The Kentucky Derby is one of America's greatest sporting events.(credit:
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During a cold September sunrise 6,000 feet above sea level, dozens of onlookers gathered about the rail as the only horse scheduled to work that morning made his way onto the manicured New Mexico dirt harrowed solely for his feet.
His unremarkable looks matched his unremarkable workout and yet every eyeball within a half mile watched each stride of his five-furlong breeze until he calmly exited the track. He was hand walked, then bathed under the tin roof of a modest lean-to, his lead rope held only by a six-year old boy.
In a scene more befitting a pet than a racehorse, his celebrity was given away only by the small crowd around the barn, a prequel to the audience of 20,000 he would be parading for that afternoon. Celebrated as a champion and a hero to the State of New Mexico's beleaguered racing industry, while deserved, it is amazing when you consider this lone fact: in a calendar year this horse only won one race.
That is what the Kentucky Derby did for Mine That Bird. He has only won one race since turning three-years-old and he may never win another race in his life, but it doesn't matter because that one dramatic closing move through the slop on the first Saturday in May of has made him immortal. In ten furlongs he gave new life to the careers of his trainer and jockey, he completely changed the landscape of the Derby trail by giving the Sunland Park Derby graded status for the first time, and he gave all fans another great chapter in Derby lore.
And this was just last year. We do this every year. There are 134 other Kentucky Derby stories that are equally if not more compelling than Mine That Bird's. For the rest of the world, the first Saturday in May is only day where the Sport of Kings is still the King of Sports. It doesn't do it justice to merely say the Kentucky Derby is the "Most Important Race in the World." More to the point is that there is no "Second Most Important Race in the World."
The Derby is in the back of our minds every time we see a well-bred two year old making their debut. It's our motive for calibrating first and second level allowance wins for newly turned three-year-olds. The Derby is why we tally every penny of graded stakes money up for grabs in the world. It is why we watch racing every day of the year; because we never know where the next Derby winner will come from...we just know that we want to be the first to spot him.
By late February the sophomores of the thoroughbred world have begun to separate themselves into contenders and cast-offs. The allure of Kentucky hangs over each racing circuit as their stakes schedules revolve around showcasing their top three-year-old talent on the road to the Derby. In the next six weeks we will see the final round of prep races and our view and opinions of these three-year-olds is apt to change dramatically.
But true to form, the horseplayer in all of us spews opinion in the form of indisputable fact as we argue about the strength of prospects despite our very incomplete set of information. The conversation begins the moment the horses cross the wire in The Breeders' Cup Juvenile, and by the first of the year it is the only conversation we have every single day. We don't wait for the Derby field to take shape; we give it shape every day as we handicap a race whose field we won't know for another two months. We wager on prospects months in advance, re-wager after a major prep race all so we can we can mark where and when we first saw our Kentucky Derby Champion, even, as was the case last year, if we don't find him until he's inside the quarter pole.
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