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--> --> May 2: Saarland: Down the stretch he comes By Larry Berteau Be it ever so humble, there's no race like the Kentucky Derby. It's called the most exciting two minutes (plus a second or two) in sports. Horse racing is called the Sport of Kings. The mint julep is a cocktail widely consumed at the Kentucky Derby. The race is held at Churchill Downs, named after a farming family (the Churchill's, not the Downs') when the grounds were purchased by a chap named Lewis Clark (no relation to the Trail) in 1874. The first derby ensued in 1875 and come hades or high jinx has been run every year since. The derby takes place in Louisville, which is the only city in Kentucky that most Americans are capable of naming when asked the numbing question: "Name a city in Kentucky." Blood lines and bad hair For soccer fans and foreigners, the Kentucky Derby is 1 and 1/4 mile long around an oval track with a lot of dough on the line - mostly coming from horse racing fans and incurable wagerers. It's this last group that this column is inspired to address. There are lots of ways to handicap this race. · Blood lines - that's the method of assuming that superior horse offspring will issue forth from superior genetic makeup, something that does not carry any weight in the human population of Kentucky. · Jockeys - the method of determining the best riders from among a stable of 120-pound people who have the courage to climb up on a steed that has them by 1,800 pounds, are four times faster, smell worse and have, on occasion, shown nothing but disdain for the person whipping their behinds, withers and other sensitive areas. · Trainers - The method that has no credibility whatsoever, which is proved by the hairdos of the most famous ones, coifs that not even a mad scientist would sport, and scientists have nothing to do with sport, hence the trainer is irrelevant. · Owners - Nothing here. They have too much money, and haven't learned that if you have too much money you should assure yourself that you don't have to hang around stables any more, getting dung all over your fancy shoes, and spending endless hours drinking gin and discussing if you should change the color of your silks, as if that mattered to anyone except your gin-drinking pal. Three words, you're out So how do you handicap this race? It's simple. It's all in the name. The Kentucky Derby, combined with the Preakness and the Belmont comprise what is called the Triple Crown of racing. Not many have captured this crown, but a look at the names is as revelatory as a book in the Old Testament. Here they are (and study carefully, because if you can divine the brilliance behind this handicapping system, you could realize a fortune beyond avarice and greed): Sir Barton (in 1919), Gallant Fox (1930), Omaha (1935), War Admiral (1937), Whirlaway (1941), Count Fleet (1943), Assault (1946), Citation (1948), Secretariat (1973), Seattle Slew (1977) and Affirmed (1978). Figured it out? Not yet, eh? The first thing that springs out is that any horse with more than two words in the name has no chance whatsoever to win the Triple Crown. Further, if you inspect the entire list since 1875, there are only a handful of derby winners with three-word monickers. And of those, one of the words was usually accidental. For instance, the most recent, Strike the Gold, could just as easily have been Strike Gold. Spend A Buck was a nice horse, but ran away from a pitiful field in 1985. Gato Del Sol means something about a sunny cat and was an obvious error in translation, Man of War is the exception that proves the rule, and Clyde Van Dusen back in 1929 was named after a car and was the harbinger of a market crash. This part is ssssssspecial So looking at this year's 20-horse field, there are immediate eliminations. Essence of Dubai and Medaglia d'Oro, two of the favorites, have no shot (See Gato Del Sol, above). Request For Parole has too many words. Now, we're down to 17 possibles. Step 2 (the final step). Look at recent winners (including the aforementioned Strike the Gold and Spend A Buck): Secretariat, Sunday Silence, Swale, Sunny's Halo, Spectacular Bid, Seattle Slew, Swaps. And earlier winners: Shut Out, Sir Barton, Stone Street, Sir Huon, and so on. I forgot Harlan's Holiday Now, you've got it. The letter S. Uncanny, what? And a quick look at this year's field leads to fortune. His name is Saarland, the only S in the race. He'll be ridden by John Velazquez, trained by Shug McGaughey and was sired by Unbridled. But none of that matters. What matters is he's an S. I know what you're thinking. "I don't even know what Saarland means." No matter. What does Seattle Slew mean? What's a Secretariat? Or, take a couple of this year's entries. What day is Harlan's Holiday, and what do you wear? What's a Mayakovsky? (Could be Russian for mint julep.) Going yard Which gets us to what you do with your winnings, and how it changes your life. You get the tires on your car rotated, because before you got rich you saw that as an unnecessary expense, but times have changed. You stop caring about the overdue movie you rented from DJs. The penalties no longer faze you. You laugh at the cost of out-of-local-season vegetables. Just buy the asparagus, Alice! Yard sales now become a whimsical pursuit instead of a cold, pecuniary necessity. And one final reward, you get to make yourself a mint julep. It's easy. Find a front porch with a swing. Get a bottle of seltzer water, some crushed ice, a sprig of mint, and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. Make ice jokes. Crumble the mint in your fingers for the tactile experience. Shake up the seltzer and launch a spray over the porch rail. Rock gently in the swing and hum a few bars of "My Old Kentucky Home." Make a toast to "Write On" the intrepid handicapper and to Saarland, that splendid nag. Larry Berteau is editor of The Tidings. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing