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The Kentucky Derby: A User's Guide

by Christopher McIntosh
05/03/2006

I'm excited.

The first Saturday in May is four days away and that means only one thing.

The Derby.

Sometime around six o'clock on Saturday, the gate will spring open and they'll be off in the 132nd running of the Kentucky Derby. It is the oldest continuous running sporting event in the United States. It's old enough that the first running of the Derby was a scant twenty-five years after the civil war - the same civil war that those... ummm... enthusiasts continue to re-enact to this day.

I've never understood the re-enactment phenomenon. Maybe it's because my part of the country was on the losing side, but this seems like continually reliving the worst breakup of your friend's life over and over, each time trying to get the excruciating details more and more exact. It seems masochistic and disrespectful at best and certifiably insane at worst.

Or as my buddy Bill says, "the type of crazy that don't wash off."

Derby day, though, I understand. The hats, the pageantry, the betting.

Especially the betting.

I have yet to actually attend the Kentucky Derby itself, but have heard that it is like Mardi Gras North without the flashing and the Hurricanes. Hundreds of thousands of people attend and it is one of the few sporting events where ancient Southern aristocrats with crinkly old white people money rub shoulders with construction workers, the unemployed, and, let's be frank, degenerate gamblers.

According to those who have gone, those in the infield do their best impersonation of the Georgia-Florida game, taking a run at the game's status as the "world's largest outdoor cocktail party." Space in the infield is finite, and like NASCAR races, as soon as the gates open, people take off in pursuit of a good spot to declare their homeland.

Kind of like Israel. Without that whole Palestinian thing.

The Derby is not quite the last race of the day at Churchill, but for all but the horseplayers, it is what the long day slowly builds up to. The tension builds and builds until the gates finally open, beginning the most exciting two minutes in sports.

It's kind of like the female orgasm. Not much is known about what actually transpires when it occurs, it's notoriously difficult to predict in advance, and men spend their entire lives in pursuit of it.

Although I'm no Dr. Ruth, I'm going to offer my official guide for enjoying the Kentucky Derby. I have some expertise regarding the sport of kings, and my experience has taught me one thing. Outside of the Derby, the other two triple-crown races (the Preakness and Belmont Stakes), and maybe the Breeder's Cup, the general sporting public has little or no knowledge of the sport. Horse racing occurs every day of the year at tracks across the country, but the public only tunes in once or twice a year.

There's a good reason. The sport is virtually impenetrable without a significant time investment and having someone you can rely on to tutor you. There's a reason it's mostly old men who show up at the track.

So without further ado, here's how to make the most of Derby Day without either enlisting a grown man with a nickname (e.g., Miami John, Hammerin' Hank, Boston Rob) or earning a Ph.D in statistics.

1. Throw a party. It's on a Saturday, it's at a time when most people would otherwise be on their couch and it easily transitions into a full evening of fun (more on this later). Virtually no one will have an excuse to skip out. If they do, you should keep a close watch on them. Refusing a party on Saturday afternoon without a legitimate excuse is listed as one of the Homeland Security criteria for identifying potential Al Qaeda operators, along with the inability to comprehend a squeeze play, not knowing the difference between Target and Wal-mart, and asking that a steak worth more than fifteen dollars be prepared well done. Provided the invitees show up and are not committed to violent attacks on the United States, you can prepare yourself and your guests for a long evening of partying. Which brings me to point number two.

2. Make mint juleps. This is non-negotiable. Think of them as a Southern mojito. Bourbon, simple syrup, and mint. That's it. You don't need the fancy julep cups and you can even make them by the pitcher if you are so inclined - just add the mint to the glass upon consumption. Two things you must know. One, no matter how fine the sugar is you *cannot* make a good Julep without the syrup, which is just shorthand for sugar dissolved in boiling water and cooled back to room temperature. Otherwise, it's physically impossible. Two, bourbon will knock you on your keister. People who regularly drink bourbon (minus a mixer) can drink you under the table. Period. If you are not a regular drinker of bourbon, be careful. The most exciting two minutes in sports could unwittingly become the most blurry two minutes in sports if you don't respect the bourbon. The corollary to this is that if you follow my advice, you will have started a party that will continue on well into the night.

3. Eat Southern food. Fried chicken, derby pie, anything involving liberal amounts of lard and/or butter. If you're from the blessed country, this needs no further explanation. If you're not, just think of it as a theme party or expanding your palate, kind of like eating Ethiopian food without the spices or lack of utensils. A word of warning - this is not the time to try out material that mocks the South. There will almost certainly be someone in the room from that part of the world, they will probably have more experience with the aforementioned bourbon than you, and they will not take kindly to being made fun of when one of our sacred traditions is on the national stage. They might act irrationally. Proceed with caution.

4. Make a friendly wager. There are too many ways to do this, but here are two easy ones. The beginner's version places the names of all the horses in a hat, has every participant put an equal amount of money in the pot and then everyone draws randomly for their horse. Benefits: Simple, easy, random, low cost. Drawbacks: boring, lack of skill, and the inevitable frustration at the most clue-free person at the party taking down the pot. The more advanced version is to put a cap on the amount of money each has invested and to have an auction--if you really like a horse, you can put all of your money on him, if you don't, you can spread it around. Benefits: skill matters, trash talking comes into play, and it provides a distraction from the human-interest stories NBC will run continuously during the hour leading up to the race itself. Drawbacks: it's complicated, trash talking comes into play, and it's really hard to execute if the mint julep experiment has not been matched with simultaneous consumption of food.

5. A little knowledge never hurt. Someone at the party will claim to have a line on what's going to happen and will loudly proclaim their predictions to anyone within earshot. Unless this person is both a regular horseplayer and a consistent winner (of which I believe there are about six nationwide), they don't have a clue. There's a reason. There are a lot of things you don't know about the Derby. Three quick examples.

These horses are not the best horses in the country, despite the prestige of the race. The best horses in the world run in the Breeder's Cup in the fall and they are generally four years old and older. Horses in the Derby are three years old - in people terms these are the equivalent of adolescents. They're still growing, they're moody, and they're still learning to run around the track without jumping the rail or hitting other horses. Consequently they turn in performances that vary widely.

The race is a strange distance. It's at least an eighth of a mile longer than the longest race run at your average track. Very few races are run at a mile and a quarter and virtually none of these horses have ever run this distance before, so no one has any idea how they'll react to a race this long.

The field is enormous. Last year's race was won by a horse that paid over a hundred dollars for every two dollars you bet on him to win. If you picked the first four horses in order you would be $800,000 dollars richer for a one dollar investment. There's a reason. No one knows what's going to happen because there are twenty horses breaking from one gate. It's dramatic and visually stunning, but twice as large as any other race and a recipe for disaster. The consequence? Traffic. Lots of traffic. Last year, there was a horse that should have won by a couple of football fields. Instead, he got caught in traffic and was never heard from again. Even if you pick the right horse, they have to have the right "trip" around the track in order to win.

So how do you counter the know-it-all and sound knowledgeable? First, make fun of anyone who claims to know "for certain" what's going to happen. Odds are they will be wrong and you can enjoy the rest of the evening laughing and poking fun at his/her "brilliance." If you're really interested in knowing what's going on, spend twenty minutes and read Derby previews by Andrew Beyer, Richard Jerardi, and Randy Moss. Take what Beyer says with some skepticism, listen closely to Jerardi (although he's not terribly interested in the Derby, he covers horse racing daily), but quote Randy Moss as if his word is the King James Bible. He's by far the best announcer on TV. Conversely, ignore everything Hank Greenberg says. Even the other announcers can't fight the urge to make fun of him. Turn it into a drinking game. Every time you catch an announcer taking a shot (veiled or otherwise) at Hank, drink.

Don't play this with juleps or you will end up under the table. Or dancing on top of it.

Follow these guidelines and you should thoroughly enjoy one of the oldest and grandest spectacles in American sports.

And for those of you wondering, no, I'm not going to make any picks regarding this year's Derby. Last year taught me the phrase, "a fool and his money are soon parted," didn't become a cliché by accident.

This year I'll be channeling my excitement into the execution of the perfect Julep and the repetition of my mantra:

I will not bet on sports. I will not bet on sports. I will not bet on sports.

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