The Kentucky Derby week that tops them all | Dick Jerardi
It was 25 years ago that wildly hyped Arazi was upset by Pennsylvania-bred Lil E. Tee
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - This will be Kentucky Derby No. 33 for me. The buildup to the 2 minutes is what makes it such a unique event to cover and, in my time, there has never been a Derby Week like 1992, 25 years ago, when the horse with wings was being followed around the Churchill Downs stable area like the second coming of Secretariat, 19 years removed from his Derby, three years after his death.
Arazi had come from France to Churchill six months earlier and won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile with a move that anybody who saw it will never forget. Sheik Mohammed, of Dubai, one of the richest men in the world, had purchased a half-interest in the colt for $9 million from Allen Paulson, one of the richest men in America. Arazi was on an eight-race winning streak. No matter that he had raced just once in 1992, a grass race in France, after what was described as minor knee surgery.
"It looks like the start of the Boston Marathon," trainer LeRoy Jolley said as he watched the throng follow Arazi on his way to the track his first morning at Churchill that spring.
I remember thinking Pamplona. It was a crush of humanity trying to follow a horse that everybody seemed so sure was not only going to win, but might win by a gigantic margin.
When asked if Arazi was the best horse he had ever owned, Paulson said: "My answer is he is the best horse anyone has ever had."
I thought that was a touch overstated. As the week wore on, my contrarian nature took over. On the morning of the race, I told my friend Jay Privman, these days the national writer for Daily Racing Form, that in years hence, any time a horse appears at the Derby with overwhelming hype, all of us cynics would say in unison, "He's just another Arazi."
As the horse madness was playing out in the 'Ville, the true madness was happening across the country. I vividly remember watching the Los Angeles riots with Privman, who lived in Santa Monica. After the police officers who beat up Rodney King were acquitted, South Central LA was on fire. Like I said, it was some buildup to a horse race.
If Arazi did not win, there were four or five others who could. The best of the bunch, A.P. Indy, a son of the great Seattle Slew, was scratched the morning of the race with a minor hoof bruise but would come back to win the Belmont Stakes, Breeders' Cup Classic and Horse of the Year.
I liked Pine Bluff and thought long-shot Lil E. Tee, a Pennsylvania-bred, was not without a chance.
Arazi made the same move in the Derby he had in the Breeders' Cup, passing 14 horses to go from 17th to third, But that was it. The colt faded badly in the stretch and finished eighth as the odds-on favorite.
A dozen years before Smarty Jones - largely responsible, Gov. Rendell would later tell me, for the passage of the slots bill - Lil E. Tee, at 16-1, passed Arazi and everything else to become the first Pa.-bred to win the Derby.
The colt's postrace story was every bit as good as Arazi's pre-race hype. Larry Littman, who grew up in North Philly and lived in Elkins Park, ran horses at what was then called Philadelphia Park. Many of their names began with Lil, his initials. Anybody around the track in those days will remember Lil Fappi and Lil Tyler, among others. Littman had watched the Derby from his other home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
When I got him on the phone, he told me the story of the colt nobody thought was going to amount to much of anything. After the colt had lifesaving stomach surgery, Littman sold Lil E. Tee to his blacksmith for $2,000. The blacksmith sold him at a 2-year-old-in-training sale for $20,000 and thought he had made a killing. After the colt won a race as a 2-year-old by 111/2 lengths, owner Cal Partee bought him for $200,000 and turned him over to trainer Lynn Whiting, whose Churchill Downs barn was right across the track from the Twin Spires.
Littman was philosophical when I spoke with him, saying he had claimed the horse's mother, Eileen's Moment, for $20,000 and she never won a race, retiring with career earnings of $570.
As a young horse, Lil E. Tee would often get lost in a field, so they would say, "ET's phoning home." Thus, the name.
Littman had done very well in business, selling disposable sensing devices for molten metal. He had eight plants around the world, including one at Philadelphia Industrial Park on Roosevelt Boulevard.
Winning the Derby would have been nice, but it wasn't going to change his life. He would be content with being the breeder of a Derby winner.
That Derby was, finally, the one that had Pat Day's name on it. The dominant rider in the history of Churchill Downs had been 0-for-9.
"I've been privileged to be second in that race three years in a row previous to that and thought I had an idea what it would feel like," Day said in a recent national conference call. "But when Lil E. Tee went to the lead and it became apparent he was going to win the race that day, there was a feeling that is absolutely indescribable. It started way down in the pit of my stomach. And as we neared the finish line, it just erupted."
With Day and Whiting, it was very much a home-team win. It just was not the Philly home team. That would have to wait until 2004 when the Chapmans, John Servis and Stewart Elliott were in the Derby winner's circle with Smarty Jones.
That race and its aftermath will always be my most special Derby memory, but there is no way any Derby Week can ever top 1992.
@DickJerardi