The "Sport" of Kings

The hoopla over the Kentucky Derby, and all horseracing for that matter, escapes me.  I don’t envy the swells with the disposable income to waste on parties and three-year olds, and I thank God I don’t feel the need to pull off a daily trifecta.  It’s all the stuff they don’t show at the Derby that bothers me.

A very long time ago, I was a reporter for a suburban Chicago newspaper, which covered the wonderful town of Cicero.  For some reason I can no longer recall, I found myself at Sportsman’s Park race track.  What I do remember are the track’s dirt—the same color brown as in the infield at Comiskey Park—and the backstretch, where track workers lived.  It looked like Skid Row in cinderblock. 

Hardly anybody in horseracing makes money, but somehow breeders manage to live a whole lot better than the stable boys.  The same goes for the horses.  Sea Biscuit, Secretariat, Man ’O War—only the winners get remembered in a sport that punishes its also-rans.  Athletes retire to a new life; retired horses can only hope they get to live with an owner who has the means and desire to care for them.  Why do you think it’s so hard to close down horse slaughterhouses?

So, pardon me if I didn’t watch the Derby and don’t know the name of the winner.  But I do wonder about the seventeen horses that finished out of the money.