Genuine Risk Pays Off

Making money off the races has always been easier for me than making money on them.

My most profitable day of racing was May 3, 1980. And I don’t think I ever once saw the legendary Twin Spires.

You see, Chuck and I attended a Southern Baptist church not far from Churchill Downs. For years, the church had parked cars headed for the Kentucky Derby in its parking lot, raising money to send teens such as Chuck and me and Sandy and Susan and Todd and Roger and Danny and Slick to Ridgecrest, a summer camp in the North Carolina mountains. That winter, the deacons decided that it was hypocritical to make money off something they were fundamentally against—gambling and the infield shenanigans that came with the Derby—and they would no longer allow visitors seeking debauchery to park in their lot.

STEPHEN M. VEST, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

I really don’t know whose idea it was, but the church had an auxiliary parking lot down thestreet from the church, and Chuck and I figured no one would think to guard it against the lowly sinners. We got up at 3 a.m. and bought a couple of cases of water bottles and all the Courier-Journals we could find. By 4 a.m., we were at the auxiliary parking lot, charging $20 to $100 for cars, trucks and recreational vehicles to park. We sold the 25-cent Derby Day papers for $1 and the lukewarm water for 50 cents. “Can you believe people are paying so much for water?” Chuck asked.

“Imagine if we had beer.” “Shh, we’re baptists.” By 9 a.m., the parking lot was stuffed, and we were gone.

That afternoon, fittingly, Genuine Risk took command entering the stretch and won the Kentucky Derby, becoming the first filly since Regret in 1915 to do so. The chestnut mare dispatched a 13-horse field in Derby 106 that included a horse named Plugged Nickle.

Our genuine risk paid handsomely, enough that I could have paid several years of my college tuition or started a bottled-water operation if I had been so forward thinking.

Any day we come home from the track with nearly as much money as we took with us we consider a winning day. The only profitable day I can rustle up from my memory was the sunny day of my November evening wedding. In my memory, I placed everything I had left on an eighth-race long shot named Steve’s Special Day. In the story I often tell, I made enough to pay for most, if not all, of our honeymoon trip to Florida.

Trouble is, there was no such horse. I thought, well, maybe his name was Steve’s Special, and he was ridden by Pat Day. In the program it would read Steve’s Special—Day, right?

Time has a way of playing tricks on you. According to Paul Gregory of The Blood-Horse magazine, my memory is flawed. After minutes of extensive research, Gregory concluded that I probably had bet on Alter Image, a son of Blushing Groom, in the first race. At some point, I bet on Don’t Hesitate and then stumbled into an exacta bet in the fifth race on Steven’s Supreme at $4.40- to-1, with Skins at $31.60-to-1. Skins won the race, with Steven’s Supreme coming in second. “I’m not sure that would have covered your entire honeymoon,” Paul said, “but it would have covered a round or two of drinks.”

Paul doesn’t understand that our honeymoon suite came with a stipulation that we sit through a timeshare sales presentation.

Gramps, my wife’s dad, was always one for picking horses by their names. It wasn’t because of any personal connection to the name. He believed there is a code known only to the underground.

In a race with a heavy favorite, if there were two horses with similar names, let’s say Katy’s Kitten and Katy’s Cupcake, he was certain that a syndicate of gangsters was behind the two long shots. The names were the key to the fix. I’m not sure there is any validity to his belief, but he won more often than he lost.

It is probably fair to say that my often-shared, yet incorrect, experience has influenced my children. During a recent trip to Churchill Downs, there was a horse running named Shut Up Chris. My son, Christopher, asked if I thought he should bet on the horse, being that it was such a long shot. “I would,” I said. He did—to show—but his youngest sister, who frequently uses the phrase “Shut up, Chris,” put $5 across the board on the Indiana gelding. Christopher’s $15 show bet paid maybe $18. When Sydney pocketed three figures, Christopher pleaded with her to share her winnings—especially since he inspired the bet. She replied, “Oh, shut up, Chris.”