No horse, no USA: Why the naughty horses at the 151st Kentucky Derby continue to thrill us

Race 12 at Churchill Downs on Saturday, May 3, draws over 150,000 people, the largest attendance for a live sporting event in America.

Racehorses stir something deep in us. Whether you are watching or wagering, this 151st running of the Kentucky Derby is a moment to cherish the most indispensable animal in human civilization: the horse.

It all began 4,200 years ago in the Bronze Age when the Shintashta culture domesticated horses and spread quickly throughout Eurasia. In human care, horses bred more successfully, according to the Smithsonian. With horses, people planted crops, settled the far corners of the world and carved out epic moments of human history.  One brown mare got Paul Revere to Lexington on April 18, 1775. No horse, no USA. 

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Of course, the colts in the Kentucky Derby are all classy Thoroughbreds and you can trace the bloodline parentage of every one of them back to the year 1700. 

But I have a secret to tell you about these three-year-olds. They can be naughty boys.

When you see some of the antics, you have to marvel at the give-and-take in the partnership that has been so crucial to human history.

It’s not easy. 

There’s Burnham Square, who exercises with his neck bowed down in morning workouts, and needs more than half a mile to “relax” and settle in. 

“He’s just a little strong. Yeah, he tries to bite the pony rider. And the pony. And he’s a little bit of a clown,” his exercise rider Mark Cutler told FanDuel TV. “But he’s not bad at all, he’s really grown up in the last few months.”

Natural high spirits that would terrify moms and daughters from the show horse world are laughed off at a racing barn. 

As for the grey Sandman, owner Griffin Johnson says “he’s not as crazy as what his father can be, but he’s definitely brought the personality and the goofiness.” Sandman’s sire Tapit, now age 24, is a quirky, intelligent grey whose offspring have earned over $216 million at the track. Sandman is the spitting image of him, and has already earned over a million dollars himself. Quirks are tolerated with that kind of success. In the barn, Sandman is “always having a good time and he makes it easy to love the sport,” Johnson said in an interview with Andie Biancone.

Mind you, they aren’t all “up” as horsemen say. Coal Battle, from Louisiana, is the laid-back type. “If he’s not lying down, he’s usually at the back of his stall just relaxing. “He knows when it’s game time,” his trainer Lonnie Briley told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Personality counts because on race day, anything can happen. Fortune favors the long-striding horse, but the horse has to want the win. 

Take Journalism, a son of Curlin whose speed figures in his wins at several races this spring were astonishing. At Santa Anita on April 5, Journalism stalked on the rail, at the back of the pack.  Jockey Umberto Rispoli was standing in the stirrups with his knees straight and butt high, the position jockeys take when they aren’t yet asking the horse for real speed. Then, at the seven-sixteenths pole, came near disaster. Journalism was shuffled behind one horse, bumped by another, but “tipped out into the clear and spun three wide into the stretch” as the official Equibase chart put it. Rispoli asked for power in the homestretch and Journalism surged to beat his rival Baeza, by almost 2 lengths. They’ll meet again in the Derby.

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In Kentucky, anything can happen. Big, loud crowds put huge pressure on the horses. The Kentucky Derby runners all arrived days ago to practice loading at the gate, working out on the track, and being tacked up for the walkover to the paddock. “The walkover used to be trainers, grooms, and hotwalkers, but now it’s turned into this whole event in its own right,” the horse Journalism’s trainer Michael McCarthy told the Paulick Report. Every horse has 30-50 people “so you’re just hoping they get to the paddock without hurting anyone,” admitted McCarthy.

For all their antics, the young Thoroughbreds gathered in Kentucky remind us how horses can take you a little bit out of yourself, demanding empathy and bravery. The scrappy, exhilarating nature of galloping a horse lifts us mere bipeds into another realm. Here is the same thrill that keeps kids asking for pony rides at the county fair and eventually learning the bravery and empathy necessary to riding, jumping and racing. It’s the connection that can be so successfully tapped for therapy for veterans, or just as a way to learn patience. 

It’s the reason for fancy hats and bowties worn to honor the status of the horse in human society.

For when the trumpet sounds, the connection is everything.  For the Derby, Rispoli says he won’t force Journalism. “I’m pretty sure that once he’s ready to run, he will make me understand it’s time to go,” Rispoli said.