All the Pretty Horses: The 135th Kentucky Oaks
Rachel Alexandra was so far ahead in the Kentucky Oaks finale that by the time I squared my camera and snapped a picture, she was gone and all that was left were the losers she dusted. (Pictured: The dusted losers)
It should have been clear that something special was going to happen during the 135th Kentucky Derby weekend the minute Scott Padgett, a Kentucky University alum and member of the NBA from 1999-2007, stepped in front of me and shot me a goofy smile (of course it was awkward. Have you seen Padgett? No other smile had a chance of flyin’ off that mug). I should have known it, but I didn’t.
Derby weekend must be seen to be believed. Churchill Downs in the first week of May is like a Jay Gatsby party in which every woman in attendance is under the impression she’s Daisy Buchanan. There are no orchestras playing jazz (unless you count Taylor Swift, in which case it’s just as Fitzgerald imagined it) and the high-society types are more imagined than imaginary.
What you need to remember is that Derby weekend is only about the 23 horse races to everyone outside of Kentucky. Once inside Louisville, it’s about hats and mint juleps. Seeing horses race plays like the Art Garfunkel to the Churchill Downs’ boozing and schmoozing Paul Simon. As someone whose fingers were inked with the racing forms 20 minutes after arrival, I was unaware how fleeting the elite’s interest in horse racing was. Over the nine hours I watched fillies run in Friday’s Kentucky Oaks races, this passivity was something that revealed itself to me as harshly as an desperate flasher. It took longer to understand why women spend a day moving wide hat brims out of their eyes than it did to fully appreciate the nuances of betting on horses.
Here are the basics of race day: (my apologies to races aficionados. Go to the bathroom, make a sandwich and when you come back, I‘ll be done with this part…providing you skip ahead to the next paragraph) There are 12 female races during the Oaks and 11 races during the Derby. There are anywhere between eight to 13 horses in each race accept for each day’s main event, in which there are a maximum of 20. Unlike the U.K., America sets its lines based upon the betting patterns of the masses. So if June Day is a 3-1 favorite on Wednesday, but no one bets on her by race time Friday, the odds that she’ll win don’t remain 3-1, they decrease significantly. American odds, the line on Wednesday is just a starting point, but the amount of bets that each horse gets right up until the start of each race, greatly determine the odds. Cool, huh? Before each race, you can bet early or you can bet late. Technically you can bet whenever you want, but unless you want to be reading about horse betting for another six hours, let’s go with the simplest explanation. If you bet on Senor Fuego 40 minutes before she’s set to race, you’ll be basing your wager on professional line-setters and the analysis inside and your gut (if there’s two things I learned not to trust on Derby weekend, it’s my gut and men dressed in pink). The early odds are based on the horse’s, trainer’s and jockey’s history and has nothing to do with the people’s wagers. Then again, if you bet on Senor Fuego at 8-1 odds 40 minutes before the race, by the time the bets windows close, the masses could have made her a 5-2 favorite or a 30-1 underdog and you’ll be trapped in your bet. Then again, if you wait until after the odds have been muddied with the gut-feeling wagers of the over-tanned wannabe West Egg socialites. The choice is up to you.
Back from the bathroom, I see. You didn’t happen to bring me a mint julep, did you? Something about equines makes me hanker for drinks that taste like mouthwash and whiskey.
When you’re in the wager lines waiting to throw your money away forever, you’ll see all sorts of race fans. Churchill Downs is an old boys club to be sure. Men with money bring their wives who are living off of it to an event that they dare not miss but aren’t all that interested in. Twentysomethings and the elderly alike arrive in costume. The ridiculousness lies not in the antiquated get-ups, but in the un-ironic sincerity with which people wore these goony costumes. Tradition is fine and I’m all for it, but why this one? At the races, showing up in low-cut prom dresses with large hats or suits that make its wearers look like plantation owners is not only acceptable, it’s expected. But taken out of context, if any of the people at the races lost their way and wound up in another state in their getup, they would immediately be checked into the nearest looney bin. Perhaps it’s best not to get into that and just appreciate a skinny woman in a bright canary dress spilling her mimosa on her shoes because she’s too preoccupied fiddling with the feathers on her gigantic top hat that she’s clearly not comfortable wearing. The Kentucky Derby: where classy race enthusiasts happen. Sorry, I’m so bitter. Mint juleps do that to me. Seriously, those things are awful.
On Friday, I bet the winning horse 3-of-7 times, came out of the day down $80 (I did win a hot dog from my girlfriend, which emotionally counted as about $25) and got to see the Oaks favorite Rachel Alexandra beat the field by 20 1/4-lengths, an Oaks record. Rachel Alexandra was so fast, most people believe she could have won the Derby had she been entered into it. (Editor’s note: Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode Rachel Alexandra to victory on Friday, also rode the 50-1 Mine That Bird to a shocking Derby victory one day later. Two days after that the cheapskates that owned Rachel Alexandra sold her to a wealthier stable who plan to enter her in the Preakness Stakes later this month. Borel chose the female horse to ride in the Preakness instead of the Derby Winner. Rachel Alexandra is only the third filly to run in the Preakness and Borel is only the third jockey to switch off the Derby winner before the Preakness).
The win was breathtaking and brilliant, even for a novice like myself. Imagine your first basketball experience being witness to a LeBron James triple-double? What if all you knew of baseball was a Randy Johnson no-hitter? I don’t doubt that Rachel Alexandra’s ass-whuppin’ was on the same level. Either way, it bore a new race fan in me.
Afterwards, I heard Adrian Brody was at the race, along with various brats from MTV shows. When did I hear this? Less than 60 seconds after Rachel Alexandra’s run. The info was purloined from a text message on a young woman’s iPhone. As the information spread around the section of the grandstands, the conversation ceased being about that magnificent filly and had totally shifted to Kim Kardashian’s Barnstable party and where in the grandstands Michael Jordan might have been. Imagine seeing that LeBron James triple-double and then commenting on how good the stadium’s cotton candy is. Or discussing traffic whle Randy Johnsons’ teammates are still dog-piling on top of him in celebration. Nothing else mattered because in Louisville, it’s about the spectators, not what they’re are spectating.
And the only thing more shameful than the fans’ attention to the event was how hard I tried to evesdrop the last conversation long enough to find out where Jordan was hiding.
You hafta admit, it would have been awesome to rub elbows with Mike.
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