“Kentucky Derby Runs from Affirmed to Hot Rod Charlie” 

May 1, 2021

Boat Racing LLC and 2x Derby Winner Doug O’Neill Bring Back Memories 

Churchill Downs, Louisville - Growing up as a a kid in the 70’s, I played  and watched plenty of football and basketball and baseball, and as a Southern Californian, volleyball was always part of my world.  Fortunately, the Rams, Dodgers and Lakers, along with UCLA and USC, were taking turns at championship seasons and compelling story lines.  But there were three other sports, ones I didn’t play or know a whole lot about, that grabbed my attention every year when their marquee events came around.

Wimbledon, the Masters and the Kentucky Derby.  I mean, if I was not playing hoops on my backyard cement or in a school parking lot, I was playing football on someones front lawn.  The way Wimbledon took care of their “lawns”, and promoted the “All England Lawn Tennis Championships” grabbed my attention.  The Masters?  Oh, well now, that was beyond legit.  I mean, besides a trophy, when you win this golf tournament you get a green jacket, a coin and you get to pick the menu of the following years “champions dinner”, where only previous winners attend in their green jackets.  

These traditions played out later in life. I used to run a tournament called “The McDonald’s Cup”, which was billed as the “largest blacktop middle school volleyball tournament in the country”.  If you have to play on a black top parking lot, you might as well treat it like it’s Wimbledon’s lawn.  The winners of this 8th grade Catholic school classic won t-shirts with “McD Cup Champions” on the back (green jackets) and the following year, their school team got free Egg McMuffins prior to the start of the event at the McDonald’s that was next door to the school.  Look, if you are a 13 year-old kid in a one of a kind T-shirt eating an Egg McMuffin in a dirty booth alongside some of the early rising homeless people in Venice, the obvious next stop on your athletic career is probably the Masters.

Then there’s the Kentucky Derby.  The premier horse race held each year on the first weekend of May at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.  “America’s Greatest Race” run on “the World’s Most Legendary Racetrack” is the best when it comes to tradition.

First, I was fascinated that horses were considered “athletes”.  I thought about that for a second, figured that’s how they roll in Kentucky, so, I was all in.  Next, the tag line of “the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” was brilliant!  How do you think I came up with a tag line like “the World’s Largest Backyard Volleyball Tournament” for the Venice Backyard Championships?  

“The Derby”, which is a cool nickname, was also known as the “Run for the Roses”, and it was the horse who got the roses draped over them.  Gotta like that.  The only thing I knew about roses then was that the Rose Bowl was the football game USC needed to win and that as a kid, my next door neighbor Mrs. Delaugarie wouldn’t give my ball back if it went over the fence and landed in her prized bed of roses.

The Kentucky Derby was first run in 1875.  Wait…what?  That was before Rutherford B. Hayes stole the presidential election!  Or perhaps it because Samuel J. Tilden stepped aside so reconstruction troops would be removed and Jim Crow could be set loose?  I digress, but the point is, that was a long time ago!  It was Meriwether Lewis Clark, grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, who go the whole Derby thing rolling.  Do you think he might have had something to prove considering his grandfathers success or perhaps because he had to deal with the first name of Meriwether growing up?  Nonetheless, he created something that stands tall through the ages.  

The traditions and the rules fascinated me.  One and one quarter mile long race, got it.  Only three year olds?  You mean, these horse-athletes only only get one shot at this?  It’s the first leg of the triple crown, the mint juleps, the hats, the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home” (back when the group singing of minstrel songs was overlooked), it was all so overwhelming and so exciting for one two minute race!

Sitting in front of my parents front room color-TV ( I had the old black and white in my room), I recall the first Derby I watched in 1973.  Jack Whitaker hosted the show on CBS.  Whitaker was a decorated WWII vet who also called football games, so I liked his style.  Secretariat won and would go on to win the Triple Crown.  That feat, which includes winning the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont, was rare.  Well, not so rare that Seattle Slew and Affirmed didn’t do it in 1977 and 1978.  

After those days, I rarely missed watching a Derby on TV, scrambling after playing or coaching some sport to get to a set to watch.  I handed off my enthusiasm for this unique event to whoever would listen, which includes my kids, who had to listen to me, theoretically.  But what stands above it all was my wife Christine’s 30th birthday and our quest to see the race in person.  

Thanks to our friends Bob and Wanda Blanford, we made a pilgrimage in 2005.  They made arrangements for us to stay at their home near Churchill Downs, we attended pre-race festivities on Friday and then, on Saturday, we were going to the 131st “Run for the Roses”.   

Wanda dropped us off early at the front gate, we grabbed a spot along the fence and enjoyed one of the best days of our life.  11 races precede the 12th race, which is the Derby Race.  We wore hats, enjoyed mint juleps and meat sandwiches and we especially enjoyed the craziness of the infield.  The infield was not too far removed from the Venice Boardwalk scene we knew so well, just with less people of color and different insanity taking place.  Then, as the 12th race, “the Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” came near, the crowd swelled and the tension in the air was suffocating, I felt like I was about to play the biggest game of my life.  

I am not a gambler but, when in Rome…I threw down my last $50 on a horse called Giacomo to win.  My advanced reasoning was as follows:  $50 x 50 to 1 odds is $2500.  That would pay for our trip and then some.  Also, I coached a kid named Giacomo.  That was about all I could muster up as “intel” after a long day of juleps and meat.

The horses walk from the Paddock to the track was followed by the “Riders Up” call, then the crowd of 156,000 sings “My Old Kentucky Home” (old school lyrics), by this time we are smothered by more fans.  Pushed up against the fence, we can see only a portion of the track, but we can watch the race start on the jumbo screen above us, then as the horses turn in front of us #10 bursts through the crowd and goes from 18th place to first place as the fans roar.  Giacomo wins!

Unreal.  I grab the cash and somehow, Christine goes next level thinking and takes us through an exit out to the street and we avoid the other 156,000 people and their stampede.  Wanda finds us and takes us back to the Blanford home.  Perfection.  

To this day, the Derby stands atop all of the sporting events I have ever attended, which include all the biggies, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, World Series and NBA Finals.  My love affair with the Derby, and of course my wife, had reached new heights.  We make it a point to call Bob and Wanda each “Derby Day” since that one and check in.

Around this time, I hadn’t quite realized that my long time friend Mark Verge had become a part owner of horses and Doug O’Neill, Mark’s fellow St. Monica High School buddy, was a trainer extraordinaire.  My interest grew more as their horses ascended the ranks.  My affection for the sport was still mostly focused on the Derby and then the quest for the triple crown, but it was fun to follow Doug’s horses in the LA Times Sports section.  

In 2012, I was pumped when Doug was the trainer and “I’ll Have Another” won the Derby and the Preakness.  In 2016, O’Neill was in the winners circle again as Nyquist captured the 142nd “Run for the Roses”.  O’Neill, both a friend and guest on my show, told me about his nephew Patrick and his football teammates from Brown University buying in on a colt.  That colt, trained by Doug, is now going off at 6-1 to win this years Kentucky Derby.

Hot Rod Charlie and the ownership team of Boat Racing, LLC is an incredible story, one that has been featured all over sports media after the horse qualified for this years Kentucky Derby.  I especially enjoyed the John Cherwa written article in the LA Times Sports section.  Describing the day poll positions were selected, Cherwa wrote, “The usually staid but murmuring crowd was punctuated by loud hollering brought on by youthful exuberance when Hot Rod Charlie drew the nine.  The horse is partly owned by five former Brown University Football players, all in their late 20's, who go by the name of Boat Racing, after a college beer drinking game".

Doug O’Neill is in the hunt for another win at Churchill Downs.  The Boat Racing LLC boys remind us what smart, young and  enthusiastic people can do.  Kind of like Meriwhether Lewis Clark.  

Today is “Derby Day”.  It is also Christine’s birthday.  That qualifies today as of the best days of the year. 

Riders up!

• Denny Lennon is the host of YouTube Live Shows and the Video Podcast, “Sports Stories with Denny Lennon”

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