LOUISVILLE – There is a silly little song my wife likes to sing to our 2-year-old son that goes something like this:
“We’re going to Kentucky, we’re going to the fair, to see the wild women dance, with flowers in their hair.”
I had heard the song before I ever covered a Kentucky Derby, but only having been here and seen it do I realize how accurate it is.
The Kentucky Derby is a fair, all right, and the women are wild and probably would be dancing with flowers in their hair if every female head weren’t covered by a hat.
They’ve been doing it since Ulysses S. Grant was president and they’re going to do it again today for 125th time. They got it right a long time ago, but that doesn’t stop them from doing it again every year.
“It’s great that they haven’t messed with the tradition of this race,” said Dick Mandella, who trains 15-1 shot Desert Hero. “This is one place in the world where tradition still works.”
He could be talking about the pageantry or the partying or the abomination of the mint julep, in which a perfectly good glass of Kentucky bourbon is fouled by the intrusion of sugar and mint leaves.
He could be referring to the pre-race sing-along to “My Old Kentucky Home,” which inevitably reduces even flint-hearted Yankees to uncontrollable weeping.
But he could also be referring to the most enduring Derby tradition of all: how tough it is to win.
So far, Mandella’s own personal Derby tradition is that he always loses in the ninth race at Churchill on the first Saturday in May. Desert Hero will be his fourth Derby horse, none of which has ever finished higher than fifth.
And yet, he will keep coming back, and so someday will Billy Mott, a Hall of Famer who is 0-for-3 on Derby day, and Ron McAnally, who is 0-for-10. Another Hall of Famer, Syl Veitch, could never win here, either, in 10 attempts. The late, great Woody Stephens was 2-for-14 and the late great Charlie Whittingham only ran seven Derby horses in 38 years, winning twice.
“Since my daddy put me on a pony at age seven, I’ve always wanted to win the Kentucky Derby,” said trainer Dallas Keen, who is here with Valhol, the electrifying – and possibly electrified – winner of the Arkansas Derby.
And perhaps the only thing tougher than winning the Kentucky Derby is picking the winner.
The favorite hasn’t won in 20 years, in part because Derby Day is a lot like New Year’s Eve – amateur night – and if there is one thing the general public is extremely adept at on Derby Day, it is creating false favorites.
But another reason is that the ability and consistency of three-year-olds is notoriously difficult to judge, especially as in the case of a race like Derby 125, in which seven of the horses, including the favorite, have had five races or less. A couple of them never raced as two-year-olds and incredibly, two have never raced as three-year-olds.
And there are two fillies, Excellent Meeting and Three Ring, both of which on paper look as fast as the boys, although being in close quarters with 17 juiced-up males sounds like a bad situation for a female of any species.
It is tough to figure how good any of these horses really are. It has been said this week that you could make a case for nearly every horse in the race – and just as easily make a case against every one of them.
And with a 19-horse field charging out of two starting gates, the chances are very good that even if this field does include a standout, he – or she – might not be able to fight through the mess that this race is almost certain to turn into.
My own personal handicapping style falls somewhere in between the sophisticated mathematics of an Andy Beyer or a Len Ragozin, and simply closing my eyes and stabbing at the Racing Form with a hatpin.
I picked Stephen Got Even for three reasons, none of which is particularly good.
For one thing, I like the trainer, Nick Zito, a New York guy who somehow has gained his place in Bluegrass Country among the sport’s top horsemen.
And I could not resist the romantic story of the love affair between the owners, Stephen and Tomisue Hilbert. He’s 52. She’s 27.
It seems Tomisue Hilbert met her husband when she jumped out of a cake at the 21st birthday party of Hilbert’s stepson, Rod. Tomisue was working as an “exotic dancer” at the time. Old man Hilbert sent her off to finishing school. When she was finished, he made her Mrs. Hilbert No. 6. Stephen got even, all right.
And, thirdly, my son’s name is Steven. Well, at least they sound the same.
Derby Week is full of great stories about trainers, owners and horses who will be forgotten long before the rose petals around the winner’s neck turn black.
One of them concerns an animal named K One King, who is owned by Madeleine Paulson, the comely, 42-year-old British trophy wife of owner and breeder Allan Paulson, who is 77.
Mrs. Paulson likes to say she “dabbles” in horse racing. Last month, she dabbled by spending $1.6 million of Mr. Paulson’s dough for K One King, who will run as part of the Derby’s five-horse mutuel field.
To train the beast, Madeleine Paulson engaged 68-year-old Akiko Gothard, a Japanese immigrant woman who lived in Japan as a child during World War II, and became a horse trainer at age 62 after working as an interpreter for some horse farms in Lexington.
It is a little like Kota Ishijima, Hideki Irabu’s former interpreter, deciding he would like to manage the Yankees – and getting the job.
Last year, Mrs. Paulson tried a similar gambit with an animal named Rock and Roll.
It turned out Rock and Roll was also just dabbling in racing, since he finished 14th in a 15-horse field.
Said Wayne Lukas at the time: “The only reason why they’re here is because Madeleine Paulson wants a new hat.”
You can bet she will have one today, too.
But possibly the most intriguing story of all is that of the Dubai invader Worldly Manner and its mega-gazillionaire owner, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum.
He, too, dabbles in horse racing in between serving as the defense minister of Dubai while waiting to someday become its king. The Sheikh is here not to make money, but to make sport.
In the name of sport, he paid $5 million to buy Worldly Manner out from under Bob Baffert last year, and has not raced him as a three-year-old. Instead, the horse has engaged in secretive “trial races” in Dubai, methods that some observers have likened to the kind of experimentation done on laboratory rats.
“The Arab loves the horse, loves the falcon,” the Sheikh said outside the barn Thursday morning. “When an Arab has just a little bit of feed, he gives it to the horse first, then to the children. The horse is his life. When it starts to rain, he brings the horse inside the tent.”
Said Baffert: “For a defense minister, he’s a real down-to-earth guy.”
And right at home at the Kentucky Derby, at the intersection of tradition and insanity.