Triple Crown

by Felix Francis

  The backside was a hive of activity when we arrived, with sheriff’s deputies, Louisville Police and the FACSA agents all pacing around the barns not really knowing what they were looking for.

  I came upon Norman standing next to one of the Suburbans.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

  ‘Three Derby horses are sick,’ he said.

  ‘Is that all?’ I said. ‘With all this fuss, I thought someone else must have died.’

  ‘They’re three of the most favoured runners. The trainers are claiming they’ve been got at.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll wait for the test results,’ Norman said. ‘The veterinarians are taking samples. There’s a rumour it might be EI.’

  EI, or equine influenza, was a much-feared disease in the racing world, and for good reason. Highly infectious through the air, and with an incubation period of only a day or two, it could spread through a horse population like a bushfire in a drought. Its appearance at a major centre like Churchill Downs, where the training barns were packed so tightly together, could easily shut down racing here for weeks.

  In August 2007, four stallions arrived in Australia from Japan, where there had recently been an outbreak of EI. As was normal practice, the stallions were transferred to a quarantine centre near Sydney Airport.

  On the twenty-fourth of August, tests confirmed that several horses at the quarantine centre were infected with the H3N8 subtype of the equine influenza virus.

  Even though the affected animals were supposed to be isolated from the general horse population, new cases of the same subtype were simultaneously reported at a nearby equestrian centre. Although never proven, the official report assumed that the virus had been transferred accidentally on the tools of a farrier who had attended to horses at both sites.

  The following day some eighty horses were found to be sick and, by the end of August, just one week after the first instances, 2,000 horses were unwell with the disease. Movement of horses throughout Australia was banned without a permit and many equestrian events were cancelled, including the Sydney spring racing festival. At the peak of the outbreak, more than 47,000 horses across New South Wales and Queensland were infected and horse-industry operations did not return to normal for almost a year.

  To lessen the likelihood of such epidemics, all racehorses in the United States and Europe have to be vaccinated and then given regular six-monthly boosters but, as in humans, the influenza virus can mutate, rendering the vaccine useless.

  The outbreak of a new variant, even this close to the race, would put the Derby itself in jeopardy. No wonder the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission was running round in panic mode.

  All morning exercise on the track was cancelled and the media circus, which had arrived to cover it, instead spent their time speculating as to what might happen next. Multiple TV crews busily set up at various locations between the barns, much to the alarm and dismay of everyone else, who worried that they might help spread the plague yet further.

  An impromptu press conference was called for eight o’clock and everyone crammed into the tented press centre situated next to the track to listen.

  The nervous-looking racing commissioner sat alone at a table with a microphone set up in front of him. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘let me start by assuring you that the Kentucky Derby will go ahead later this afternoon as planned.’

  There was a collective sigh of relief from the assembled media, and a round of applause from the many owners, trainers and jockeys who were squeezed in at the back.

  The commissioner waited for silence before continuing. ‘Early this morning, at around five a.m., three horses that had been due to run in today’s Derby didn’t eat up their food and were found to be showing signs of sickness. The horses in question were immediately placed in isolation and, as of just now, no further cases have been reported. However, on veterinary advice, those three have been scratched from the Derby. As it is now past the deadline for replacements, only seventeen runners will go to post.’

  ‘Is it equine influenza?’ shouted one reporter from the front row.

  ‘As yet, we have no indication of the disease,’ said the commissioner, ‘but we wish to remind you that all US racehorses are routinely immunised against equine influenza.’

  ‘So are you saying it is not influenza?’ asked the reporter.

  ‘Er . . . no, I’m not. It may be a new strain. We will all have to wait for the results of blood tests.’

  He didn’t exactly exude confidence, but he changed direction by then naming the scratched horses and, as Norman had indicated, they were three of the four most favoured for the win.

  Was it just the way my mind worked, or was that rather convenient for the fourth?

  Life in the backside returned to normality, if that was the right term for the excitement generated by Derby Day morning at Churchill Downs.

  The remaining seventeen Derby hopefuls were trotted up in turn in front of the state senior veterinary officer for him to decide whether each animal was sound and also, in the light of what had occurred earlier, for them to have their temperatures checked. Fortunately, after a thorough inspection, all were declared well and fit to race.

  After the medical examination each was then presented to the press in what can only be described as a beauty pageant for horse and owner.

  Occasionally, in England, especially at the Cheltenham Festival, connections of a particular horse might wear a necktie in similar shades as their racing silks, or perhaps a knitted scarf in comparable tones – nothing too ostentatious, you understand.

  There was clearly no such restraint in Kentucky.

  One of the Derby owners was decked out in a three-piece suit cut from cloth boldly printed with his green-and-yellow racing colours, complete with matching tie, baseball cap and even coordinating green-and-yellow-striped shoes. The poor horse looked positively embarrassed to be standing next to him for the photographs. But there was more. The owner’s wife and family were similarly attired in green and yellow and, in case you couldn’t work it out, each of them wore a huge button badge with the name of their horse printed large across it.

  And the man was as brash as his outfit, telling all the assembled press that his baby was a certainty to trot up and collect the trophy. None of them really believed him as the horse in question was one of the rank outsiders, but that didn’t seem to dampen the owner’s enthusiasm.

  Meanwhile, away from the limelight of the press parade, I watched behind the media tent as another owner, inconsolable in his grief, was trying to come to terms with the fact that his prized Thoroughbred star, strongly tipped to be a Triple Crown winner, would now not even get to the starting gate of the first leg.

  It is not generally polite to stand and watch a grown man cry, but I felt sorry for him. Only a handful of racehorse owners ever have the privilege of owning a potential champion and this man’s dream of glory had been snatched away by a virus so small he would need an electron microscope to see it.

  And there would be no coming back next year to have another go. The Kentucky Derby, like all the ‘classic’ races, was for three-year-old horses only. This might have been the unfortunate man’s only chance in life of owning a Derby runner, let alone the favourite – no wonder he was in tears.

  Horseracing history is full of heartbreaking ‘if only’ stories and this one, like all the others, would quickly be forgotten by everyone except those whose lives it touched most closely. The victor that afternoon would be hailed as the conqueror of all and, in future years, no one would ever mention the three who failed to line up at the start.

  Such was life.

  But for this moment, it was almost too much for the desolate owner to bear and he sobbed openly. Fortunately for him, all the TV crews and photographers were busy snapping the fancy suit and striped shoes around the other side of the tent.

  At ten o’clock the focus of attention for some switched from the backside ba
rns to the racetrack proper.

  The Derby was far from being the only race of the day. In fact, there were twelve additional contests scheduled, ten before and two after, and, for the owners, trainers and jockeys, the support races were clearly worth winning too. In addition to the Grade 1 Derby itself, there were three Grade 2 stakes, plus two other Grade 1s, each with purses in excess of half a million dollars.

  But for the enormous crowd already teeming into the public enclosures there was only one race that mattered, the one due off at precisely twenty-six minutes to seven in the evening. Everything about the day was building up to the moment when the starting gates would swing open and the ‘most exciting two minutes in sport’ would begin.

  Fortunately, there was still plenty of time for eating and drinking before then, especially drinking, with the sickly sweet mint juleps on sale in special commemorative glasses from the moment the entrances opened at eight am.

  Frank and I tried to get another breakfast at Wagner’s but decided the line was too long, stretching out the front and right round the corner of the street, so we found a drive-thru burger outlet and sat in the Suburban munching our way through English muffins filled with bacon and eggs.

  ‘No grits today, then?’ I said with my mouth full.

  ‘We’re not far enough south. They have it at home in Alabama.’

  ‘McGrits?’ I said, laughing at my own joke.

  Frank didn’t think it funny in the slightest.

  13

  As Frank had suspected, our movement throughout the grandstands was much restricted compared to the previous day. Indeed, I was lucky to be able to get in at all as I didn’t have a magic badge and a simple ‘I’m with him’ didn’t seem to work with the gateman today.

  ‘No ticket, no entry,’ he kept repeating.

  Fortunately, Frank was able to rustle up Norman Gibson on his mobile phone, and he soon arrived, together with the racetrack head of security. Eventually the gateman relented and allowed me through, but he clearly didn’t like it. Perhaps he thought I looked a bit shady, and he was probably right. I hadn’t had a shave for four days, not since I’d decided to go undercover as a groom, and I was already sporting some substantial stubble.

  If I thought that the Gold Cup at Cheltenham or the Grand National at Aintree were jam-packed, it was nothing in comparison to Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day.

  At least at Cheltenham and Aintree it was just about possible to move from the grandstands to see the horses in the paddock and then get back to the stands to watch the race. Here, it was virtually impossible.

  Several hundred of those with general admission tickets had no intention of ever seeing the race itself. They had arrived early to bag a preferred spot on the paddock rail from where they would not budge, couples taking turns to elbow their way to the restrooms and the beverage outlets, so as not to lose their place. In the grandstand boxes, suites and glass-fronted restaurants, meanwhile, the patrons wore their tamper-proof, colour-coded wristbands with pride and tended to stay where they were between races, venturing only as far as the nearest bar or betting window.

  As the afternoon progressed, the excitement built, with rock bands playing in the infield and a string of A-list celebrities swaggering along the red carpet. At two o’clock, the Vice President arrived in a bulletproof limousine with much fanfare and the playing of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’.

  There was some general dismay among the crowd that three of the best horses had been scratched from the race but it didn’t seem to diminish people’s enjoyment unduly.

  Frank and the other FACSA special agents were assigned to assist with enhanced security measures for the Derby horses, so I made my way through the grandstands to find somewhere to watch the racing. That sounds easier than it actually was because, unlike on British racecourses, there was no standing concourse at the front. Rather, the ticketed seating went right down to the running rail.

  I managed to talk myself past another gateman and into a spot in front of a temporary grandstand on the clubhouse turn, but it lacked any shade and, boy, it was getting hot, with the sun baking down from a cloudless sky. I began to wish I had one of the straw hats that were clearly popular all around me.

  But I couldn’t leave my position to buy one or to find some other shade. With only a few hours to go to Derby post time, every vantage point had been seized by the tens of thousands without a reserved seat. If I left my spot now, I’d never get back, even if I could again talk myself past the gateman.

  I started seriously to envy those upstairs in the air-conditioned luxury of The Mansion at Churchill Downs, enjoying a five-course Derby lunch while imbibing their seven-hundred-buck vintage champagne.

  As in the UK, the first few races of the day were scheduled at half-hourly intervals, but here, as the afternoon progressed, the periods between races became longer. There was more than an hour between the ninth and tenth races and then almost a two-hour break before the Kentucky Derby itself.

  I thought the crowd might have gone off the boil a bit during this extended period but the excitement was cranked up by the ‘Derby walkover’, when the seventeen equine participants were led from the barns on the backside round the track to the paddock to be saddled.

  Each horse was accompanied by its owner and trainer, along with their various family members, friends and, of course, a sheriff’s deputy, all of them cheered to the rafters by the expectant spectators.

  The full green-and-yellow brigade was there in force, the striped shoes getting covered with dirt from the track. The brash owner looked far more circumspect now as the nervousness had set in with fifty minutes to post time.

  Fire Point, the big chestnut colt trained by George Raworth, was now the only one of the top-four points scorers still in the field and he was the overwhelming favourite.

  I watched as he was walked past me led by a groom wearing a huge white bib with the number ‘1’ emblazoned large on both back and front.

  I remembered back to what the waitress had said at Wagner’s.

  He’s drawn in Gate One and everyone knows that being on the rail is not good. He’ll be swamped in the early running.

  According to the race-day programme, which contained every Kentucky Derby statistic known to man, the race had been won eight times by a horse drawn in Gate 1, although the last of those had been over thirty years ago.

  Would Fire Point break the mould?

  We would soon find out.

  At six-fifteen precisely, a rotund huntsman, clad in a bright scarlet jacket and black riding hat, stood in front of the grandstands and played ‘The Call to Post’ on a long silver trumpet to announce the arrival back onto the track of the seventeen hopefuls, now saddled and mounted by their brightly silked jockeys.

  One could almost cut the mounting tension as the 170,000 crowd joined together to sing ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ before the horses made their way down to the starting gate at the far end of the finish straight.

  I had attended all the big races in England and some others around the world but there was something unique about the atmosphere here today at Churchill Downs. Hysteria would hardly be too strong a word to describe the excitement that had gripped those around me. Two people on my left were openly praying and a man to my right almost collapsed from hyperventilation.

  There was a lull in proceedings as the horses went behind the starting gate to be loaded. It was as if everyone was taking a deep breath, but then the bell rang and the gates swung open. The race was on.

  I am sure there was a track commentator somewhere calling the race but I had no chance of hearing him over the shouting and cheering from the crowd as the seventeen runners broke in an even line.

  My vantage point, low down on the clubhouse turn, was not ideal but there was a huge-screen TV across the track giving me a perfect view.

  As predicted, Fire Point was indeed swamped by the others in the early running as they all moved left towards the rail to take the shortest route, but he wasn’t impe
ded, passing the finish line for the first time in sixth place, well tucked up behind the leading group.

  They came into view around the turn, sweeping past right in front of me at a terrific speed. Then they were off down the back straight where the field began to spread out as the breakneck pace caused some of the lesser animals to tire.

  Fire Point was not among them.

  The chestnut colt hit the front coming off the final turn and was never again headed, striding away from the chasing pack down the stretch, in the shadow of Churchill’s famed twin spires, to win by three lengths.

  As the horse passed under the wire, his jockey, Jerry Fernando, stood tall in the stirrups, saluting the crowd with his whip hand held high, while those in the enclosures roared back their approval.

  I noticed that the green and yellow silks finished fourth, collecting a hundred grand for the man in the striped shoes. Perhaps he’d be happy but, in this race, as in every other, winning was everything. Unlike in Formula One, there are no trophies in horseracing for coming second.

  The jockeys pulled up their exhausted mounts right in front of me, each of them bar one with a hard-luck story of how they maybe didn’t get a clean run down the stretch, or were hampered on the rail in the turn, or the track was too dry, or a hundred other reasons why they didn’t win.

  But for the connections of Fire Point, all their Christmases had come at once, as their champion racehorse was led to the Kentucky Derby winner’s circle to be draped across the withers with the traditional three-metre-long garland of red roses.

  The race wasn’t called the ‘Run for the Roses’ for nothing.

  LEG 2:

  THE PREAKNESS STAKES

  ‘The Run for the Black-Eyed Susans’

  A mile and three-sixteenths

  Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore, Maryland

  Two weeks after the Kentucky Derby

  First run in 1873

  14

  ‘Can you ride?’