Louisville Magazine

APR 2014

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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1 2 2 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4.14 speed but fnished sixth. Two weeks later in Baltimore, Stevens measured Oxbow's speed out a drop and a drip at a time, leading the Preakness Stakes from wire-to-wire in a critically acclaimed riding performance. Six months after that, at Santa Anita Park in California, Stevens stole the show at the Breeders' Cup. On that Friday he won the biggest race of the day, jetting Beholder to a startlingly dominant victory in the $3 million Breeders' Cup Distaf. Te next day, riding Mucho Macho Man, Stevens prevailed by inches in a three-horse drive to win the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic. Now another Derby comes around, and Stevens is eyeing his 20th mount in the race. "I've known what's going to happen in every Derby since my frst," Stevens says. "It's basically going to be a fre drill, with alarms going of for the frst eighth of a mile. If you can be within one of the frst ones down the frst set of stairs, or in position behind the fast people to get you to the outside, you're going to be in good shape." But while the old routine came right back to the man who will soon ride his 5,000th winner, it seems a remarkable thing that Stevens is still competing at this level. But they do it, the great ones. Bill Shoemaker won his fourth Derby at 54. Eddie Arcaro rode in 35 Derbies. Pat Day won 8,806 races. How do jockeys so defy age? "Forty-three is the new 20-something," says Mike Smith, who is actually 48 and still riding at the top of his game. Smith also has been aboard some very promising colts this spring, looking for his Derby horse. Just before this story was written, he won a major prep at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas aboard the Bob Bafert-trained Hopportunity. Recently, Daily Racing Form columnist Jay Hovdey noted that, in the Santa Maria Stakes at Santa Anita, the top horses would be ridden by Smith, 48; Alex Solis, 49; Corey Nakatani, 43; and Kent Desormeaux, 43. Stevens was of to San Francisco that day for the El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields, where he would ride against Russell Baze, 55, the winningest rider of all time with more than 12,000 victories and counting. "So what's going on in the jocks' room?" Hovdey wondered. "Jockeys seem to stay in better shape these days," Smith told Hovdey. "Tey're all great athletes who have kept themselves in shape. Remember, though, we don't do the running. Tat's a big diference. I mean, we're tearing up our bodies — don't get me wrong. But if you can stay in good shape, there's nothing like experience, especially when you have to make quick decision after quick decision. Having faced those decisions so many times makes your reactions become almost automatic. If a quarterback wasn't so physically abused, wouldn't you take Joe Montana right now?" T he owners of Derby prospects lead a racing life far less harrowing than the riders. Unless you count how hard hoping and hoping can wear on the soul. Tat's what owners of racehorses do, you know. Typically, they can't ride; don't train. All they can do is hope that, maybe, this will be the year. But in a bit of poetic justice, horse racing seems to reward those who hope hardest and longest. Which became clear in the 1990s, when a series of longtime horse owners, after lifetimes of trying, fnally made it to the ultimate winner's circle. Te frst one, the adorable 92-year-old Frances Genter, had to make her way there in a wheelchair, across a carpet laid across the track to the infeld. Genter had been in the horse business for 50 years and in that span had owned such outstanding horses as In Reality, Smile, and Rough'n Tumble. Because, in 1990, the petite senior-senior citizen could not see over the crowd from her box in the clubhouse, trainer Carl Nafzger "called" the progress of Unbridled in the Derby for her in one of racing's more poignant moments: "He's taking the lead. He's gonna win. He's gonna win. He's gonna win. He's a winner. He's a winner, Mrs. Genter." Two years later, W.C. "Cal" Partee, an Arkansan who made his money in lumber, oil and banking and was a horse owner for four decades, won his Derby with Lil E. Tee. He was 82. Te next year, owner Paul Mellon, then 85, and his longtime private trainer, 71-year-old Mack Miller, who had been in racing forever together, watched longshot Sea Hero rally to victory. A headline the next day in the Courier-Journal referred to "Old Men and the Sea." And in 1995, 77-year-old Overbrook Farm owner William T. Young scored with Grindstone for his frst Derby. Te longest record of futility with a happy ending belongs to Gladys Mills Phipps, who founded Wheatley Stable with her brother Ogden Mills in 1926. Tey came close in '57 with Bold Ruler, who ran fourth behind Iron Liege, Gallant Man and Round Table in what many experts call the best Kentucky Derby feld of all time. Te Phipps champion Buckpasser was slightly injured and missed the 1966 Derby, and then, famously, her son Ogden Phipps won but ultimately lost a fateful coin fip to determine who would own the frst of two foals of Somethingroyal sired by Bold Ruler. Te second foal turned out to be Secretariat. Ten, last year, descendants of Gladys Phipps, including grandsons Stuart Janney III and Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps, fnally captured the Run for the Roses with Orb. See how all this fts together? An even longer vigil continues, going back to when Sir Huon won the 1906 Kentucky Derby for local horseman George J. Long and his Bashford Manor Farm. As best as we can determine, no Louisville owner has won a Derby since. Tat's 108 years. But several Louisville owners seem determined to reclaim the stage. T here's a famous Derby feat that Gary Stevens could duplicate. In the 1920s, jockey Earl Sande rode two Kentucky Derby winners: Zev ('23) and Flying Ebony ('25). Sande retired after that, but owner William Woodward talked him into making a comeback, specifcally to ride a horse named Gallant Fox. Sande won his frst race with "Fox" as a two-year-old in the fall of '29, then guided him at three to victories in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes — a sweep that came to be known as the Triple Crown. Writer Damon Runyon admired Sande's skill and often wrote snappy little poems about him, rhyming his lines with the jockey's name, pronounced San-dee. Runyon topped his 1930 Gallant Fox Derby story for the New York American with: "I've known what's going to happen in every Derby since my frst. It's going to be a fre drill." — jockey Gary Stevens. 112-128.indd 122 3/19/14 5:39 PM

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