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Standing on the stage inside the tent with the giant Finlandia Vodka of Finland banner lapped on the roof, swarmed by a mob of reporters and photographers just minutes after a collective groan vibrated through the space occupied plenty of people and the smell of crab cakes and fresh oysters, Shug McGaughey pinpointed his only major concern.
Robbie Walsh sat atop his horse midway through the Iroquois Steeplechase and said, almost out loud: “I don’t know how well you’re going, but I’m afraid to move.”
Some horses truly don’t handle a wet surface and poor track conditions offer a handy excuse for any Kentucky Derby starter that does not run well. Six Derby starters are set to go to the gate in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes. Some finished well up the track in Louisville.
On a quiet Tuesday morning at Pimlico, trainer Shug McGaughey looked at Orb, talked about Orb, thought about Orb and kept coming around to the same thing.
Orb and Departing know each other all too well, or at least they did growing up in the Bluegrass pastures of Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky. Now they’re about to get reacquainted, this time as the main players in one of the country’s marquee races for members of their generation.
Orb and Departing coming together again to meet in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes is certainly not an anomaly, but a showdown between former pasture mates is far from ordinary even in today’s era of smaller foal crops and precisely plotted racing careers.
Divine Fortune did everything he could do. He saved his energy, cut the corner, got first run, jumped the second-last like an Olympian, kicked up the rise toward the finish.
Claiborne Farm is on a roll, a position it is quite used to, and the news scroll on the farm’s website tells the story.
Orb became the 10th and first Kentucky Derby winner since 1995 born and raised at the Hancock family’s Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky. The Malibu Moon colt was bred and is owned by longtime Claiborne clients Phipps Stable and Stuart S. Janney III and won the Derby almost 83 years after the farm’s first Derby-winning graduate, eventual Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox, won at Churchill Downs.
It’s not quite Kentucky Derby Day, but Iroquois Day is a big deal to jump racing thanks to history, prestige, an immaculate race course and all the pageantry that comes with it.
