LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Wayne Lukas almost requires his own page in the Kentucky Derby media guide. Forty-three Lukas-trained 3-year-olds have contested the Derby. Four have won, equaling the second-highest training total in the race's 135-year history. For 20 years in a row, from 1981 to 2000, Lukas had at least one starter in the race.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Not that she wanted to find out, but now Shannon Ritter knows how it feels to get so close, only to suffer a crushing blow.

Ritter trains Endorsement, who was withdrawn from the Kentucky Derby on Wednesday morning at Churchill Downs after suffering a condylar fracture of his right front ankle following what was to be his final workout for the Derby. Ritter, who was aboard Endorsement for the work, knew while walking back to the barn that something was amiss.

"I noticed it when we were walking home," she said.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The first time trainer Bob Baffert ran a horse in the Kentucky Derby, in 1996, Cavonnier lost by a nose, leaving Baffert in what he will readily admit was a year-long funk.

"That was the most brutal beat of my career," he recalled Tuesday morning at Churchill Downs.

At the time Baffert had been regularly training Thoroughbreds for less than a decade. And while he had already won a Breeders' Cup race with Thirty Slews, the Triple Crown stage was foreign to him.

"I was devastated," he said. "I didn't know if I could get back."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As the son of a trainer, Dale Romans grew up around Churchill Downs. He has seen plenty of changes over the years. The twin spires no longer dominate the rooftop, there are skyboxes atop the length of the grandstand and clubhouse, and now lights encircle the track.

To anyone who thinks Sidney's Candy can be beat in the 136th Kentucky Derby next Saturday at Churchill Downs, jockey Joe Talamo has just one question:

"Who dat?"

This has been quite a year for Talamo. He appeared in the TV show "Jockeys." He went on the "Tonight" show during Conan O'Brien's brief stint. His beloved Saints, from Talamo's hometown of New Orleans, won the Super Bowl. "Who dat say gonna beat them Saints?" Uh, no one.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - In a nondescript corner office of Barn 30 at the Thoroughbred Training Center, there isn't a single clue that its occupant trained the Kentucky Derby winner 40 years ago this May.

"I've only been in this barn a year or so," said Don Combs. "Maybe one day I'll hang up a picture or two."

1. What prep race is most likely to be misinterpreted?

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - When Bob Baffert is holding court on the Churchill Downs backstretch these days, you'd think he has never won the Kentucky Derby and that Todd Pletcher has won it three times.

Of course, the reverse is true, although the way that Baffert keeps going out of his way to praise Eskendereya, the Pletcher-trained favorite for the 136th Derby, you wouldn't suspect that Baffert might well be on the threshold of his fourth Derby victory.

Everybody has a julep recipe, but almost no one knows for certain how the iconic cocktail of the Kentucky Derby came about.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The excuses that some trainers and jockeys give their horses for disappointing races can be rather flimsy, with traffic and track surface ranking among the most popular culprits.

But when Awesome Act regressed from a visually sensational win in the Gotham Stakes to finish a distant third behind Eskendereya in the April 3 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, there may have been a reasonable explanation for the subpar effort: The colt lost a shoe at the break and never seemed completely comfortable to jockey Julien Leparoux.