My first visit to the Kentucky Derby

Regardless of whether or not he goes on to win the Triple Crown, California Chrome is already a great American story. In a sport dominated by wealthy dudes who spend millions of dollars to secure horses from the most pristine bloodlines, Chrome was born in 2011 to a mare that cost $8,000.

On Saturday, he dominated the Kentucky Derby with 164,906 people in attendance at Churchill Downs. Donovan and I were two of those people.

In Britain, horse racing is considered “the sport of kings.” Across many beaten down racetracks in the United States, however, it might more appropriately be called “the sport of degenerate gamblers.”

But Churchill Downs is certainly a venue worthy of kings. It is immaculate, from its famous twin spires overlooking the grandstand to its regal main entrance gate. Walking into Churchill Downs feels like walking into a palace, not a racetrack.

The track’s infield sits in the shadow of a new HD video board, 171 feet long, on which patrons can watch the action. This is good, because the infield offers patrons very few views of the actual racing surface. The grandstand is for the bourgeois, the infield is for the working man. If California Chrome were a human attending the Derby, I’d imagine that he would be in the infield.

The infield is also for people who like to accompany their horse racing with a few (or a dozen) alcoholic beverages. Although, with mint juleps selling for $12 (but you get to keep the glass!) and domestic beers for $8, the working men and women of the infield (who also pay $50 just to get in the door) are wise to enjoy a few beverages at home or on their way into Churchill Downs.

With regard to this latter point, it wasn’t clear to me if Louisville relaxes their open container laws on Derby weekend, or if the police just don’t bother enforcing them. Either way, there was plenty of drinking and selling of alcohol on the sidewalks outside the track.

On the day of the Derby, which is always the first Saturday in May, racing begins at 10:30 am. In the morning, races go off about every half hour. Eventually, that slows to about every hour. The Kentucky Derby was the eleventh (but not final) race of the day, and it went off at about 6:30 pm.

So how does one pass the time in the infield between arriving at Churchill Downs and the main event? Donovan and I had a pretty standardized cycle: We’d visit the betting windows (the lines were fairly long), stop in the restroom (the lines were fortunately not very long at all), grab a drink (again, no lines), and then return to our spot in the grass where we’d watch the next race on the video board. After pretty much every race, we’d repeat that cycle.

Other possible activities included sampling a wide variety of food vendors, visiting the paddock area behind the grandstand (which is extremely crowded), and chatting up the rest of the people who were there, which included a large number of people from the greater Cleveland area.

Besides all that, the infield is a great place to kick back, relax, and enjoy the fine Kentucky weather. We were fortunate to be there on a day when it was 70 degrees and sunny.

When that sun finally did begin to set, and the 140th Kentucky Derby began, the infield, the grandstand, and the millions of people watching on television anxiously awaited an answer to the same question: Is this horse from California the real deal?

Two minutes and three seconds after the start of the race, we all had our answer: YES. He hadn’t lost a race all year, but he came to Kentucky with plenty of question marks. I, for one, was very curious about how a horse would respond to a dramatic change in time zones. But the way that he simply ran away from the rest of the elite field when he needed to answered any and all of those questions.

I would love nothing more than for my first Kentucky Derby experience to have been an historic one. If California Chrome can win his next two races, that will be exactly what it was.

[On a personal note, I want to thank my friend Kate who was awesome enough to drive me to Kentucky, and also host us at her mom's house.]