When Louisville native Hunter S. Thompson put himself down recently, tributes to the famous participant/writer made note of his first piece of “gonzo journalism,” a story titled “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” published in 1970 in Scanlan’s Monthly. His notes from the underbelly of what he described as the “jaded, atavistic freakout” of Derby Week launched him as the pre-eminent comical shin-kicker of American culture.
The rest of us in the press are not as fearless or as capable of loathing, which goes a long way toward explaining why we’ll never became as illustrious as Thompson. But we also have our ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 >Derby notes. Mine are filtered through a different haze than his bourbon-fueled consciousness. For me, several moments shine through the fuzziness of time gone by, now 25 years of doing Derby. Among them:
The year 1985, when I talked my way into the crowded Churchill Downs paddock area
(a difficult media credential to obtain). In the arousing moments when 13 impeccably fit Derby starters were led into the paddock, circled around its tiny track and brought to their stalls, there was a curious little social gathering of owners and their entourages mingling with their trainers and jockeys — as if, even at this late hour, it was still all about making the right connections. Only one jockey, Angel Cordero Jr., seemed to snub the schmoozing. I watched him walk into his mount’s stall, place his hands on the horse’s head and neck and, it seemed, communicate with him one on one for a few precious minutes. The jockeys then hopped on their charges and paraded to the post — and Cordero and Sp/files/storyimages/a Buck sprinted to a wire-to-wire victory.
n For the ’81 Derby, my girlfri/files/storyimages/(now wife) and I made our first and only day of it in the infield with St. Louis friends Rick and Nancy. Hunter Thompson famously described the scene there as “thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles,” but we didn’t see one altercation until after very late in the afternoon, when Pleasant Colony crossed the finish line. Suddenly, drunken losers were acting up on all sides of us, so we got the heck out of the Downs and somehow made our way to a Chi-Chi’s restaurant and a few good margaritas. The night ended with the four of us sitting for a half-hour in front of my apartment building, partying to Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run cranked at maximum volume in Rick’s Volkswagen Rabbit.
Even before parenting broke me of my late-waking habits, I’d rise before the crack of dawn and meet up with a fri/files/storyimages/or two to wander among the stables on the backside of the Downs and watch the Derby horses work out. My Derby media pass gained me access, but it didn’t guarantee the folks on the backside that I knew anything about horses. I probably should’ve taken note the time word spread like wildfire that a Thoroughbred had busted loose in the stable area; everyone but me, it seemed, was inching a little closer to a safe spot should he round the corner. When my fri/files/storyimages/Joe and I made our way to the gap in the fencing where horses enter and leave the track for their morning’s work, we stopped to admire the majestic animals at arm’s length from us — until an exercise rider, careful to modulate his tone, said quietly, “You don’t want to stand there” and carefully coaxed his powerful mount a different direction. He couldn’t have moved us any faster with a swift kick in the pants.
Back in the day, the media pass was not the show-your-ID proposition that it is today (nor was the rest of the American experience, come to think of it). Able to get my hands on a couple of extra passes, I invited my older brother from Texas to visit with a fri/files/storyimages/and laid the credentials on them so they could wander the Downs during Derby Week. But what I really remember is golfing with my brother — a rarity, unfortunately — and walking down to the 11th tee at Seneca. Beargrass Creek cut in from the left side of the fairway to the front of the tee box, and there I stood, looking out across the murmuring waters, blooming plants on the landscape and a difficult shot to the safety of the fairway staring me in the face. Spring in Kentucky — let ’er rip.
For the 1993 Derby I obtained access to the winner’s circle, which meant crossing the track from the grandstand before the race and watching from the inside rail. The first pass of the horses was a blur, but on the second sighting, as they drove to the finish line, the smallish coltSea Hero accelerated improbably. Amazed, I saw him bolt to the inside and zip past six other horses for the win, leaving me to marvel, for the first time really, at the athleticism of the finest Thoroughbreds. His seemingly effortless sprint to the finish was over as quickly as it started — but I’ll never forget it.
