If you’re a three-year-old colt in Stickney, Illinois, the ticket to Louisville, Kentucky, is winning the Illinois Derby.
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Last year’s winner, Sweetnorthernsaint, was the Kentucky Derby favorite. This year Todd Pletcher, one of the top trainers in America, split up his best three-year-olds to give himself two chances at a Kentucky Derby starter. Any Given Saturday ran in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct in New York (a race once won by Secretariat). Cowtown Cat was sent to Stickney.
“Where did all these people come from?” I asked my gambling buddy, McChump. “They’re here for the camel and ostrich races,” he said.
The ostrich race was more exciting than the Illinois Derby and more honest than the camel race. Two ostriches threw their jockeys, but winner Pecky Hart (named after Hawthorne’s director of mutuels, Michael P. “Packy” Hart) got the smoothest ride I saw on any animal all day. His jockey leaned back in the saddle, sitting like a harness driver, perfectly in rhythm with his mount’s bobbling gait. “How’d you do on that race?” I asked Scott “the Professor” McMannis, who teaches a handicapping class before the races. “I had the exacta,” he said, grinning.
