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Triple Crown Contender
As I realized what had just happened, tears flooded my eyes. I thought of my mother, who had succumbed to cancer a few months earlier. I wished terribly that she could have seen me win this. She would have been so proud.Barbaro came to a standstill, and an NBC broadcaster, Donna Brothers, pulled alongside me on her horse for an interview. "Edgar, congratulations on your first Kentucky Derby win!" she said. "It was so impressive on Barbaro's part. What kind of horse is this?"
I tried to find my voice. "Barbaro is an excellent horse. He's just shown what kind of quality horse he is. He proved he can run. I'm very happy."
Donna asked about this being my seventh attempt to win the Kentucky Derby. "I was very, very confident today. In America, dreams come true," I responded.
I steered Barbaro back toward the finish line and the winner's circle. As we passed the packed grandstand, a huge, roaring ovation greeted us -- thousands of people cheering, calling out Barbaro's name. I pointed to Barbaro. He was the champion and had done all the work. I was only along for the ride.
When a horse is undefeated and wins the Kentucky Derby by six and a half lengths, people start to think big. And that's what happened in the two weeks between the Derby and the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Baltimore. Millions of people from all over America liked this great horse's chances of becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 28 years.
Everywhere, people were talking.
On race day, a bright and clear Saturday, I awoke in nearby Woodstock, needing to get to Pimlico early. I had toast and coffee, kissed Liliana goodbye and headed out.
I stopped to see Barbaro on my way to the jockeys' room. He'd been to the track for a morning warm-up, which Michael said was brilliant. Barbaro looked ready to run. His eyes danced.
I stood outside his stall, stroked his neck and said, "It's going to be a good day, big man." His ears went back. He always loved voices.
Before the race, we stood around on the grass for close to ten minutes while the other horses were saddled. It was unusual for Barbaro to be on the grass before a race. I didn't think anything of it at the time. But later, when I tried to make sense of what had happened that day, I remembered the change in his routine.
Before his other dirt races, Barbaro had been saddled on hard floors of concrete in fully or partially enclosed paddocks. Then he had gone out and run on a hard track. Now he was being saddled on the grass and, being a creature of habit, as horses are, may have thought he was about to run on grass, which excited him.
The longer he stood there, the more his muscles tensed and the harder he breathed. By the time I got on him, he was agitated, a little too eager. He even jumped a couple of times, which he'd never done with me before. I chalked it up to the wild scene around us. Rock music was blaring, people were screaming and the announcer was talking nonstop. None of that had bothered Barbaro before, but horses can be unpredictable.
I hoped the change in his behavior was just a minor pre-race glitch. But then we were loaded into the starting gate, and there was a bigger glitch -- a disaster.
Barbaro had gone easily into the No. 6 hole, the back gate clicking shut behind us. He waited calmly while the remaining horses were loaded. The last one to go in was Diabolical. The colt balked, so Pimlico's gate staff used an old trick. They opened his front starting gate to give him a more open space. Then, once he was in, they closed the front gate and then the gate behind him as well.
When Barbaro heard that second click, he suddenly kicked with his forelegs, opening his own front gate. And he began running down the track. The huge crowd gasped.
A false start in horse racing is a freak accident, a rare event. Of the thousands of horses I had ridden in my career, only a few had broken through early like this.
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