THE ONLY SAFE KENTUCKY DERBY: THROW A PARTY WITH MECHANICAL HORSES

It’s shocking to know the Run for the Roses continues, despite seven deaths in 10 days last year and several more during another tragic summer, prompting me to suggest a race without any real animals

     For her, go with an elephantine hat, a pastel in chilled blue and a flapover shoulder bag. For him, a brackish bow tie graces a seersucker blazer, a fedora and anything non-Aaron Rodgers. This is what folks should wear Saturday to the 150th Kentucky Derby, which includes a new $200-million paddock at Churchill Downs, where horses are lined up like football players entering new stadiums as people peer through glass.

     The Twin Spires are in play, reminding us that the series has been around long before universities were trashed by scandals, homeless slept in tents and presidential warfare haunts our every twist. Perhaps we can view the Derby just as a bash, as it was before crooks ruined the beautiful vision of thoroughbred racers. Fun still can be achieved, not only in Louisville but in hot spots throughout the land. And if we can focus on drinking glasses and fashion items, let’s sip mint juleps and much better potions and hope 2023 somehow remains in the distant past.

     If that isn’t a wretched life absurdity.

     A complete abolishment of the sport should have been underway last year. To watch seven horses die in 10 days, including Chloe’s Dream and Freezing Point before the race, was an assassination for humans who care about the welfare of animals and the truthful concept of competition. Didn’t it make much more sense to let 150,000 party and watch mechanical colts? The sinful trainer with the pasty white hair, Bob Baffert, was run off the Kentucky track but was allowed to race at the Preakness Stakes, where one of his colts died before he won the second leg of the Triple Crown. Then the Belmont Stakes lost two horses to death, before 14 horses died at Saratoga Race Course. Welcome to the summer of rot, portrayed in recent days by the New York Times in a documentary called “Broken Horses.” Watch the program.

     You will wonder, like me, why we have a Run for the Roses. NBC is in full bloom, with Mike Tirico on an overactive chemical as the network pays for a deal that expires next year. They might celebrate a victory involving Mike Repole, whose horse, Forte, was a favorite last year until he was scratched by disturbed veterinarians. He wouldn’t grant time this week to the Times, which covered Forte’s positive test for meloxicam, yet somehow, Repole returns and could win with Fierceness. Tom Brady is engaged in a sneaker business with him. Rick Pitino, the St. John’s basketball coach, trusts him with NIL donations. Can you imagine this man fixing a broken industry, as he aims?

     “You want real or you want fake??? You want loud or you want quiet??? You want intensity or you want passive???” Repole wrote on X. “You want better or you want worse??? Love me or Hate me.”

     Can we just ignore him? Or will he become the latest ragdoll to win? Baffert remains sidelined after stripped Derby winner Medina Spirit tested positive in 2021. He lied in claiming he didn’t use betamethasone for a rash, only to admit it later, which allowed Churchill Downs Inc. to ban him. Welcome to Year Three. “A trainer who is unwilling to accept responsibility for multiple drug test failures in our highest-profile races cannot be trusted to avoid future misconduct,” CDI said. “Mr. Baffert will remain suspended from entering horses at all tracks owned by CDI through 2024. After such time, we will re-evaluate his status.”

     How nice if a fresh champion emerged when racing needs him most? Jayson Werth would generate cheers. He entered the game after an accomplished baseball career, winning a World Series in Philadelphia and signing a $126 million deal with Washington. He will cheer for his horse, Dornoch, running from the first gate. Didn’t Babe Ruth once hang out at the track? Imagine if Werth wipes out the Bafferts and Repoles.

     “It has some fragrance of the World Series,” he told the Associated Press. “Things are totally different now. We’re at the barns, roads are blocked off, there’s security everywhere. It’s definitely heightened, and you get the sense, ‘This is it, this is the highest level of the sport.’ It’s surreal: We kind of got into this as a hobby, and it’s turned into a passion. I’ve got a passion for the sport like I would’ve never thought, and I want to share it with the world.”

     Let’s pray we get through the day. The FBI oversaw dope slime on the East Coast, a probe that could be repeated anywhere. Investigations have prompted no answers, with Lisa Lazarus saying little as CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. “We certainly have a whole lot more work to do,” she said after compiling a 197-page report. “When we say there’s not one singular factor that caused the breakdowns, it doesn’t mean we don’t know what the risk factors are that contribute to breakdowns. Those are things we’ve been working on very hard.”

     They should keep trying. The morning sun rises in hours.

     Mike Smith has won the Derby twice as a jockey. He knows the worst is possible. “It’s a wonderful, beautiful, beautiful game, but it can also be very dangerous,” he said. “We certainly need all these protocols.”

     I will have fun. I will drink and eat.

     I will not watch. That’s my Derby day.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.