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Today is my mom’s birthday. So seeing as today is her special day, we’ll take a break from the current hot-button topics surrounding our local teams: the stagnant Tigers offense, the Pistons non-pursuit of Greg Monroe, Michigan and their search for a competent starting quarterback.
Instead, today we’ll embark on a little trip down memory lane. And with horse racing’s Triple Crown captured just a couple of weeks ago by American Pharoah, it seemed the perfect time to flash back to 1973 and my mom’s very memorable trip to Louisville to watch Secretariat race in perhaps the most famous rendition of the Kentucky Derby in history.
"It's always more fun to root for the underdog."
The day was May 5th, 1973, and Secretariat was preparing to begin his assault on horse racing's famed Triple Crown. A record crowd of 134,476 stuffed their way into the Churchill Downs infield to get a glimpse of the mammoth chestnut colt.
One horse racing aficionado described Secretariat at the time as, "A Rolls-Royce in a field of Volkswagens."
Everybody knew it was Secretariat's day. Well, almost everybody.
My mom was also in attendance at the Derby that afternoon. She has two distinct memories from that trip.
One is that she claims to have never seen a horse.
It's surely an odd sentiment coming from a person that was actually at the Kentucky Derby, but an understandable one considering the circumstances. She and her friends were amidst the throng of people elbow-to-elbow on the infield, which was not exactly "prime viewing" in terms of actually observing the action.
It would be like watching a Cubs game from the rooftop of an apartment building a half mile from Wrigley. You're there, but you're not really there. Secretariat could have been a blue horse with a bushy orange tail, and my mom would have been none the wiser. She never saw a horse.
Stepping Out On A Limb
The second recollection from that day involves her wagering strategy and the results that followed. As post time approached, Secretariat was still holding steady as a significant favorite (3-2 in most spots). Everybody was plunking down money on Big Red. It was a sure thing. But my mom had her own ideas.
She liked Warbucks. As she has told me many times in looking back at the race, "I liked the long shots.” And old Warbucks definitely was that.
It is near impossible to find exactly what odds Warbucks was getting that day (trust me, I've looked), but it is also just as impossible to find any account of anyone heading into the race that thought Warbucks had a chance. But that didn’t matter to my mom.
The race started and a couple of rabbits set the pace, leaving Secretariat and a host of others biding their time in the back. But as most of the horses began tiring and slowing their pace as the distance increased, Secretariat only got better.
He ran each quarter mile of the race just a little bit faster than the one before it. He blazed the final leg in a blistering 23 seconds, on his way to a record-setting Derby time (a record that still stands today). It was a breathtaking performance by a horse that would eventually come to be regarded as the best in the sport's history.
What About Warbucks?
What happened to that cute, little longshot that was supposed to pay my mom bundles of dollars? Turns out, Warbucks was a longshot for a reason.
There were 13 horses entered in the Kentucky Derby that day. And Warbucks finished 13th.
Dead last.
I recently came across a fairly long-winded recap of that race. Several sentences are devoted to each participant and interesting anecdotes are sprinkled throughout.
But my mom’s guy got three measly words.
The final sentence read, "Warbucks was dull."
That's it. No in-depth analysis. No explanation for his performance. Just dull.
But truth be told, how Warbucks actually performed that day really meant nothing.
My mom drove from East Lansing to Louisville, pushed and pulled her way through over one-hundred thousand sweaty fans, and spent an entire day at Churchill Downs without ever seeing a horse. That’s an accomplishment in and of itself.
After all that, there was no way she was simply going to fall in line with all of the other sheep and bet on the favorite. She liked Warbucks.
Anybody could have sidled up to the betting counter that day and threw a fiver on Secretariat. It was the safe play. He was going to win.
But as Tom Hanks so eloquently stated in Big, "What's fun about that?"
Go up to any random sports fan at the bar and ask 'em who won the '73 Derby and you're likely to get an immediate response. Everybody knows that was Secretariat's year.
But nobody knows who came in last. Except my mom.
And she's got the losing ticket to prove it.
