FIVE. OH! TOO…

FIVE.

1. 2020, in three press releases from Churchill Downs:

 

March 17: “The 146th Kentucky Derby will be rescheduled.”

 

Aug. 21: “COVID-19 cases…Derby without spectators.”

 

Sept. 3: “Inequality that exists…some who disagree with our decision to run the Kentucky Derby this year…voices that tell us we have not successfully created an environment in which everyone feels welcome or included.”

 

 

2. For 100 days, Louisvillians have been shouting Breonna Taylor’s name in the streets, and those protests are expected to surround the track tomorrow on Derby Day. (The Killing of Breonna Taylor, a New York Times doc, will air tonight on FX, and you’ll also be able to watch it on Hulu.) In the New York Times, turf writer Joe Drape has a story about Greg Harbut, “the rare Black owner of a horse (longshot Necker Island) in America’s biggest race” who “is hearing calls that he should boycott.” Drape writes, “But how, Harbut asks, can he be expected to give up his hard-won seat in the owner’s box beneath Churchill Downs’s iconic Twin Spires? His grandfather Tom could not even sit in the grandstand to watch the 1962 Derby.

 

“Jim Crow laws and ostracism in the sport pushed Black riders out of the saddle and into the barns as manual laborers, or to Europe, where they were more widely accepted. Their history has been mostly erased over the last 100 years, but the virulent sentiment that made it vanish is very much alive in the sport.”

 

 

3. Managing editor Mary Chellis Nelson catches up with a woman who won’t be inside Churchill on Derby Day for the first time in a half-century:
 
Ginny Keen has embellished her outrageous Derby hat for 51 years. This year’s get-up involves two stuffed-animal horses on leashes — one with a tutu, one with a blanket of roses, both with hats of their own. I wrote a piece about Keen in 2019 and recently got a call from her after Churchill announced fans would not be allowed to attend the races this weekend. Keen, a perennial infielder, and her son (it’ll be his 21st Derby) will still head to the track Saturday morning. “So we can say we went,” she says. “If we don’t go inside, does that count as going to the Derby?”

— MCN

4. And now, a quick game: Derby winner or Louisville mayor?

 

1. Joe Cotton
2. John Joyes
3. John Bucklin
4. John Barbee
5. Ben Ali
6. Ben Brush
7. Philip Tomppert
8. Lieut. Gibson
9. Judge Himes
10. George Smith
11. Paul Jones
12. Huston Quin
13. Clyde Van Dusen
14. W. A. Cocke

 

Answers:
1, horse; 2, mayor; 3, M; 4, M; 5, H; 6, H; 7, M; 8, H; 9, H; 10, H and M! (George Smith the horse was named after a multi-millionaire gambler and racing enthusiast; Mayor George Weissinger Smith was a Republican whose one term was marked by World War I efforts and a 40-percent increase in the city’s size); 11, H; 12, M; 13, H; 14, M

 

 

5. Yesterday, I had Emilia, my first-grader, and Miles, my three-year-old, handicap this year’s field of Derby horses, presented in order of post position.

 

Finnick the Fierce (since scratched)
Emilia: “Oooooh, cool. I like it. It’s fierce. Kinda like a tiger.”

 

Max Player
E: [The equivalent of  🤷‍♀️]

 

Enforceable
E: “It starts with an E!”
M: “Like a force!”
E: “I think it could win.”
M: “I do too.”

 

Storm the Court
M: “Before you read this one right now, I think it’s gonna lose.”
E: “That one could be the winner, I think.”
M: “I think that one’s a loser. They do have cool names.”
E: “Yeah, different than people’s names.”
M: “Do they have masks on?”

 

Major Fed
M: “Do you know why I like horses so much? They gallop everywhere and throw dust up into the air.”
E: “That one seems warm and cozy. He might look cute.”
M: “Fed — like eating? I am hungry.”

 

King Guillermo (since scratched)
E: “That’s a long name.”
M: “He sounds like a king.”
E: “The king of all horses.”

 

Money Moves
E: “Sounds rich.”
M: “So much money.”

 

South Bend
E: “He sounds like he lives really far away.”
M: “Ben from the movie Descendants?”
E: “Daddy, Ben is Mal’s boyfriend.”

 

Mr. Big News
E: “He sounds like he’s big.”
M: “No, no, no. He sounds like he’s a moose. Uh, oh, Daddy: Are you gonna send that?”

 

Thousand Words
E: “Maybe he talks a lot.”
M: “Or is he the age of a thousand?”

 

Necker Island
E: “Looooong neck.”
M: “A giraffe, I think.”
E: “On the island, maybe he lives by a large palm tree or something.”

 

Sole Volante
E: “Is that Spanish?”

 

Attachment Rate
E: “Wait, I have one more thing to say about the Spanish one. Muy bien.”

 

Winning Impression
M: “Winning! Sounds like a winner!”

 

NY Traffic
E: “I bet Miles could ride him in the Derby because he loves cars.”

 

Honor A.P.
M: “Pee-pee?”

 

Tiz the Law
E: “Twizzlers.”
M: “If I give him one he’d eat it.”

 

Authentic
E: “Hmmmm.”
M: “Ummmm.”
E: “Oh, I got it! I know what I want to say now. Wait, what’s his name again?”

 

Their trifecta, in order: 1. Enforceable; 2. Money Moves; 3. NY Traffic.