Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

One thing is for certain about horse racing: there is no such thing as a “sure thing.” Horses are living, breathing creatures with as distinct personalities as pedigrees. A horse is not a car — he gets sick, gets hungry, gets full of himself, gets tired. In short, he is a real athlete in every sense of the word. And just as in the human world, there are those horses who stand out among the rest physically and mentally, being born with a talent that screams to be exercised. There are horses, and then there are horses.

All right, Mr. Big, you now have my full and undivided attention. Not only did you prove that you deserved the hype before the Kentucky Derby, you’ve succeeded in building an imposing mystique around your huge physique. You won the Derby coming from post 20, which no horse has done since a starting gate amounted to a piece of string; you won the race after staying on the outside of the herd and blowing away to a four and three-quarter length victory; and you’re the first Derby winner to scare off practically all of the other Derby contenders to enter the Preakness since Citation in 1948. Citation, in case you weren’t aware, was America’s eighth Triple Crown winner. One of eleven.

Big Brown, Big Brown, Big Brown: It’s all you hear in the pre-Derby coverage, the barn buzz, the betting windows. Racing fans are so hot with fervor about this colt, they’re injecting his color into their Derby fashions. How many big brown hats will we see come this Saturday in the mass of color?

There’s no surprise he’s going off as the 3–1 favorite in the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby this Saturday. And he is as remarkable-looking as they say, with his towering conformation, his easy-breezy gallops, his commanding presence, and his perfect record of 3-for-3 with Curlin-esque winning margins. But Big Brown isn’t the only horse in the race, and after drawing the absolute worst post position on Wednesday evening, some handicappers are beginning to sway their bets toward the better-placed horses.

If one more good horse is scratched off the Kentucky Derby trail, I swear I’m going to pull an Elvis and shoot my TV. News broke Saturday that Eclipse winning champion War Pass suffered a hairline fracture in his left front ankle and will take a break from racing until it is healed. The injury is not fatal, but it will keep him out of the entire Triple Crown, making War Pass just another head in the list of true competitors scratched off the Derby trail. He joins the company of Georgie Boy and Crown of Thorns, two talented horses who would have greatly improved the quality of the field in the Kentucky Derby were it not for small injuries.

I would start a barroom brawl in the defense of my Derby horse if he was unjustly criticized, and that’s nearly what happened on the rail at Keeneland when a drunken ox with an ape brain shouted, “No Derby for you, huh, number seven!”

Yes, at that moment, I about lost it. It was not a good day for Pyro, (number seven for those people who can’t read letters), who went off as the even money favorite at 1–1 in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes. Coming off two impressive wins in Louisiana, Pyro descended upon synthetic track for the first time and met disaster.