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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4.14 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 1 5 1 (Shug) McGaughey III, soon-to-be winning trainer, and, as Orb's regular exercise rider, she's ridden the three-year-old son of Malibu Moon more than any human being on the planet. She's invested in this horse and this race and this moment, and it's about to pay of. Now she springs into the air and twists, a near-perfect pirouette. She pirouettes again. And again. Orb roars past in a spray of muddy water, a blur of red-and-white jockey's silks almost as brown as his bay coat. All you hear are mufed hooves stamping tide-crashed sand and whips singing in the air. All you see is Patterson, pure joy, pirouetting one more time, another perfect landing. "We WON!" And this is how the end begins. It's not fve minutes after a stable hand removes the blanket of roses that Orb exits the winner's circle, plodding stickily through the drying racetrack surface a half-mile counter-clockwise toward the barns. Another McGaughey assistant holds Orb's bridle as Patterson walks alongside. Behind the winner, a parade of happy humans streams across the track toward the Churchill grandstand, back to the box seats and tables and champagne, some to the interview room, some to a post- race party, the crowd seeming to grow by the second, swelling like a frat party with hangers- on. Orb's party now consists of four: Patterson and three other training assistants. Te horse wears a new blanket, his spoils for running the race of his life. It's black, with gold and white lettering. It reads: "Kentucky Derby 2013 Winner." Tere is the mix of drunken cheers and golf applause as he passes the grandstand, but, oddly, as Orb semi-circles around the frst turn . . . nothing. Te fans have turned their attention to the next race, the next mint julep, the nearest exit, hell, maybe next year's Derby. Orb has a paparazzi party of exactly two: photographer Ted Tarquinio and me. Tis is the Derby winner? Where are the armed guards and security? Te throngs? Alas, Orb has returned to being another Toroughbred led post- race back to the barns. And yet, as he crosses from the track to the backside, a day's-done ballplayer stepping from diamond to dugout, a certain clubhouse respect descends. "Tere he is," says a man in dirty boot-cut jeans, oversized rodeo-rider belt buckle and cowboy-style shirt, his face the very defnition of grizzled. He could be an encyclopedia picture entry for stable hand. "Orb!" shouts a woman who looks as if she may be a trainer's wife, or a pari-mutuel clerk with a rare Derby Day of. www.historichomes.org 138-160 BACK.indd 151 3/20/14 12:35 PM

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