The most famous names in American Thoroughbred racing used to be those of dynasties possessing fabulous wealth – the Phipps family, the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, the Wideners, and others. They owned the best stallions and mares, bred and campaigned the best racehorses. They did not merely participate in the sport; they ran it. The elites were members of the Jockey Club, the organization that ruled racing, often in a high-handed fashion.

Eugene “Snake” McDaniel awakens each morning at three o’clock on the dot, freshens and dresses, fusses with his dog, then heads to the barn of Ben Cecil at Santa Anita Park, where things begin to stir around 5 a.m. During the course of the morning McDaniel will set the saddles, handle cold bandaging, hold horses who need that special touch, and otherwise patrol the shed row with a benign presence that speaks to his six decades at the track.

“Old school” seems difficult to define, but everyone knows it when they see it. The term reeks of retro, of throwbacks and nostalgia and anything of vaguely pleasant remembrance that took place “back in the day.” My 1972 Camaro, for instance, or the Los Angeles Rams.

Charles Dickens gave the idea of “old school” an early workout in “Bleak House” to describe the driven, misogynistic lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn as “an unopenable oyster of the old school,” which does not sound like a compliment. Later he was shot through the heart.

Score one for the old school.

Orb’s stretch-running victory in the 139th Kentucky Derby was not only trainer Shug McGaughey’s first success in the race, but also a vindication of a philosophy that today seems almost quaint. Whenever the Hall of Famer was asked why he had come to the Derby for only the second time since 1989, he never said that this is the race that every trainer aspires to win. His answer was always on the lines of, “The horse brought me here.”

Life goes on. At least, that’s the rumor. But for as many fairy tales that could have come true during this year’s Kentucky Derby saga, just as many ended way too soon for the people closest to the 3-year-olds who fell by the wayside on the long haul to Churchill Downs.

The 139th Kentucky Derby seems like a race where you should take a flyer rather than pound a favorite. After a prep season that was short on dazzle and left half the field looking capable of winning the race, I think you’re supposed to try to get one of the pricier plausible entrants into the winner’s circle, and I’ve managed to talk myself into one – though I acknowledge I risk revocation of my lifetime membership in the Society of Speed Figure Believers.

LAS VEGAS – For the past dozen years or so, there have been two questions I’ve been asked far and away the most during Derby Week.

No. 1: Who do you like?

No. 2: Where’s the best place to watch the race?

Unless you bleed Celtics green or lean toward tattoos in a pinstripe pattern, you’re probably like most sports fans who react badly to a dynasty. They’re like strikeouts in baseball. And strikeouts, as defined by Crash Davis in “Bull Durham,” are boring. “Besides that,” Crash added, “they’re fascist.”

If it is time to tidy up a bit of historical housekeeping and let Shug McGaughey finally win a Kentucky Derby with Orb on Saturday, then maybe for a warm-up on Friday the long-suffering Richard Mandella should silence his critics and take down the Kentucky Oaks with Beholder.

With the strongest racing stable in America, Todd Pletcher comes into the Kentucky Derby in a position of extraordinary strength. He will saddle 25 percent of the field: Verrazano, the undefeated colt who is the probable favorite; Revolutionary, the formidable stretch-runner who won the Louisiana Derby; Overanalyze, runaway winner of the Arkansas Derby; and two others.