LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Everyone involved in the Kentucky Derby feels pressure as the race approaches, but no one has felt it more intensely than Blair Minnich. He has experienced emotional lows and highs for months, and Friday he was hospitalized in Pennsylvania after suffering what may have been a mild heart attack.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - So far Phil Chess is 1 for 1 in the Kentucky Derby.
In 1942, when he was a student at Western Kentucky State Teachers College - now Western Kentucky University - he and a group of friends drove from Bowling Green to Louisville on Derby Day and he was thrilled to watch from the infield as his selection, Shut Out, won the 68th Run for the Roses in the colors of Greentree Stable.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Don't bother breaking out the Russell Reineman net for Gary Garber. No crying towels will be required. If Domestic Dispute comes through with the race of his life to win the 129th Kentucky Derby on Saturday, less than one week after being sold to Chuck Winner and David Bienstock, that will be Garber standing nearby, smiling a smile of no regrets.
At least, that is what he said on Monday.
NEW YORK - There are four little words that the modern horseplayer seems terrified to utter in relation to a Kentucky Derby. They seem like a white flag of surrender, a confession of failure, an admission that the speaker is utterly lacking in imagination, cleverness, adventurousness, and perhaps basic intelligence.
Yet the more this horseplayer contemplates Saturday's 129th Derby, the more they sound like the right four words for this year. Call me a chalk-eating coward, but I just can't help it:
I like the favorite.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Where do Kentucky Derby winners originate? From everywhere and under all manner of circumstance. Win the Derby with a $1,200 yearling? Preposterous, but it happened and Canonero II was a popular classicist, adding the Preakness to his laurels but coming acropper in the Belmont.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - If it is true that time heals all wounds, then General Challenge has a head start of nearly two years on his owner, Betty Mabee.
General Challenge, a flamboyant chestnut gelding with legs dipped to the knees in white, was last seen under the Golden Eagle Farm colors of John and Betty Mabee on an August afternoon at Del Mar during the summer of 2000. That was the day he failed at odds-on to win his second straight Pacific Classic.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Wally Dollase and his son Craig, both successful horsemen in California, have a chance to write a fresh page of racing history here next weekend.
The senior Dollase will saddle Illinois Derby winner Ten Most Wanted in the 129th Kentucky Derby. And on the day before the Derby, Craig Dollase will attempt to capture the Kentucky Oaks with Elloluv, who may be favored on the basis of her impressive victory in Keeneland's recent Ashland Stakes.
TUCSON, Ariz. - It has been 250 years since the British and French and the Seneca, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians fought over "the Forks of the Ohio," a triangle of land where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers join the Ohio in western Pennsylvania, a spot that was to become Pittsburgh.
Since then, no one has cared enough about the place to fight over it.
Until now.
All of a sudden everyone wants Pittsburgh, or at least a piece of it big enough to build a racetrack.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A year ago, when Wayne Lukas purchased Scrimshaw at the Keeneland 2-year-old sales for $550,000 on behalf of Bob and Beverly Lewis of Newport Beach, Calif., the Gulch colt was beginning to buck shins. His workout prior to the sales was a good one, however, and Lukas reasoned that if Scrimshaw was not distracted by his sore shins in the work, he might be worth having in the stable.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Niall O'Callaghan began his Monday morning with the usual glance at the Thoroughbred Daily News waiting for him on his desk at Churchill Downs. There were results from abroad, closing day at Gulfstream, a recap from Keeneland, and . . . what's this! From Santa Anita Park, on Sunday's closing program, the $400,000 San Juan Capistrano Handicap was won by a horse called Passinetti.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," O'Callaghan said. "I thought it was Groundhog Day. I thought the horse was dead, or worse. This couldn't be the same Passinetti?"