By Melissa Sweazy, Writer/Producer/Director
You expect the hats. You expect the mint juleps and the fabulous pastel suits, the women of Millionaire’s Row with their sky-high heels and whisper-thin dresses. What you don’t expect on your first time to the Kentucky Derby is the rain: near constant, soul crushing sheets of rain along with bracing 47 degree temps that have turned the hallowed Churchill Downs track into a muddled, mushroomy soup. But this is Kentucky, and this is Christmas in May, and by God, a little weather isn’t gonna get in the way of the 143rd Run for the Roses.
Director of Photography Peter Braswell and I are in Louisville, tasked with covering the Kentucky Derby for TruGreen. The Memphis-based company’s partnership with Churchill Downs enables them to help maintain the lush, green turf that will presently be ripped to shreds by 20 gorgeous thoroughbreds. Our objective: film horses and turf and local color. And not freeze in the process.
It’s Friday of race weekend – Oaks Day – and men in pressed white uniforms holding trays of iced drinks the color of sunsets holler “Lily! Get your lily” to a crowd already happy to be working on the signature Oaks cocktail at 8 AM. Turns out mint juleps are the official Derby cocktail on Saturday. I mean, they’ll sell you a mint julep on Friday, but heaven forbid you be gauche.
We’re ushered into the press room of Churchill Downs for the official photographers’ meeting. Forget the horses. Here are the real rock stars of the Derby: The New York Times. Vogue. The Wall Street Journal. Getty Images. The AP. The AP! I try not to swoon. A large bank of tv screens broadcast various angles of the track, NBC’s The Today Show, and the myriad correspondents struggling to stay chipper in the downpour. We’re given a cubicle sandwiched between a Louisville business paper and a corporate sponsor, and it’s a fantasia of English major bliss. Editors in fancy suits accept CF cards from mud-splattered photojournalists. A chic French correspondent down the row files stories in a fabulous magenta Derby hat. I’m in combat boots and a parka, but I sneak into the bathroom to clamp a lone peacock feather/rhinestone combo onto my baseball hat. No one will notice, but it makes me feel slightly more Derby.
Peter bounds over with the free loaner of a Canon f4 DO 400 mm lens. I’m telling you, it’s magic in that press room. Paired with our rented Angenieux zoom lens, the finished video will look like Peter managed to sneak onto the track and run alongside the horses.
I wouldn’t put anything past Peter.
* * *
I’m standing next to a horse. The magical lanyards around our necks grant us unprecedented access, and we have followed the conga line of horses and jockeys as they make their way from the paddock through the tunnel and out onto the track where, if I dared, I could reach out and touch velvety haunches.
I’m tiny next to these million dollar behemoths, all legs and chestnut coats and watery coal eyes. Thoroughbreds are descended from just three mythical Arabian stallions brought to England in the 1600s. The preciseness of their breeding yields the results that one would expect of any bloodline with very little forks in the trees: horses that are gorgeous, powerful, and sometimes more than a little crazy. Each thoroughbred is met on the track by a chill stable horse, their own personal stressbuster who leads them on the “walkover,” the official trek to the starting gate. Each hour we will watch this ritual repeat – a bugler in a jaunty pink blazer plays the Call to the Post, summoning the horses to line up at the starting gate, and the jockeys in multicolored silks explode forth, frantically urging on their horse in the chocolate sludge of the track. How do you tell the winning jockey after each race? He’s the clean one.
Derby Day sees the same torrential downpour, the same chill, but by late afternoon, a roar rises up from the crowd. The sun has punched a hole over Churchill Downs, rays hitting the famed twin spires. The Mint Juleps flow in earnest, especially in the flooded infield where hundreds of spectators have given up trying to stay dry and dance to Florida-Georgia Line in saran wrap-like ponchos. The stands fill up as the magic hour approaches. Harry Connick Jr. sings the national anthem. Everyone in the press room stands and places their hands over their hearts. Then, a mad scramble to the press seats and finally, it’s time.
Horses with names like Irish War Cry, Tapwrit and Gunnevera take to the track in the final walkover. Patch, the one-eyed wonder horse, has 20-1 odds but is a clear Derby favorite. All twenty thoroughbreds line up at the gate. And they are off.
I can’t see a damn thing. I squint at the Big Board, the world’s largest 4K video screen, where I can barely make out the scrum of horse and jockey. But the crowd virtually lifts us up, screaming, yelling all twenty names as they round that last curve toward the homestretch. In the end, Always Dreaming will cross the finish line first, but what I will remember is that the sun was still shining and that Mint Juleps taste like liquid gold.
