, but others prepped in the United States. Still, Sheikh Mohammed was determined to win on his own terms and to win from his homeland. “The more they say that [it is impossible], the more possible Sheikh Mohammed will make it,” Godolphin racing manager Simon Crisford declared, leaving no mistake about the sheikh’s unwavering ambition.18 The next chance for the sheikh to prove that a Dubai-based horse could win the Derby came in 2002 when Mohammed entered Essence of Dubai, a $2.3 million yearling purchase and major stakes winner in Dubai; he finished ninth.
In the fall of 2008, Churchill Downs announced the creation of a race called the Kentucky Derby Challenge Stakes, to be contested in England the following March. The winner of the Challenge Stakes would be guaranteed a place in the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby.19 Churchill Downs president Steve Sexton explained, “The Kentucky Derby is a naturally compelling and exciting event, but the presence of international contenders always adds to the anticipation and intrigue surrounding America’s greatest race. A consistent international presence in the Derby will strengthen worldwide interest in our race and, in the long term, boost demand for the event as we work to expand distribution of wagering opportunities into new international markets.”20 Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, Mohammed’s brother, won the inaugural running of the Kentucky Derby Challenge Stakes (and that will likely prove to be the only running; Churchill Downs put the event on indefinite hiatus in 2010) with a colt named Mafaaz, but decided not to run in the Derby when the horse finished eighth in Keeneland Race Course’s Bluegrass Stakes, a key April Derby prep run in Lexington, seventy miles from Churchill Downs. Mohammed returned to the Kentucky Derby in 2009 with two runners, Regal Ransom and Desert Party. Both had been running well in Dubai in the months prior to being shipped to Louisville, and team Godolphin held higher hopes for its Derby prospects than it had in previous years. The results, however, were no better: Regal Ransom and Desert Party finished eighth and fourteenth, respectively.
Jockey Gary Stevens stands in triumph as he crosses the finish line aboard winning horse Thunder Gulch in the 1995 Derby. (Photos by Z.)
The Derby’s persistent place of importance in the wider consciousness of the American public led to the recognition of the race by foreign horsemen as emblematic not just of American racing, but also of American society and culture. The foreign recognition of the Derby’s significance only added to the race’s importance within the American Thoroughbred industry. But whereas journalists gravitated toward foreign owners’ quests to win at Churchill Downs, the American public was not always as willing to embrace a foreign owner or horse at the Derby.
Both the Preakness and Belmont drew large crowds in 2002 when Prince Ahmed bin Salman’s War Emblem was on the Triple Crown trail, but the national attention that War Emblem received was dwarfed by the fanfare and praise that would be heaped upon Funny Cide and Smarty Jones and their American human connections during their Triple Crown bids the next two years. Perhaps the discrepancy was due to the public disapproval of the manner in which Ahmed had acquired his horse (only weeks before the Derby). Another, more likely, explanation is that Americans were not prepared to fully embrace a Derby-winning Arab owner when the attacks of September 11, 2001, were still fresh in their minds and the possibility of American military action in the Middle East loomed.
Funny Cide, winner of the 2003 Derby, was a relatively inexpensive New York–bred gelding (once purchased for $22,000 from Fasig-Tipton’s New York–bred sale) who was owned in partnership by a group that included six high school buddies from upstate New York. The group raced under the name Sackatoga Stables—derived from a combination of the name of their hometown and their favorite race meet—and the owners followed their gelding on the Triple Crown trail in a rented school bus. In winning the Derby, Funny Cide defeated the regally bred post-time favorite, Empire Maker, owned by a Saudi prince named Khalid Abdullah, becoming the first gelding since Clyde Van Dusen in 1929 to win the race, and the first New York–bred horse ever to wear the Derby roses.
Jack Knowlton of Sackatoga Stables holds the 2003 Kentucky Derby trophy with trainer Barclay Tagg (left) and jockey Jose Santos (right) following Funny Cide’s victory. (Photos by Z.)
The victory of these American “regular guys” over Saudi royalty resonated with an American public that had made hits of jingoistic saber-rattling songs like country music star Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).”21 The lyrics are a vague threat and shake-of-the-fist imprecisely directed toward the Middle East in general (or anywhere any Muslims might be found). They struck a chord with Americans in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. That same sentiment helped to create a following for Funny Cide, many of whose fans embraced him as an equine American who did his own part to strike a blow against a wealthy and influential Arab.
The American public’s propensity to embrace Funny Cide’s story was also increased by the immense popularity of Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, published in 2001, about a hard-luck horse who captures the hearts of Depression-era Americans and wins a climactic match race against a regally bred colt owned by American racing royalty.22 Seabiscuit enjoyed a long run atop national best-seller lists and was still very popular during Funny Cide’s improbable bid for the Triple Crown. A major motion picture based upon the book was released later that summer, garnering box-office success, critical acclaim, and seven Academy Award nominations.
Funny Cide wins the 2003 Kentucky Derby. (Photos by Z.)
Funny Cide’s success in the late spring of 2003 spawned the production of countless pieces of Funny Cide–related memorabilia, including—among other trinkets, gadgets, and knickknacks—a Funny Cide beer. The beer was produced in a Saratoga, New York, brewery not far from a Funny Cide retail store. A Web site devoted to the gelding is still up and running; here fans can sign up for the Funny Cide fan club and purchase assorted products bearing the horse’s name or likeness, including hats, T-shirts, poker chips, wine corks, snow globes, mugs, mouse pads, key chains, and dozens of other items. Though Funny Cide failed to capture the Triple Crown, NBC’s telecast of Funny Cide’s attempt in the Belmont Stakes was the highest-rated program in America that week. Americans rallied that year behind “America’s horse,” winner of America’s race, at a time when patriotism was at a fever pitch. Today Funny Cide resides at the Kentucky Horse Park’s Hall of Champions near Lexington and is visited by thousands of fans every year.
Smarty Jones and jockey Stewart Elliott win the 2004 Derby on a sloppy Churchill Downs track. (Photos by Z.)
Though no Web site celebrates Ahmed bin Salman’s War Emblem, there is one devoted to 2004 Kentucky Derby winner Smarty Jones, who attracted even more attention and fanfare than Funny Cide had the previous year. After his Derby victory, Smarty appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated beneath the headline “Why Everybody Loves Smarty Jones.” The article explained the recipe for the colt’s popularity: “He has a breathtaking story—aging, kindhearted owners; a trainer and a jockey from a small-time track testing their chops against the best, and a timeline sprinkled with tragedy, nearly including his own demise. But he also has the goods.”23
In June 2004 more than 120,000 fans showed up for the 2004 Belmont Stakes hoping to witness Smarty Jones capture the Triple Crown, shattering attendance and betting records at the New York racetrack. It was the largest crowd ever to witness a sporting event in New York. Fans not at the racetrack were also paying attention as Smarty Jones’s Belmont had the highest-rated television audience for the race since 1977 when Seattle Slew won the Triple Crown. Bucking a twenty-year trend of dwindling American viewership of horse racing, NBC’s Belmont broadcast drew a higher rating than that year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game and the final round of the Masters golf tournament. An estimated 8,500 people came to Philadelphia Park to watch a Smarty Jones workout prior to the Belmont, and the colt received a police escort, followed by news helicopters, to Belmont Park for the big race.
Smarty’s fans were disappointed, as the colt chased a fast early pace, tired, and finished second. Some expressed their displeasure vocally as the spoiler named Birdstone and his connections (including owner Marylou Whitney, the fourth wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, whose father, H. P. Whitney, had owned 1915 Derby-winning filly Regret) made their way to the winner’s circle. Despite his loss in the Belmont, the only loss of his career in what would be his final race, Smarty had made a mark on American culture. He was named one of Time magazine’s “People Who Mattered [in] 2004” along with the likes of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, Apple, Inc., cofounder Steve Jobs, and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Fans spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Smarty merchandise, and reporters from across the globe flocked to cover the horse and speak with Smarty’s human connections. Such unprecedented attention for a horse in a sport whose heyday had passed decades before begged the question “Why?” Why that horse? Why that year? Before Smarty Jones, six of the previous seven horses to win the Kentucky Derby had gone on to win the Preakness. Each came to Belmont Park with a chance to win the Triple Crown. But none of those horses received the attention and fanfare that Smarty did.
Unlike the others, Smarty entered the Belmont undefeated. Smarty was trying to become the first undefeated Triple Crown winner since Seattle Slew in 1977. This circumstance must have added something to Smarty’s appeal, but it was by no means the only reason for the horse’s popularity. His owners were an elderly husband-and-wife team, Roy and Patricia Chapman. Roy “Chappie” Chapman was suffering from emphysema. The horse’s jockey had overcome problems with alcohol. The trainer was enjoying his time in the spotlight after years of hard work and relative anonymity. The horse had overcome a near-fatal injury as a youngster. Any of these stories would have been compelling by themselves. Taken together, at a time when American headlines were dominated by stories of war and a contentious presidential election, these stories made Smarty Jones a symbol of what was “right” with America when so many things seemed to be wrong. But the sine qua non of Smarty’s popularity was his victory in the Kentucky Derby. Like Funny Cide the year before, he was an “all-American” champion of America’s horse race. Since Derby-winning horses could not tell their own stories, journalists and fans were left to sculpt an identity for them. In the cases of Smarty Jones and Funny Cide, the American public embraced them and their human connections as examples of Americans who overcame obstacles to achieve greatness in affirmation of the “American Dream.”24
The Derby could provide a story line that could fit almost any national mood or set of tastes, and the malleable identity of Kentucky mixed well with the malleable identity of a horse. Journalists covering the Derby had the option to ascribe an almost limitless assortment of “personality” traits to the Derby horses they covered, depending on the pervading cultural climate. Throughout the twentieth century journalists who covered the event tended to gravitate to stories that reflected and reaffirmed the dominant social and cultural values of their era. Beginning in the 1980s the stories that emerged from the Kentucky Derby tended to be those of redemption, the triumph of the underdog, and the reward of patience and perseverance. These themes reflected the hope and assumption that opportunity existed in the United States for anyone to succeed, regardless of age, gender, or background. Of the countless “human interest” stories available to journalists at the Derby, in the 1980s and 1990s journalists were inclined to focus on those that spoke to the belief that the American Dream was alive and well at the Kentucky Derby.
For the first hundred years, newspaper reports about Derby-winning horses tended to fall into the category of “superhorse” or “dark horse,” but later journalists found many other ways to “spin” their stories. Each racehorse had people who had cared for it as a foal. Some were sold at auction. Each was taught to carry a rider. Each was introduced to the racetrack and starting gate by some human. Each horse had an owner, a trainer, a jockey, an exercise rider, a groom, a breeder, a veterinarian, a blacksmith, and countless other people who had helped the horse along the way to the Derby. In every Derby-winning team there was someone who was an example of outstanding achievement, or someone who had overcome substantial obstacles to reach the pinnacle of his or her career. Sometimes it was the horse itself who had overcome obstacles or was an example of excellence. The stories that journalists discovered, reported, and promoted at Churchill Downs each May became the Derby experience for millions of Americans. In a sport with so many human-interest stories from which to choose, each Derby was almost guaranteed to have a memorable image or an attractive storyline attached to it for posterity.
Beginning in the 1980s, stories of individuals overcoming adversity and embodying an American spirit largely replaced connections to the Old South (with the obvious exceptions of “My Old Kentucky Home” and mint juleps) as the imagery most readily associated with the Derby. Photographs and descriptions of beautiful women were still a part of the journalistic coverage of the Derby, but stories of female success on the racetrack were increasingly part of that coverage as well. In order to retain its status as a part of Americana, the Derby needed to reflect some of the values of an ever-changing American culture and society or risk becoming an irrelevant anachronism. In an era when Americans placed a high value on the notion that their society was one in which anyone could succeed with enough desire, effort, and perseverance, stories of unlikely victors helped to affirm this belief.
Genuine Risk became the second filly to win the Derby in 1980. She is pictured with her first foal. (Photos by Z.)
In 1980 Genuine Risk became the first filly to run in the Kentucky Derby since 1959, and the first to win the race since Regret in 1915. After the race Dick Young of the New York Daily News commented, “Let’s admit it, fellows. It’s a different world. Equal pay for equal work. Women at the head of large corporations. And now this, the ultimate step in the sexual revolution—a filly beating the colts in the Kentucky Derby.”25 In reality, women did not actually receive equal pay for equal work and that year the Republican Party would remove support for the Equal Rights Amendment from their party platform; however, Genuine Risk’s gender was the major focus of journalists’ reports from the Derby in 1980.
In 1984 females were again in the Derby spotlight, and the race was referred to as the “female Derby” by local media. The betting favorites that year were a coupled entry of two fillies, Althea and Life’s Magic. That year Patty Cooksey became the second female jockey to start in the race, and Dianne Carpenter the fourth woman to train a Derby starter. Governor Martha Layne Collins, a former Derby Festival Queen, brought as guests to the Derby vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro and astronaut Sally Ride. Collins presented the trophy to the winning owners from Claiborne Farm, after Seattle Slew’s son Swale stomped a full field of twenty under jockey Laffit Pincay Jr.
In 1988 Winning Colors became the second filly to win the Derby in less than a decade, a much shorter gap than the sixty-five years between Regret and Genuine Risk. Dave Anderson attempted to put the feat in perspective for his New York Times readers. “It’s as if Martina Navratilova won the Wimbledon men’s singles. As if Nancy Lopez won the Masters. As if Jackie Joyner-Kersee won the men’s Olympic decathlon.” After the trophy presentation the winning owner, former San Diego Chargers owner Eugene Klein, exclaimed, “I’d like to salute all the women of America. This one’s for you gals.”26 D. Wayne Lukas, the filly’s trainer, found the win somewhat bittersweet as it brought back memories of the death of a favorite filly, Landaluce, who had died suddenly five months before the 1983 Derby. “She had a head like a princess, a butt like a washerwoman, and a walk like a hooker,” the trainer recalled.27 Lukas’s description served as a reminder that if Winning Colors’s victory represented some kind of a triumph for womankind, it was a superficial one.
Winning Colors, winning the 1988 Kentucky Derby with jockey Gary Stevens. (Photos by Z.)
D. Wayne Lukas, winner of four Kentucky Derbies. (Photos by Z.)
Journalistic portrayals of the Derby reflected what Americans wanted to see in their culture and society. Americans valued the notion that their nation was one in which women were treated as the equals of men. When females competed in the Derby as owners, trainers, and jockeys in the latter part of the twentieth century, they garnered plenty of attention from the media, which also gravitated to stories about people who played by the rules and waited patiently for the fruits of their labor.
In 1986 seventy-three-year-old Charlie Whittingham was one of the most successful and well-respected trainers in racing history, but a horse of his had never won the Kentucky Derby. Fifty-four-year-old jockey Bill Shoemaker had ridden more winners than any rider in history, but hadn’t won a Derby in twenty years; and it had been more than thirty years since he had won his first. Both men had long since been inducted into American racing’s Hall of Fame. After sitting off of a fast early pace aboard Ferdinand (a son of the top international stallion Nijinsky), Shoemaker weaved through the pack of tiring frontrunners in the homestretch, guiding the chestnut colt to Derby victory. With their triumph, Whittingham and Shoemaker became the oldest trainer and jockey of a Derby winner, and were greeted with great fanfare in the winner’s circle and lauded the next day in the newspapers.
After the race Whittingham explained what a Derby victory meant to him. “You tell people what business you’ve been in since 1934 and the first thing they ask you is, ‘Did you ever win the Kentucky Derby?’ When you tell them no, they walk away. Now, I guess they won’t.”28 Shoemaker had been confident all week, telling anyone who would listen that forty-six-year-old Jack Nicklaus’s win in the Masters golf tournament earlier that spring was an omen and that he and Ferdinand would win on Saturday. Though the horse was a 17-1 long shot, the producer of ABC’s Derby telecast chose to focus a camera on Ferdinand during the race because of a “gut feeling and sentiment.”29 The decision paid off and viewers were treated to a replay of one of the more memorable rides in Derby history.
Jockey Bill Shoemaker after winning the 1986 Derby with Ferdinand. (Photos by Z.)
A similar choice in camera positioning allowed ABC to capture another of the Derby’s most memorable moments in 1990, and another example of a popular and emotionally evocative Derby victory for an elderly person, this time a nonagenarian owner. None of the millions who watched the 1990 Derby telecast would soon forget the image of trainer Carl Nafzger describing to nearly blind ninety-two-year-old owner Frances Genter (whose late first husband was involved in the development of the pop-up toaster) the progress of her colt Unbridled as jockey Craig Perret urged him toward the front in the race’s final turn, took the lead in the stretch, and extended it as the finish line approached. “He’s gonna win,” Nafzger shouted as the colt approached the wire. “He’s a winner, Mrs. Genter. We won it! You won the Kentucky Derby! Oh, Mrs. Genter, I love you!”30 Mrs. Genter, who had been involved in racing for fifty years, was finally rewarded by what racing fans and journalists often call the “Derby gods,” deities who preside over the Derby from on high, dispensing racing luck with particular regard to the elderly, those who have overcome adversity, and those who have “paid their dues.”
Charlie Whittingham, the oldest trainer to win a Kentucky Derby, won two: Ferdinand (1986) and Sunday Silence (1989). (Photos by Z.)
This praise for Derby-winning horsemen and horsewomen who had paid their dues and waited their turn soon reappeared. In 1993 Sea Hero won the Derby for eighty-five-year-old owner Paul Mellon, son of billionaire financier and former secretary of the treasury Andrew Mellon, and seventy-one-year-old trainer Mackenzie “Mack” Miller. Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey, who rode Sea Hero to Derby victory, described the significance of the race in his autobiography. “[The Kentucky Derby] epitomizes the American Dream,” Bailey explained, “offering hope that enough sweat can allow anyone to smell the roses. With the joyful mayhem it compresses into two minutes and change, the Derby affirms life itself.”31 Thomas Meeker, president of Churchill Downs, praised the winning connections in the winner’s circle. “The Kentucky Derby is a collage. Sometimes the new people win it, and sometimes the old people win it. There is something for everybody.”32 Though perhaps not overly profound in his observations, Meeker was right. The winners of the Derby were sometimes new and sometimes old. In either case, journalists were ready to frame the event in a favorable light, one that appealed to popular American sensibilities at the time.
Jockey Craig Perret celebrates as he wins the 1990 Derby on Unbridled. (Photos by Z.)
In 1996 the storyline was repeated for seventy-eight-year-old William T. Young when his colt Grindstone (a son of Mrs. Genter’s Unbridled) just caught Cavonnier at the wire in the closest finish in the Derby in almost forty years. While the press praised Young and trainer D. Wayne Lukas (Grindstone’s victory was the trainer’s record sixth-straight win in Triple Crown events), many felt sorry for Cavonnier’s trainer—the excitable and affable Bob Baffert. Baffert, a prematurely white-haired character from Southern California, was then relatively unknown, but he would soon become a media darling. Baffert later recalled in his autobiography, “As much as I hated to lose and hated to get beat by D. Wayne Lukas, at least here was a good man [Young] who had won. He was just the chosen one this year.”33 Baffert graciously congratulated Young, but later admitted that the loss was devastating. His disappointment with Cavonnier and his grace in defeat would serve as preludes to the realization of another prevalent theme in the coverage of modern Derbies—that of redemption—the following year.
In the last quarter century turf writers have often referenced the “Derby gods,” and it was to these Baffert was referring when he called Young the “chosen one.” These references, typically made in hindsight, are efforts to explain the significance of a Derby result and to justify how it was the right and fair result. When Silver Charm survived a photo finish to win the 1997 Derby for Baffert the year after he had narrowly missed with Cavonnier, the Derby gods were smiling upon Baffert, who in this victory was, according to journalists, granted his just reward for his perseverance. A headline in the New York Times read, “Baffert Makes Good on a Second Chance.”34 Adding a bit of spice to Baffert’s tale of redemption was the fact that the trainer won the 1997 Derby for owners Bob and Beverly Lewis. The Lewises were also clients of Wayne Lukas, who often received the owners’ more expensive yearlings, leaving Baffert with what he called “ham sandwiches.”35
Bob Baffert, three-time Derby-winning trainer. (Photos by Z.)
At the trophy presentation, Baffert thanked his friend Mike Pegram for helping him get his start in Thoroughbred training. The following May, Baffert again won the Derby, this time with Real Quiet, a skinny $17,000 yearling purchase owned by none other than Mike Pegram. “The Gods smiled on me today,” Pegram said after Real Quiet’s Derby win.36 The Derby gods seemed to share a sense of justice with the nondenominational American God evoked by presidents in speeches ending with the line “May God bless America.” Americans like to think that the American God rewards those who play by the rules, work hard, and wait their turn for their just desserts. Journalists and fans assumed that, as an important American cultural tradition, the Derby and its gods adhered to a compatible set of ethics.
Silver Charm on his way to the winner’s circle after the 1997 Derby. (Photos by Z.)
The following year the resonant story to emerge from the Derby was again a tale of redemption, this time for a jockey: Chris Antley returned from drug and weight problems to win aboard Charismatic, a 31-1 long shot. “A forgotten horse, a trainer who had been upstaged, and a jockey trying to find his way back to the top combined for one of the biggest payoffs in Kentucky Derby history,” Maryjean Wall summarized in the Lexington Herald-Leader.37 Antley had experienced a meteoric rise to the top of American racing, culminating in his 1991 Derby victory aboard Strike the Gold, but had found himself out of racing only sixth months before his improbable 1999 Derby score. With Charismatic’s victory in the 1999 Derby, trainer Wayne Lukas ended Bob Baffert’s streak of consecutive Derby wins at two. Baffert’s first Derby win in 1997 had itself deprived Lukas of a third consecutive victory, making the 1999 Derby a tiebreaker of sorts between the two. Both had achieved great success and national prominence from well-documented roots as outsiders to the world of Thoroughbreds. Both were former Quarter Horse trainers. Lukas was a former high school basketball coach from Wisconsin, and Baffert was an irreverently playful character from rural Arizona (his autobiography, published that year, was titled Dirt Road to the Derby). The rivalry between two of the most visible characters in the sport of horse racing was covered by the Derby press corps, but it was overshadowed by the story of Antley’s redemption that year.
Charismatic (right) narrowly defeats Menifee in the 1999 Derby. (Photos by Z.)
In fact, this tale of Antley’s return from drug problems to win America’s greatest race had already been told—in 1991, on the heels of his earlier well-publicized drug problems. Antley’s success in overcoming a cocaine addiction had been part of the New York Times’s coverage of the 1991 Derby, in which George Vecsey credited the jockey for testing clean since the previous March. The story could have had a much different emphasis—an irresponsible former drug abuser had managed to hold it together just long enough to win the Kentucky Derby—but the race had achieved such a place in American culture and society that such a story would be unacceptable. The Derby represented a nation and a culture, and the stories that emerged through Derby journalists tended to reflect the ideals and values of that nation and culture.
Antley and Charismatic would go on to capture the Preakness Stakes two weeks after the 1999 Derby, setting up a chance for the Triple Crown with a win in the Belmont Stakes. Alas, Charismatic fractured his leg sixty yards from the finish line and finished third. Antley again made headlines for the great care he took in holding the horse’s leg until vets arrived on the scene. Charismatic would make a full recovery, but Antley died the next year from a drug overdose. His passing would have received little or no attention had he not been twice celebrated by the media as a redeemed champion of the Kentucky Derby. Since Antley was a two-time Derby champion, his death was widely reported in news outlets across the country. Redemption at the Derby made a good story, but so did the fall from grace of a Derby winner.
Perhaps the greatest story of redemption in recent Derby lore was that of Arthur B. Hancock III. Americans first became aware of the central Kentucky horseman’s story in 1982, when his colt Gato del Sol won the Derby. Hancock, a fourth-generation horseman, was the oldest son of Arthur “Bull” Hancock II, whose father had founded world-renowned Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky. Arthur III had been a black sheep in the family, a self-described “freewheeling, hard-drinking, guitar-picking, bar-brawling, skirt-chasing fool.”38
According to racing journalist William Nack, “Hancock bridled at authority and this compromised his chances for ever wielding it at Claiborne.”39 When his father died in 1972, the trustees of his estate recommended that Arthur’s younger brother Seth be put in charge of the farm. Arthur left Claiborne and established a breeding operation at Stone Farm just down the road. In the 1989 Derby, Sunday Silence, a colt owned in partnership by Hancock, defeated two-year-old champion and odds-on favorite Easy Goer, who was owned by one of the trustees of Bull Hancock’s estate and had been born and raised at Claiborne Farm. The fact that Charlie Whittingham was a co-owner and trainer of the colt only added to the storyline. Sports journalists and racing enthusiasts fully embraced the story, which seemed tailor-made for a Hollywood drama as it played out on the bright stage of the Kentucky Derby and became another important entry into the race’s anthology of lore. Sunday Silence and Easy Goer would meet three more times that year, in the Preakness, Belmont, and Breeders’ Cup Classic. Of the four meetings, Easy Goer managed only one win, but it cost Sunday Silence a Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes. Their rivalry, though brief, was horse racing’s most compelling since Affirmed-Alydar, and it began at the Kentucky Derby.
Arthur Boyd Hancock III. (Photos by Z.)
In the absence of a tale of redemption in the Derby, journalists covering the race in recent years have often relied on the “unlikely victor” or “underdog” angle. There can only be one betting favorite in any race, and in a race that often consists of twenty starters there are many horses who can qualify as surprise winners. A horse can qualify on the merits of an unusual place of origin or breeding, a small price tag at auction, or long odds as determined by Derby bettors. More often than not, a Derby winner can meet at least one of these criteria. In a sport that is thought to be dominated by extremely wealthy men, the underdog Derby winner can be attractive to followers of America’s race as proof that there is room for “the little guy” on such a bright and significant stage.
In 2007 jockey Calvin Borel became the latest unlikely victor to be celebrated at the Derby after his come-from-behind victory aboard Street Sense. Borel left school in the eighth grade to ride the minor Louisiana bush track circuit. Journalists lauded him as a hard-working, polite, unassuming man, and he quickly became the favorite story of that year’s Derby. When asked how it felt to perform in front of “the queen,” Borel was confused until told by his fiancé that Queen Elizabeth of England had made a much-publicized visit to the Derby that year.40 The following night Borel joined the queen at a state dinner at the White House, where he sat next to “a football player, I forget his name.”41 The football player was reigning Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning.
Borel’s story seemed to be taken straight from the pages of a Horatio Alger novel. In reality Borel’s life had already included many rags-to-riches elements before his Kentucky Derby victory. But his victory at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May made Borel’s name familiar to millions of people, and the Kentucky Derby was again shown to be a place where American dreams can come true. “Riding in the Derby is a dream every jock has, much less winning it,” Borel explained after the race. “It’s the greatest moment of your life, to win the Kentucky Derby.”42 Borel’s performance on one of American sport’s grandest stages was an affirmation of what Americans like to believe is possible for good people and hard workers in the United States.
Charlie Whittingham and Sunday Silence. (Photos by Z.)
Sunday Silence (saddle cloth #8) and Easy Goer, one of the great rivalries in Thoroughbred racing history. (Photos by Z.)
Jockey Calvin Borel, the only rider to win three Kentucky Derbies in four years, celebrating his first Derby triumph aboard Street Sense in 2007. (Photos by Z.)
Calvin Borel, hoisting the 2009 Derby trophy, with connections of surprise winner Mine That Bird. (Photos by Z.)
Two years later Borel again found his name in the headlines when he won his second Derby, this time aboard 50-1 long shot Mine That Bird.43 No horse had won with higher odds since Donerail in 1913, and no horse had won by a greater margin since Assault’s eight-length victory in 1946. Purchased as a yearling for $9,500, the horse had been driven from New Mexico to Louisville by his trainer, Bennie L. “Chip” Woolley Jr., the week before the race. The trainer, a former bareback rodeo rider, was forced to drive the fifteen hundred miles with his left foot because of a broken leg sustained in a motorcycle accident. On the way to the Derby he stopped at Lone Star Park outside of Dallas so that his horse could exercise. Borel and his mount were featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated the following week, and the Cajun jockey brought lumps to the throats of millions of television viewers as he lamented that his deceased parents could not witness his victory. “This just shows what can be done with two buddies who have fun together who like to go to the races and dream a little bit,” explained Mine That Bird’s co-owner Leonard Blach.44
News media and the American public had gravitated to stories about the realization of the dream of Derby success for decades. Whatever the mood of the nation, the Derby could provide a storyline that would affirm the collective values and ideals of the American people. In the case of Mine That Bird, journalists focused on the fact that the horse had been sold as a yearling for a relatively modest purchase price, or on the romantic cross-country journey of horse and trainer to reach the Derby. Buried beneath the headlines and deep within stories that celebrated the unlikely success of an underdog horse was the fact that Mine That Bird had been a champion two-year-old in Canada. He had been purchased by his owners for $400,000—a far less modest sum than his cost as a yearling—after he won four races in a row as a two-year-old.45 Mark Allen, one of the horse’s two co-owners, had been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his father’s guilty plea in an Alaska bribery and corruption scandal involving the state legislature and former U.S. senator Ted Stevens.46 Allen first became friends with the trainer Woolley when the latter assisted the former in a fight he had gotten himself into at a New Mexico bar called Annie Get Your Guns. But these less romantic elements of the Mine That Bird story were not widely reported by journalists.
Because the Derby is such an important piece of American culture, people want their Derby champions to “deserve” the title and to reflect the salient “American values” of their time. These values are not static; they evolve, disappear, and resurface at the whim of the pervading cultural, political, and social climate. However, one of the most enduring elements of American national identity has been the idea that America is a place in which people can make whatever they want of themselves if they work hard and play by the rules—a theme that has been reflected in journalistic coverage of America’s most famous horse race over the past thirty years.
The morning after their Derby win with Mine That Bird, trainer Chip Woolley and owners Mark Allen and Leonard Blach returned to Churchill Downs and held court in front of a newly unveiled statue honoring widely beloved 2006 Derby champion Barbaro, whose untimely death, caused by complications resulting from a racetrack injury, captured the hearts of people around the world.47 The trio distributed roses from the blanket worn by Mine That Bird in the winner’s circle to fans visiting the statue in the shadows of the Kentucky Derby Museum. Woolley, Allen, and Blach had become part of Derby lore with Mine That Bird’s victory the day before, but their decision to ceremonially share a symbol of their Derby experience at that memorial site revealed an understanding of the centrality of history to the identity, meaning, and significance of the Kentucky Derby.
Technically speaking, the race that Mine That Bird won was no longer called simply “the Kentucky Derby.” Three years earlier Churchill Downs, Inc., had made international headlines when it announced a five-year sponsorship agreement with Yum! Brands, the parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken, that included a provision to change the name of the most famous horse race in America to “The Kentucky Derby, presented by Yum! Brands.” The agreement marked the first time in the event’s long history that the race would be called something other than simply the Kentucky Derby. A Chicago Sun-Times columnist opined that the agreement “may well be the most repellent sponsorship deal . . . in marketing history.”48 Traditionalists and purists concerned that the sponsorship would detract from the race echoed this opinion. Downs officials did not share those concerns; they rang the opening bell of the NASDAQ stock market live from the racetrack during Derby Week, underscoring the corporate nature of their operation.
The ill-fated Barbaro, winning the 2006 Derby by six and a half lengths. (Photos by Z.)
Two months after the Derby’s name change was made public, Woodford Reserve Distillery announced that it would be selling fifty premium mint juleps for $1,000 each at the 2006 Derby, with the proceeds to benefit charity. Latter-day colonels of conspicuous consumption who shelled out such big money were presented with hand-prepared concoctions consisting of ice from the Arctic Circle, mint from Morocco, sugar from the South Pacific, and bourbon from Kentucky, served in a gold-plated cup. In addition to the fifty “Ultimate Mint Juleps,” well over one hundred thousand more modestly priced mint juleps would be sold at the track during Derby weekend that year, suggesting that many at the Derby were disobeying “polite” society’s rules for moderation in ways that called to mind the old tales of reckless and lawless Kentucky in bygone days. These symbols of decadence and exuberance were part of the Derby culture that had drawn Christian evangelical protesters to the sidewalks surrounding Churchill Downs in droves each Derby Day for decades.
Their presence demonstrated that the Derby was still an important cultural battleground in the twenty-first century. But the 157,536 fans who witnessed Barbaro’s dominant six-and-a-half-length win that day were not thinking about colonels or hillbillies, sin or salvation. They were too busy marveling at the magnificence of the winning horse, whose margin of victory was the largest in sixty years and whose final quarter mile was the fastest since the great Secretariat. They were taking in all the sights, sounds, and smells of Derby Day at Churchill Downs beneath the twin spires on a warm spring afternoon in Kentucky. They were experiencing one of the great sporting environments in the entire world.
Today overt references to the Old South around Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby are few. However, the “sense of a world apart” is still perceptible to anyone who visits the Downs on Derby Day: the gleaming white façade of the clubhouse, the roses, the mint juleps, fashionable ladies in hats, and “My Old Kentucky Home” are each in their own way a small nod both to Derbies of yesteryear and, less directly, to nostalgic memories of Old Kentucky. The myths and stereotypes associated with Kentucky and Kentuckians that helped to make the Derby an attractive destination in the first part of the twentieth century are no longer as prominent in American culture as they once were. But they persevere: Elements of the old mythology and identity of the state now live on in the identity and experience of the Kentucky Derby. The rich and famous in the clubhouse, luxury boxes, and dining rooms perform their best impersonations of colonels and belles. Meanwhile, in the infield, the rowdy hedonists flout societal rules by drinking, smoking, gambling, and shedding clothes, helping to preserve the contradictory dualistic elements of Kentucky’s identity that trace back to the first published reports of Daniel Boone.
According to the master newscaster Walter Cronkite, the cultural cachet of Kentucky remained a part of the attraction of the event at the end of the twentieth century. In the introduction to a coffee-table book about the Derby, Cronkite asked, “What is it about the ‘Run for the Roses’ that so captures our imagination?” He answered his own question, explaining, “Those viewing the Derby on television somehow feel—if only for a moment—a part of the nostalgia of Old Kentucky. And those who attend the event in person sense they are witnessing history.”49
Each person experiences the Derby in a different way. But the history, mythology, and imagery that have become associated with Kentucky over the course of more than two centuries still comprise an important part of what makes the Derby unique and attractive as a spectacle and as an event. It is Old Kentucky for which Derby fans feel an affinity. But what that is and what it means have varied drastically over the years. That evolutionary process is bound to continue as the meaning of Kentucky and the Derby continues to be reinvented by Derby fans and the journalists who cover the race. Despite an uncertain future for the sport of horse racing, Kentucky remains the capital of the American Thoroughbred industry, and its Derby is unquestionably America’s greatest horse race. The bold predictions of the Derby’s potential for longevity made in 1875 proved to be remarkably prescient. Today, Derby fans have every reason to be just as optimistic about its prospects in the twenty-first century.
