The run for the roses

On the first Saturday in May, in the great state of Kentucky, the crush of mint, sugar, bourbon and clinking ice cubes can be heard throughout the bluegrass landscape. Women decked out in floral hats with brims the size of your mama's coffee table, sashay back and forth, presenting a quasi millinery close encounter of the third kind! Men splashed with cologne arrive in limos and ride the escalator to their boxes. College students, a pocketful of change begging to be wagered, stand in line for hours with their coolers brimming over with sandwiches and beer. This is the day of the greatest 2 minutes in sports...the Kentucky Derby, and it's been taking place for over a century. On what was probably my favorite trip in the last decade, I was fortunate to spend a day at Churchill Downs, tour the backside where the horses are stabled, and leave my footprint on the hallowed track where the trainers and horses cross over to lead their contenders to post. My bro-in-law, the T, called his boyhood friend, a gent who sat on the Florida racing board, and he made arrangements for a table in the renovated owner's section. We dined like royalty, and at the end of the day, as the rain showers cooled humid Louisville, Dorothy and I stood on the terrace just past the finish line and watched as the horses splashed down the stretch in the Stephen Foster Handicap. Who do I like this weekend? It's a full 20 horse field. The prohibitive favorite scratched. My degenerate brain is swimming with figures. In the Kentucky Derby, it's often not the best horse that wins, it's the luckiest. The one that can carve out the trip. I like Nick Zito's horses. Ice Box. And Jackson Bend. A filly drew into the field too. But her barn is on an edgy negative karma roll. Long shots are Stately Victor, American Lion, and Backtalk. Here's looking at luck.