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Tom Law 
This Is Horse Racing and ST Publishing are pleased to present the following excerpt from the recently published book Never Say Die: A Kentucky Colt, the Epsom Derby, and the Rise of the Modern Thoroughbred Industry, by James C. Nicholson.
The second day of Keeneland’s spring meet dawned sunny and a little chilly. The equine version of rush hour was in full force, at the height of morning training. Most people in this business probably realized long ago that hope, dreams, possibilities can be as much a part of the fabric of a racetrack as the thunder of hooves and the surface they race across. Yet today, the possibility of these dreams seemed especially evident, more than ever before.
The days of top-class racehorses running back in 14 days seem like a bygone era, but Winning Cause did just that Saturday at Keeneland Race Course and lived up to his name with a victory in the Grade 3 Coolmore Lexington Stakes.
The line stretched at least 20 deep into the parking lot. The woman in front of us, with her two adolescent and thankfully well-behaved children, heard the surprise in our voices at the length of said line.
John Cardella remembers the days when racing in Ontario was run at five racetracks and hearing news that a new facility, in the Township of Etobicoke out in the Toronto suburbs was being built. Cardella also remembers when that track was built, a state-of-the-art facility on 780 acres known as New Woodbine Racetrack. He remembers Secretariat making his final career start there, in the 1973 Canadian International on the turf.
Nobody likes a complainer.
Cyber Secret was starting to look like a good sale, but maybe not the best buy. The kind old owners don’t regret selling and the kind new owners wish they didn’t buy.
Mike Repole was somewhere other than Hot Springs, Arkansas. Todd Pletcher was in Lexington, Ky., watching via simulcast under the grandstand at Keeneland Race Course with an NBC camera and Donna Brothers’ microphone in his mug.
A full field of 14 in a Grade 1 prep for the Kentucky Derby and a colt without too much early pace doesn’t leave too many options, so Ken McPeek didn’t fret too much about strategy. He left the outcome of the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes in the hands of Julien Leparoux and that move, along with a few others, led to victory for Charles Fipke’s homebred Java’s War.
