Flatter: Kentucky Derby 2022 is a challenging home game

Louisville, Ky.

Talk about the pressure of Kentucky Derby 2022. After covering the race 13 times as a tourist and once last year while in the process of moving from Nevada to Kentucky, it really is a home game for me now.

I get it when professional athletes say they would rather be on the road than having to sort out all the long-lost friends and relatives who suddenly want tickets on short notice. My particular pressure is not so much about Derby tickets. It is figuring out who to invite to dinner next week. That became logarithmically tougher when I scored a table for four downtown at Jeff Ruby’s.

A $3 million purse and nearly 1 1/2 centuries of history and the grandeur of the twin spires and the specter of the personal-seat monoliths that have risen over them are merely the framework of this mega-event. What was it Biden whispered to Obama and into a hot microphone? It is the same thing Wayne Brady offers at the end of his show every weekday at 3 p.m. – 2 p.m. Central time – on CBS.

I am not even sure how the Kentucky Derby outgrew the wildest dreams of some grandson of Lewis and/or Clark. I know Col. Winn had something to do with it, but that is not for me to sort out. Not right now. First I have to know who all the jockeys are and whether Todd Pletcher will get a third horse in next week’s race.

That would not be so important for, say, the Peter Pan another week later at Belmont Park. Or even the Belmont Stakes the month after that. When it comes to this 148th annual affair, the slightest news – real or fake – causes the collective media to genuflect, especially around sunrise. Did you hear that rooster crow? Or was that a horse coughing? Someone get over to the Asmussen barn, stat.

Oh, false alarm? Again?

The challenge is having the discipline to focus on what is important and to block out distractions.

If there are, say, 50 media organizations in the Churchill Downs stable area at any given time, there theoretically should be 50 different stories being produced. But there are not, theoretically meaning every story short of 50 represents a looming layoff notice. But that is not how it works.

Instead, there are omnipresent gaggles. There is one around Brad Cox. There another one around Todd Pletcher. And another around Asmussen. And over at the Baffert barn…oh, wait. Not this time. Hey, lookie there. That gaggle looks exactly like the other gaggles.

I once asked an old drinking buddy in Chico, Calif., if he had been to a particular store to see the new clothes that were in stock. He said, “I don’t shop there. I don’t want to be a twin.” Good advice, especially for the poorly dressed turf writer who gets sucked into gaggles.

Pet peeve time. When one of my media brethren says, “You’re late,” I shake my head. Since when am I on anyone else’s schedule? If I am late for the 12th race at Churchill next Saturday, then that would be a problem. But if I am “late” to hear another trainer tell me “the horse looked good this morning,” what did I really miss?

Those “penultimate” (who the hell uses that word?) and then final workouts are supposedly must-see moments for anyone covering the Derby, especially anyone on an expense account who has to justify another $499 night at a two-star hotel on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. But how many of us truly know what the hell we are seeing when we watch a horse gallop?

Workout expert Bruno De Julio often castigates the media for peddling misinformation about morning breezes. I think he is right, but I really don’t know, because I most certainly am not a workout expert. I think I know a really bad gallop when I see it, but I will struggle to learn the nuances of a good gait and comportment until I am in an urn.

Jockeys and trainers are supposed to be workout experts. But the active ones do not want to reveal faults in their horses. That is especially true if they want to keep the gigs they have been afforded by the horses’ owners, many of whom have fragile egos and even more delicate Derby dreams. Frankly, there is no upside for horsemen and women to criticize their horses.

But it is a double-edged sword, because it is our job to ask questions, hopefully in a pertinent way that encourages a trainer or a jockey or even an owner to be honest. It is like that old fork-in-the-road riddle, which is available in an old novelty book – or Google.

It is the same in every sport. Care to explain the advantages and disadvantages of a 4-3 vs. a 3-4 defense? How about the triangle offense? Or why there are so many more strikeouts these days? You really think Bill Belichick or Gregg Popovich or Joe Maddon will ’fess up?

In all sports we inevitably identify experts who we come to trust, even if they may not deserve it. Tony Romo and Charles Barkley and John Smoltz may come to mind right away, but it is not difficult to find their critics. They are lined up on Twitter, no doubt using their real names and avatars, right?

So here we are, one week and one day before the Super Bowl of horse racing. OK, maybe more like the Daytona 500, because it still is early in the year. As the Derby approaches, so, too, does the thirst for good information on which to make a bet. And the demand on the media to unearth it.

Often, we fail. Where was all our good information in 2005 and 2009, when 50-1 long shots won the Derby? I would have thrown that 65-1 payoff in 2019, but no matter how hard we in the media tried, the people in charge of the result of that race were not answering questions. At least not right away. And certainly not before the race.

Hopefully, we stumble into something good and useful. I try to do it by picking up the phone and using it, get this, as a phone. Or getting away from the work-at-home mentality and going to the stables and walking around and asking questions and listening for some nugget that no one else has found. I usually come back with something. Like when Simplification’s trainer Antonio Sano revealed what proved to be his Florida Derby strategy – before the Florida Derby.

Now that the Kentucky Derby is a home game, I think I have a bit of an advantage in finding my way around the Churchill Downs barns, which have a cockeyed numbering system that looks more like pi to the 200th digit.

Somehow this spring I figured out where the new quarantine barns are. Here is a free hint to my uninitiated colleagues. They are the white ones next to Lucketts Tack Shop. That gave me a head start in finding Crown Pride and Summer Is Tomorrow.

Come next week, when the traveling media descend on Louisville via connecting flights – because you can’t fly directly here from there – the one-on-one interviews will be fewer. Us twins will turn into triplets and then some.

Rest assured. No matter how many gagglers show up, there always are unique stories to be found. That continues to be my lure that hopefully is hiding in plain sight.

Since the Derby has become a home game, though, I have to clear new hurdles. When it was a road trip, I could round up a unique story or two by day, have dinner and a few drinks by night and walk back to the $499-a-night hotel to conk out. Now I cannot have a few drinks, because I still have to drive at least 10 miles to get home. And Uber ain’t cheap during Derby week.

I wonder if there is an empty bale of hay in the quarantine barn – and whether it requires first and last months’ rent up front.