The Derby and Eight Belles

Hello. I don’t know what the tradition way is to start these blogs, but if it’s anything like starting a story, I like to jump right in.

The purpose of this is to talk specifically about a novel I’m writing, but I’m going to back my way into that. One of the chapters in it has the main character going to a fictional horse race in Kentucky, and I’ve just gotten back from two real horse races in Kentucky, the Oaks and the Derby, so I’ll start with that and work my way backwards into talking about the book.

Last week, I left on Monday night, flying from Los Angeles to Louisville. I checked into a very Victorian bed and breakfast near the university called the Inn At The Park. My family and I were the only people staying there until the weekend where the rates went up nearly 10 fold, as they do throughout Louisville in anticipation of the Derby.

Tuesday through Thursday, my cousin Paul took us on tours of the state, from the Derby Museum where we boned up on trivia to the Kentucky Horse Park where we met several champion horses and boned up on more trivia, to Berea, a little college town off in the mountains where we looked at folk crafts. Mostly though we drove through Kentucky, past all the great, vast, green, hilly lawns of one horse “farm” after another, separated by ribbons of white and black fences. We also went to a stud farm to see Smarty Jones, the Derby winner of 2004, the Preakness the same year, and second in the Belmont Stakes, so almost a Triple Crown Winner.

Friday was the Oaks, and it looked like rain. My mother managed to talk her way into getting a forbidden umbrella into the race track after cajoling the security guard into looking the other way. As a preview of the Derby itself, the crowd was pretty well-dressed in their seersuckers and big silly hats in the boxes, though more mixed at the betting windows. I was keen on trying on some exotic bets I had learned to make – partial wheels on exacta boxes and the like, but I had most success with the conservative bets of $2 Shows on the favorites. They also have a Daily Double where you can pick the winners of two separate races on that day, and in a special rule for that weekend, you can bet on a race on the Oaks for Friday and the Derby on Saturday as part of the same Daily Double. I went ahead and put $2 on the favorites, Proud Spell for the Oaks raced by Gabriel Saez and Big Brown for the Derby raced by Kent Desormeaux. I figured the odds against chosing the winners of two races were against me enough that I might as well pick the favorites in the big races.

I would have bet on Eight Belles, who was still on the program as the heavily favored choice at the Oaks. There was a lot of speculation on that Friday over whether she would race at the Derby or the Oaks, and she was on the program for both. She ended up scratching in favor of racing at the Derby, so I went with Proud Spell.

Before the actual Oaks race, the storm finally broke and after a half an hour of hoping it would let up, we left. Luckily we had our one umbrella and when we worked our way under cover to the gates, we found the abandoned umbrellas of people who had their confiscated ... Well, let’s just say we got back to the car several blocks away and were relatively dry.

We saw Proud Spell win the race back at the hotel.

The next morning, we got up early to go to the governor’s breakfast in Frankfort. It was spitting rain still as we had our country ham and grits, shook Steve Beshear’s hand, and toured his house. It was still spitting rain when we got to Churchill Downs in time for the second race, but soon it cleared, and the sky was filled with white puffy clouds and then clear blue.

My brother, who has a friend who knows a lot about horse racing, placed a number of exotic bets, but I stuck with the conservative $2 Shows, not aiming to make much money but just to have a horse to root for – though, of course, winning a bit is always good. I placed one silly bet: a $1 “Hi-5” where you pick all the horses in a race in order. The odds of winning are as infinitestimal as winning the lottery, but the prize was a $100K Mercedes and I thought why not. I don’t remember what all my picks were but since I already had Big Brown for my Daily Double, I bet on Pyro as the winner for that one. I didn’t bet on Eight Belles at all. There were so many other favorites to fill out a Top 5, and I picked Adriano, Colonel John, and Gayego to go alongside Pyro and Big Brown on my ticket. Obviously, I wasn’t even close at the end. One dollar down the drain, a ninth of the cost of a mint julep.

It was a great race. The crowd roared when Eight Belles surged ahead, leading for most of the race, and roared again when Big Brown – who though he was one of the favorites was expected to have trouble being in the 20th position on the edge of the race – tore ahead. There was a blip on the giant video screen at the end, and it wasn’t clear whether Horse 20, Big Brown, or Horse 5, Eight Belles, was the winner. We cheered when it was clear Big Brown had won, and I had my Daily Double.

There were two more races to go, but we had to leave after the Derby to go to my Great Uncle Harold’s retirement center for dinner, so we went in to cash our tickets. My cousin Paul stayed behind to see the governor give the award to Big Brown. He thought it was strange that the ceremony took so long to get started, and in retrospect, he thought he saw some “activity” out on the track, but it was far away and unclear what it was.

In line getting cash for my winnings, I talked to some other fans, who were enthusiastic because they had placed bets for Shows and Places on Eight Belles, and her odds were so unfavored, they were going to collect big. No one knew that they were collecting money on a horse who was already dead.

When we arrived at my Uncle Harold, a friend of his who was joining us at the dinner told us about Eight Belles breaking both of her ankles and being euthanized on the track. We went in, sure that the story couldn’t be true, and we went to the television room where an old man was sitting watching the next race. We asked him if he had heard something about Eight Belles being injured.

“She broke her legs, they shot her,” he said with a strange smile.

It was apparently good TV. I’m glad I missed it.