Jay Hovdey

While doing research for a column in an upcoming Kentucky Derby Preview publication for Daily Racing Form, I ran across an old friend. It was a piece written by William Faulkner for Sports Illustrated in 1955. He called it "Kentucky: May: Saturday." This is from that: Once the horse moved man's physical body and his household goods and his articles of commerce from one place to another. Nowadays all it moves is a part or the whole of his bank account, either through betting on it or trying to keep owning and feeding it.

In the wake of Zenyatta's tour of the course on Friday at Oaklawn Park, the racing world now will be roughly divided into a number of constituencies: There will be those who, having exhausted their vocabulary in describing her athletic prowess, will resort to interpreting every nod, prance, pause or flick of the ears as behavior bef

Now that the dust has settled, the fires are out, and radiation levels have returned to the acceptable range, it is time to ponder the deeper impact of the Santa Anita Derby just run. All of the easy questions have been answered: Sidney's Candy is the real deal. Lookin at Lucky needs a name change. Victor Espinoza committed a suspendable offense. Garrett Gomez was guilty of a $750 temper tantrum. And Bob and Jill Baffert are the most entertaining buddy cops since Cagney and Lacey. What remains debatable are those everlasting intangibles. Was there malice in Espinoza's heart when he tightened things up on Gomez? Did Gomez, a national champion four years running, flagrantly disregard Bob Baffert's instructions and put Lookin at Lucky in a tough spot? Did Richard Mandella not understand the eligibility rules for the Kentucky Derby in bringing the massive

On the backstretch at Santa Anita, in his stall at the Julio Canani barn, The Pamplemousse is still awaiting his call to come over for the Santa Anita Derby. The 2009 Santa Anita Derby. He was a big, beautiful freak in action, and people were ready to pay good money to watch him run against Pioneerof the Nile in that Derby. But The Pamplemousse was doing business all along on a dicey tendon, and he was finally betrayed by the soft tissue in the days leading up to the race. He was scratched on the morning of the '09 Santa Anita Derby and has not run since, while Pioneerof the Nile won at Santa Anita and went on to finish second to Mine That Bird at Churchill Downs. That was only the most recent in a long line of dramas surrounding the Santa Anita Derby, which through the years has been more of a Shakespearean soap opera than a horse race. Go back to the

On an otherwise idyllic seaside afternoon a few years ago at Del Mar, Julie Krone dismounted after a race, grabbed a tack bucket and made a beeline for an opposing jockey. "Hey, Jay," said the West's tallest handicapper, Bob Ike, peering down from the pressbox balcony. "I think your wife's gonna hit somebody." Well, no one got hit, but the public display of temper got Krone a $300 fine from the stewards. It also got her a hero's welcome from her colleagues, both on horseback and on foot, since the object of her ire was a notoriously erratic rider who, according to just about everyone who rode against him, put others in jeopardy far more often than should have been officially tolerated. The next day, Krone had a dozen people offer to pay her fine. This happy little tale came to mind Sunday morning when word went out that six tra