When Bodemeister runs in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, many fans will harbor doubts about him that are based on the race’s history. The fast colt is relatively inexperienced. He did not make his career debut until January, and not since 1882 has a horse won the Derby without running as a 2-year-old.

As a native born Louisville boy, the late Dr. Hunter Thompson spent large chunks of his wayward youth terrorizing locals and behaving badly, especially come Kentucky Derby time. To his eternal credit ne never referred to such behavior as “research” nor to the substances he ingested as “experimentation.” Bad craziness is more like it.

Shivananda Parbhoo has not exactly followed a conventional path to the Kentucky Derby. He bought his colt Trinniberg almost by accident. He employs his 72-year-old father as his trainer. He decided to run Trinniberg at Churchill Downs on Saturday even though the speedster has never raced as far as a mile and appears unprepared for the Derby's demanding 1 1/4-mile distance.

Among the many things a jockey might consider as an activity in retirement, testifying before a Congressional committee is well down the list. Golf, yes. Mountain climbing, maybe. Sitting at the witness table under oath, not hardly.

The 21st century horseplayer trying to handicap the Kentucky Derby is equipped with tools that were almost unimaginable 25 years ago – unlimited replays of every prep race, lifetime past performances of every entrant with sophisticated speed figures, comprehensive coverage and videos of every entrant’s morning gallops and workouts, and detailed discussion and analysis of

Video: Glorious Dancer wins at Golden Gate last Sunday for owner Michael Beychok.

Whether life imitates art or the other way around really does not matter, not when the story hits home as a tale imbued with the assuring touch of truth.

Still, it did sound like a preposterous swing at the stars when Michael Beychok, dramatic winner of the 2012 Daily Racing Form/NTRA National Handicapping Championship in Las Vegas last January, marked his million-dollar triumph six weeks later by claiming the horse that, in effect, won him the tournament.

Have you heard? Horse racing is no longer fun, or at least that’s how the story goes these days, and therefore horse racing must be made fun again if it is to survive in a climate rife with entertainment alternatives that are unimaginably fun. As a result, “fun” has become the byword across the board in management circles, stamped on the forehead of every department chief and dominating the memos. Once recognized as a pleasing byproduct of a well-run operation, fun is now the whole point of the exercise.

Nothing’s harder in these frantic times, when the media has become not only pervasive but social as well, than catching one’s breath. Okay, maybe there is a period of relative calm well past midnight, when the dogs are sleeping and the tweets are just beginning to dribble in from Western Europe. Then comes the dawn, and the onslaught begins anew, rendering even the most diligent blog jockeys behind before they start, the information piling as high along with the demand for its immediate digestion.

By a single vote, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission last week failed to pass a resolution that would have banned the use of the anti-bleeding medication furosemide, commonly known as Lasix, in Kentucky racing. The 7-7 vote within the commission – a majority is required and a deadlock is a failure – surprised and frustrated proponents of the ban, who have vowed to renew their efforts in the months ahead.

It’s not news that we live in the information age. Newspapers seem like a primitive way to get updates and even the nightly news that we all grew up with is usually nothing more than a recap of what we have already seen on our computers or on our cellphones.

Heck, two of the biggest ways a lot of people get their news – Facebook and Twitter – didn’t even exist at the turn of the century.

I’m also not breaking any ground by saying offshore sports books have changed the way the casinos here in Nevada do business. That’s been going on for years as well.