Paul Moran's Derby Beat

Dawn broke over Churchill Downs this morning muted by a thick, low cloud cover. The soaking rain that began on Friday continued, offering the occasional hopeful respite only to resume tauntingly. Weather forecasters, generally no more reliable than handicappers, predict that the rain will end sometime this morning. Meanwhile, the 20 horses who will contest the 134th Kentucky Derby -- one of which will answer the question central to horse racing in America – are but a matter of hours from the most important two minutes of their lives.

Louisville stirs to life and runs to windows to check the weather. The connections of the Derby horses shared a restless sleep. One will find an answer to a question asked long ago, an answer shared by the few who know the feeling of winning the Kentucky Derby.

There is no written record of the event, but at some point in the dark reaches of history, one Bedouin said to another, “my horse is faster than your horse,” and racing was born. Sometime later, the first bet on the outcome of a horse race was arranged when the challenged Bedouin answered, “Two camels and a useful young slave say you’re wrong.” The coincidental marriage of equine athleticism and gambling that would endure the rises and falls of many civilizations was consummated.

The bond between horse and human had already been forged but racing gave the relationship a new dimension. At the outset of the 21st Century, organized racing is common to almost every culture on Earth, an endeavor that blurs the lines of religious, political, and ideological confrontation by bringing together people like-minded if only in this respect from every social and economic strata who share the dream and ask the same question.

What if?

This question is the essence of life at the races, the one considered again and again by anyone who has not given up, surrendered to overwhelming odds, traded uncertainty, romance, and the perpetual dance with oblivion for the most mundane trappings of security. There is no correct answer, no map, manual, moment of enlightenment or spiritual rebirth at which all truth is revealed, but at the moment you stop asking yourself, “what if?” you are staring into the cold, grim eyes of hopelessness.

It is a question, of course, that has propelled the imaginative mind of every persuasion, partner of necessity, mother of invention and occasionally of inspiration. It has driven explorers and scientists, poets and those responsible for every advance in mousetrap technology, but these are the exceptions in the world beyond the stable gates: the leaders, the discoverers, the inventors, visionaries of every discipline and the great despots. Theirs is a world in which all questions result eventually in answers.

Racing in all its facets is deliciously uncertain, the triumphant moments fleeting and compelling, the despair. A good horse, it is said, can come from anywhere, but disappointment comes from everywhere. At the racetrack, all truth except the answer to the sport’s great question is temporary.

Those with lives tethered to the fortune of racehorses, if only to the uncertainty of attempting to forecast the results of races before they are run, who do not awaken with that question on their minds knowing that they are unlikely ever to experience the ultimate “what if” moment -- when the answer is revealed in a tsunami of adrenaline -- face a measured future and anyone with two dollars who does, has a puncher’s chance.

At the racetrack, everyone is a dreamer. Whether in the cloak of eternal optimist or dour fatalist, for the overwhelming majority the best day they will ever have is forever tomorrow unless it is the first Saturday of May… and that day is today, a brass ring snatched from the ether.

This is an enterprise vibrant in color both literal and figurative; a game at once violent and charmingly subtle, a balance of bravado and finesse as nuanced and fragile as antique lace. When the stars are favorably aligned and your meagerly bred horse blossoms into a stakes-class runner that brings the minions of Arab royalty to the doorstep with staggering offers; when a miraculous seam opens on the rail and your hopelessly trapped horse wins a race when all appeared lost; when the animal you have backed gets its nose down first at the wire -- when you get the money – you have the answer, if only for the moment. Tomorrow raises the same questions, but the answers will be different and the renewed search for temporary truth no less sweetly alluring.

The cumulative subconscious response to racing’s central query is the life force that rules every aspect of the business and propels it to meet the demon of daily uncertainty. It is responsible for every mating, every decision to buy a horse and each consideration made in the management of its frail future. It explains why people leave their beds at 4 a.m. to care for regal animals whose hearts are engorged with bloodlines that trace through the timeless ether to the bounty of the ancient Arabian desert. It lures young people bursting with possibility to the racing life at the expense of home, education and parental approval, leads them down precarious, serpentine career paths and lives that often lead nowhere but are never misspent.

The racing muse speaks loudly. The horse has inspired artists of every discipline who have, beginning with those whose work has endured millennia on cave walls and those whose legacies survive in the ruins of ancient civilizations recorded a rich tapestry in witness to the eternally entwined history of humans and their horses. It inspires children who write sincere letters to the particularly heroic horses whose names filter into the mainstream of current events and public consciousness. The sudden outburst of speed, the purity of courage and poetry of equine grace whispers perhaps most sweetly to the young.

Today, the nation will focus on rain swept Churchill Downs, and every soul that witnesses the Derby will have asked the same question: What if?

What if I took the chance; the chance of a lifetime, the song goes, in a lifetime of chance?

And what if it led me here, to Louisville, to Churchill Downs on the first Saturday of May?

What a feeling, but beyond description. Language fails at times like these.

What if I owned a horse good enough to win the Kentucky Derby?

One horse will provide that answer, change lives, make history. Immortality waits in the shadow of the Twin Spires.

It is the first Saturday of May, 2008.

Carpe diem.