Disclaimer: I’m not a hardboot who has inspected horseflesh since Man O’ War was a yearling. But I’ve spent 40 years watching and later covering great athletes, and this much I know: Power, grace and beauty are qualities that transcend genus and species. In other words, I know a good horse when I see one. [...]
For the committed and the obsessed, some of whom are so obsessed that they ought to be committed, handicapping the Kentucky Derby begins in winter with a mindset best stated by Shakespeare himself: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” This is our wish, our prayer, our greed. Because if you pick the [...]
The Kentucky Derby is not broken, but a few things that could stand to be fixed. • The post position draw. • The lack of crucial, easily acquired handicapping information. • The pointlessly diverse rainbow of kindergarten colors used on the horses’ saddle cloths. The Derby is a great race and a greater spectacle. Here [...]
Molly Jo Rosen, 27, has been clocking thoroughbreds for 10 years, but she’s been riding horseback since her diaper days. Girlfriend knows her equines. Here’s a chance to float down her stream of consciousness as Rosen discusses the Kentucky Derby horses she has observed, in most cases, for more than a year – but more [...]
The backside of a racetrack is the sanctum sanctorum of horse racing, and it was for ages a fraternity through and through – the equine equivalent of The Little Rascals’ infamous fellowship: The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club. The only fillies permitted to tread the hallowed ground owned four legs and weighed a thousand pounds. Women [...]
Some trainers bring horses to the Kentucky Derby, and some let the horses bring them. Shug McGaughey is the latter. Beware. McGaughey is about to enter his first Derby horse in 11 years. He’s a tall, strapping, chocolate-colored colt named Orb, and he’s a good bet to depose Verrazano as the pre-race favorite for Saturday’s [...]
A week from now, it will all be over. At least for another 364 days. We’re six days from the Kentucky Derby and halfway through Mark Coomes’s 10-part series on an insider’s look at the big race. Just in case you missed his coverage, here’s a wrap-up of this week’s columns: On the backside: IL [...]
The Kentucky Derby is America’s oddest horse race. It draws by far the largest field, the largest crowd, the most attention and the most myth-making legerdemain. But that makes the race uniquely special, not uniquely odd. What makes it odd is that despite all the star-spangled trappings, it is the most un-American race in the [...]
Mark Coomes: On Derby Day, Louisville is a city where anything is possible indeed
As a civic slogan, Possibility City has begotten more smirks and eye-rolling than the political careers of Ashley Judd and Richie Farmer. But once a year, at the corner of Fourth Street and Central Avenue, the dubious motto actually means what it says. For 122 seconds on the first Saturday in May, Louisville is a [...]