Mornin' Cuzzies, The Kentucky Derby each year gets me totally where I live! My crazy love for animals started w/ horses, and I came by it naturally. My grandmother, mother, and uncle all showed horses in Madison Square Garden in NYC, the pinnacle show in the country. The best of the bunch was probably my uncle who was Captain of the Polo Team at Princeton University, but we lost him in WW II in '45....an Overstreet w/ a Loveless gran. And, of course, I was thrown up on a show horse, English riding, at a very early age, and sent to the shows. My family was hysterical they had another 'horsey' one in the family! Really good horse stuff comes naturally.....I'm convinced it's in the genes. I married a rancher, who though he didn't know the front end from the back end of a horse, his father had the touch. He bought a King Ranch stallion and parked him on the ranch wherein most of the 100 head of really good looking horses they had were from this horse. But, the father died, and no one kept up the registration of the horses, etc. But, the older Mexican cowboys could tell me who belonged to whom and I registered the whole lot of them. In the meantime there was a great track in Del Rio and I became very interested in the running and training of quarter horses, and stumbled upon a brand new trainer who was just learning the game.....and the guy just had it all naturally. He could spot a winner, and those horses talked to him, I'm convinced. After several years learning the biz, he started picking horses for his owners at sales, and they started winning everything in sight. I was introducing the trainer to the boys who could afford to buy the really top quarter horse yearlings, and he as a trainer was on his way. Great stock, great skills.....unbeatable combination! Now, where does the Derby come in? Well, Todd Pletcher, Bob Blaffert, and D. Wayne Lucas, the top Derby trainers, were also from this same quarter horse tracking system......but, my trainer was handling it very nicely and beating them in the biggie quarter horse races wherein the purses were also from $1 mil to $2 mil. Actually Todd was a pup then, having just been born, but, his dad was on the track and he went on to learn the trade from Lucas. Todd's horse won the derby yesterday...... Fate has a way of putting us on life's path, through no fault our own. My trainer was beginning to talk of going on to thoroughbreds which he would have and risen to the top for his horses were beating these trainers' horses on the quarter track. But, a very strange thing happened on the way to the stars: he developed an accute case of cancer and was dead w/in the year. I on the other hand chose to get a divorce because of a very unfortunate situation, leaving my ex-husband w/ an acclaimed stallion who could have earned him betw. $20 and $40 mil, but didn't because the trainer and I, the knowledgable ones of the team, were out of the picture. And, my po ex-husband didn't have the vaguest clue, and died never knowing what he had in his hands....which was the pot from the rainbow. So, you can see why the Derby has great meaning for me......were the deck stacked differently, we would have all been at the top of thoroughbred racing, without a doubt. And, you know, I'm star-struck abt. competition, athletics, winners, and the limelight.....and there they all are: people we beat when we were running the quarter horses. Alas, not my path to trod, but I'm still captivated by the biz and very wistfully recall the wonderful aromas of a racing stable's shed row, a mixture of newly cut hay, linament, and the horses, a smell I love. I'll tell you some more tomorrow.....yes, I picked the winner yesterday, even in that slop. That's what I have a nose for! ( : Have a good one! Buckette