Felix Francis - Triple Crown

I sampled a small amount and pulled a face.

Frank guffawed loudly. ‘I reckon it’s an acquired taste.’

I concentrated on the eggs and bacon.

‘Eat up yer grits, man. They’re good for you,’ he said, shovelling another great spoonful of the white stuff into his mouth. ‘Full of iron.’

I’d have rather chewed on a rusty nail for my iron than eat grits, but the rest of the meal was excellent and I was soon fit to burst.

‘It’s a tradition,’ Frank said, forcing in yet another mouthful. ‘It wouldn’t be the Derby without a breakfast at Wagner’s.’

Clearly everyone agreed with him and soon a line had formed out on the sidewalk as people waited their turn to get in. As it was, not a spare inch of floor space was wasted with horsemen, media and a few brave tourists crammed together at tables so close together that no one had enough elbow room to cut their bacon.

And it was noisy too, with most of the banter being about the chances of the various horses in the following day’s big race.

‘Fire Point, that big chestnut colt of George Raworth’s, will surely canter up,’ said one man on my left. ‘Destroyed the field in the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct in March.’

‘He’s no chance,’ called the waitress as she delivered more breakfasts. ‘He’s drawn in Gate One and everyone knows that being on the rail is not good. He’ll be swamped in the early running.’

Racing really was the religion in these parts come early May.

‘Did you hear that Ryder was shot seven times,’ said someone behind me. ‘Twice in the head, poor man. Killed him instantly, apparently.’

‘He shouldn’t have tried to stick one of them Feds with a pitchfork,’ said someone else. ‘He had it coming, if you ask me.’

Nobody did, and most of the sympathy was clearly with the dead trainer. Overall, however, I was amazed that Ryder’s death hadn’t caused greater disquiet among the racing fraternity. They seemed to take it in their stride, almost as if sudden violent death was an expected part of the business. Of course, it was, but not often for the human participants.

‘I fancy Liberty Song for the Derby.’ The man on the other side of us said it to no one in particular. ‘He was truly brilliant in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland last month. Won by five lengths easing up.’

‘But he had no competition,’ claimed a man sitting further beyond him. ‘I reckon it will be one of those two West Coast horses that’ll clean up this year.’

Racing chat was the same the world over as punters tried to pick a winner.

The truth was that the starters in the Kentucky Derby were all potential champions. They were the best three-year-old horses in North America, each of them having had to qualify through outstanding performances in some of thirty-five other major stakes races held at tracks all over the country. Points were awarded for the first four home in each race and the top twenty points holders were entitled to a place in the Derby starting gate.

This year there were four horses with far more points than any of the others but that was no guarantee of success. In 2009, the $1.4million prize was carried off by a gelding called Mine That Bird, which had been bought as a yearling for only $9,500. His career before the Derby had not been spectacular, finishing last in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, but he scraped into the Derby field with a win in the Grey Stakes at Woodbine and a fourth-place finish in the Sunland Derby in New Mexico.

No one gave the horse a chance, the press being far more interested in the trainer, Chip Woolley Jr, who had driven the horse himself the 21-hour, 1,700-mile trip from his home to Louisville in a horse trailer attached to a pickup truck, and with his broken foot in a cast to boot.

Yet, Mine That Bird, stone last and so far out of the running for the first half of the race that he didn’t even appear in the TV coverage, slipped through an opening on the rail at the top of the final stretch and romped home to win by six and three-quarter lengths, the longest margin of victory in over sixty years, and at a price of fifty-to-one. It was a lesson in not writing off any of the starters.

Frank and I finished our breakfast and gave up our seats to the next two in the ever-growing queue. He had been absolutely right about beating the rush.

‘Where to now?’ asked Frank as we climbed back into the Suburban.

‘You’re the expert,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been here before.’

He drove us round to the front entrance of Churchill Downs.

‘You’ll never find anywhere to park,’ I said. ‘It’s the Oaks today.’

The Oaks was sometimes called the Fillies’ Derby. It was raced over the exact same course and distance some twenty-four hours earlier, but was reserved for three-year-old female horses.

Frank just smiled at me. Oaks Day was second only to Derby Day itself as a crowd-puller, not least because if you wanted to buy a Derby ticket, you had to buy one for the Oaks as well. Most racegoers, therefore, made a two-day trip of it.

But that didn’t seem to worry Frank.

A quick flash of his ‘FACSA Special Agent’ metal badge and we were welcomed into the restricted parking lot with open arms.

The same tactic allowed us not only to gain entry to the public enclosures but also to jump the sizable line, and to get in for free. It seemed that the simple words ‘security check’, together with the badge, was an automatic ‘Open Sesame’ to every cave of treasures.

‘He’s with me,’ Frank said, when one of the staff asked for my non-existent ticket. I could get used to this, I thought but, to be fair, I too had an ‘access all areas’ pass for every racecourse in Britain.

Even though it was still well before nine o’clock, Churchill Downs was beginning to fill up. The entrance gates had opened at eight and many had been queuing for several hours before that for general admission tickets. Indeed, even twenty-four hours ahead, there was already a line for Derby Day with some hardy folk staking their place early so they could be first through the gates the following morning.

General admission ticket holders did not get a seat and were not able to get much of a view of the track itself, but that didn’t seem to dampen their spirits. They were there to see, and to be seen with, the rich and famous.

‘General admission tickets also give access to the infield through the tunnel,’ Frank said. ‘About seventy thousand will cram into there tomorrow and hardly any of them will even get to see a horse, let alone the race. Most come only to drink and get laid. It’s like a big frat party. The bars open at eight in the morning and everyone’s drunk by lunchtime.’

‘It must be hell if it rains,’ I said.

‘It is hell anyway,’ Frank said, laughing. ‘When it rains the women wrestle in the mud. When it’s dry, they just wrestle. It’s a complete nightmare.’

It was far removed from my mental image of Kentucky Derby Day, with gentlemen in seersucker suits and ladies in haute couture and fine hats, all of them sipping traditional Derby mint juleps.

‘Come on,’ said Frank. ‘Let’s go check out the upper echelons.’

The metal special agent badge again worked wonders as we rose in a special VIP elevator directly to the top floor of the clubhouse, to Millionaires Row and the even-more-exclusive ‘The Mansion at Churchill Downs’, where the admission charge was so high that, if you queried the $700 tab for a single bottle of bubbly, you plainly couldn’t afford it.

We wandered round on the deep-pile carpet between the lush leather seating of the dining area, and then out onto the spectacular terrace doing our ‘security check’. The view was indeed as stunning as the price.