But I couldn’t leave my position to buy one or to find some other shade. With only a few hours to go to Derby post time, every vantage point had been seized by the tens of thousands without a reserved seat. If I left my spot now, I’d never get back, even if I could again talk myself past the gateman.
I started seriously to envy those upstairs in the air-conditioned luxury of The Mansion at Churchill Downs, enjoying a five-course Derby lunch while imbibing their seven-hundred-buck vintage champagne.
As in the UK, the first few races of the day were scheduled at half-hourly intervals, but here, as the afternoon progressed, the periods between races became longer. There was more than an hour between the ninth and tenth races and then almost a two-hour break before the Kentucky Derby itself.
I thought the crowd might have gone off the boil a bit during this extended period but the excitement was cranked up by the ‘Derby walkover’, when the seventeen equine participants were led from the barns on the backside round the track to the paddock to be saddled.
Each horse was accompanied by its owner and trainer, along with their various family members, friends and, of course, a sheriff’s deputy, all of them cheered to the rafters by the expectant spectators.
The full green-and-yellow brigade was there in force, the striped shoes getting covered with dirt from the track. The brash owner looked far more circumspect now as the nervousness had set in with fifty minutes to post time.
Fire Point, the big chestnut colt trained by George Raworth, was now the only one of the top-four points scorers still in the field and he was the overwhelming favourite.
I watched as he was walked past me led by a groom wearing a huge white bib with the number ‘1’ emblazoned large on both back and front.
I remembered back to what the waitress had said at Wagner’s.
He’s drawn in Gate One and everyone knows that being on the rail is not good. He’ll be swamped in the early running.
According to the race-day programme, which contained every Kentucky Derby statistic known to man, the race had been won eight times by a horse drawn in Gate 1, although the last of those had been over thirty years ago.
Would Fire Point break the mould?
We would soon find out.
At six-fifteen precisely, a rotund huntsman, clad in a bright scarlet jacket and black riding hat, stood in front of the grandstands and played ‘The Call to Post’ on a long silver trumpet to announce the arrival back onto the track of the seventeen hopefuls, now saddled and mounted by their brightly silked jockeys.
One could almost cut the mounting tension as the 170,000 crowd joined together to sing ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ before the horses made their way down to the starting gate at the far end of the finish straight.
I had attended all the big races in England and some others around the world but there was something unique about the atmosphere here today at Churchill Downs. Hysteria would hardly be too strong a word to describe the excitement that had gripped those around me. Two people on my left were openly praying and a man to my right almost collapsed from hyperventilation.
There was a lull in proceedings as the horses went behind the starting gate to be loaded. It was as if everyone was taking a deep breath, but then the bell rang and the gates swung open. The race was on.
I am sure there was a track commentator somewhere calling the race but I had no chance of hearing him over the shouting and cheering from the crowd as the seventeen runners broke in an even line.
My vantage point, low down on the clubhouse turn, was not ideal but there was a huge-screen TV across the track giving me a perfect view.
As predicted, Fire Point was indeed swamped by the others in the early running as they all moved left towards the rail to take the shortest route, but he wasn’t impeded, passing the finish line for the first time in sixth place, well tucked up behind the leading group.
They came into view around the turn, sweeping past right in front of me at a terrific speed. Then they were off down the back straight where the field began to spread out as the breakneck pace caused some of the lesser animals to tire.
Fire Point was not among them.
The chestnut colt hit the front coming off the final turn and was never again headed, striding away from the chasing pack down the stretch, in the shadow of Churchill’s famed twin spires, to win by three lengths.
As the horse passed under the wire, his jockey, Jerry Fernando, stood tall in the stirrups, saluting the crowd with his whip hand held high, while those in the enclosures roared back their approval.
I noticed that the green and yellow silks finished fourth, collecting a hundred grand for the man in the striped shoes. Perhaps he’d be happy but, in this race, as in every other, winning was everything. Unlike in Formula One, there are no trophies in horseracing for coming second.
The jockeys pulled up their exhausted mounts right in front of me, each of them bar one with a hard-luck story of how they maybe didn’t get a clean run down the stretch, or were hampered on the rail in the turn, or the track was too dry, or a hundred other reasons why they didn’t win.
But for the connections of Fire Point, all their Christmases had come at once, as their champion racehorse was led to the Kentucky Derby winner’s circle to be draped across the withers with the traditional three-metre-long garland of red roses.
The race wasn’t called the ‘Run for the Roses’ for nothing.
Leg 2:
The Preakness Stakes
‘The Run for the Black-Eyed Susans’
A mile and three-sixteenths
Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore, Maryland
Two weeks after the Kentucky Derby
First run in 1873
14
‘Can you ride?’
‘To be sure, sir, I can,’ I answered in my best ex-headmasterly Cork accent.
‘You’re a bit tall.’
‘I blame my parents, sir,’ I said. ‘They fed me too well when I was a wee lad.’
My interviewer laughed. His name was Charlie Hern and he was the assistant to George Raworth, the Derby-winning trainer of Fire Point. I took him to be in his mid-thirties but he looked older, having already lost most of his hair.
‘You won’t have to ride the horses anyway,’ he said. ‘We have exercise riders for that. But it might be a bonus.’
He looked again at the slightly battered Green Card he was holding in the name of Patrick Sean Murphy complete with my picture and thumbprint. A Green Card’s official name was a United States Permanent Resident Card (USCIS Form I-551) and Tony Andretti had worked a miracle with the State Department to have mine delivered to his home the previous day.
It meant that I, as Patrick Sean Murphy, had the right to work legally in the United States.
Not only was the name on the card false but so was the date of issue, as it stated that I had been a US permanent resident for the past three years. Consequently I had spent some time the previous afternoon ‘aging’ the card by rubbing it under my shoe on a concrete floor.
The man shuffled once again through my equally fake testimonials while I stood in front of him without speaking, waiting.
‘Why did you leave Santa Anita,’ he asked, tapping one of the references.
‘Too hot, sir,’ I said. ‘Especially in the winter. I prefer me winters cold, same as at home, like.’