Having quite possibly just won a daily double at one of England’s finest turf courses, the incomparable Winston Churchill once said of our most majestic four-legged friends: “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”
And never do horses stir more men and women than today, the first Saturday in May, with the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby.
At 6:24 EDT this evening, 20 of the world’s finest 3-year-old thoroughbreds will break from Churchill Downs’ famed starting gates (the name has nothing to do with the legendary British prime minister, by the way), all hopeful of finishing the mile-and-a-quarter race in under two minutes.
Let one of them accomplish that goal and it should be enough to deliver him the blanket of red roses reserved for the winner, since only three horses in Derby history — Secretariat, Sham (which finished second to Secretariat in 1973) and 2001 winner Monarchos — have broken 120 seconds.
Such uncertainty and intrigue is why the race often is called the most exciting two minutes in sports. And why, for all the troubles currently befalling the horse-racing industry in general, the Derby largely has been immune to such concerns, its long history and once-a-year charm enough to keep it among the nation’s top 11 non-NFL watched events in 2013.