Horse Racing Is in the Home Stretch

Note: I’m taking a break from my usual subjects to write this piece about horse racing and the Kentucky Derby.

I sat on the floor in front of the TV, just days after surgery. I was going to be fine, but I was sore, scared and shell-shocked. My grandparents came over. I was spread out with the morning paper in front of me, looking at, what I think was for the first time, actual color in a newspaper: the silks of the jockeys to be worn during the Kentucky Derby.

I can’t remember those colors now, but I remember being pretty damn excited when the horse I picked, Genuine Risk, won. At the time she was only the second filly to win the Derby; by now the total is just three.

I was hooked.

It didn’t take moving away from Louisville for me to appreciate the Kentucky Derby. I had gone three times towards the end of high school. At my first Derby in 1990, my friends and I somehow snuck up from the second floor grandstand into the third floor clubhouse and found an empty box of seats near the finish line about 20 minutes before the race. We watched Unbridled cross the finish line first in style. I’ve never gotten seats for the Derby like that since.

But it wasn’t until I started spending the first Saturday of May in other places that I longed for the Derby, and allowed it to stand in for all…