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sports nut: The stadium scene.

Sheik Mohammed's Billion-Dollar QuestionCan you buy a Kentucky Derby title?

By Dan Schar
Posted Thursday, May 1, 2008, at 4:26 PM ET

Also in Slate, Ted McClelland explains why nobody goes to the horse races anymore, and Magnum Photos presents a gallery of racing photos.

(Continued from page 1)

The road to the roses is fraught with more than simply long odds at predicting equine stardom. Power and strength notwithstanding, the Thoroughbred is an exquisitely fragile creature. In the run-up to May, any number of injuries may put a horse out of Derby contention. Big Brown, now the odds-on favorite after his commanding victory in the Florida Derby, was sidelined twice this year with hoof wall separations; the Derby will be only his fourth career start. The leading graded-stakes earnings winner, War Pass, will sit out the Derby—and perhaps the rest of the year—after radiographs recently turned up a fracture in his left front ankle. And with more tracks switching to synthetic surfaces, an increasing number of Derby entrants—this year, notably Californians Bob Black Jack and Colonel John—will be making their inaugural run on old-fashioned dirt in Louisville, adding more uncertainty to the equation.

The Derby's peculiarities must also be considered. While Derby prep races are traditionally run at 1 1/16 or 1 1/8 miles, most of the 3-year-old crop will not yet have stretched out at the Derby's 1 1/4 miles. Then there is the field of 20 contenders, nearly twice as many as a typical graded stakes race, where fields aren't so swollen with glory-hungry arrivistes. In such heavy traffic, horses are easily hemmed in or boxed out of a clean run. Post-position draws may also play to disadvantage, as horses breaking from far outside posts have historically fared less well at Churchill Downs. Not least, there is the spectacle that is the Derby itself—the event Hunter S. Thompson called "decadent and depraved"—the grandstand roar of 100,000 julep-wielding fans nostalgia-woozy from having just sung "My Old Kentucky Home." Swinging around the quarter pole and into the bourbon-breathed maw of that frenzied crowd would have been enough to put the fear of creator in the likes of even Thompson, to say nothing of a horse whose total career starts might be counted on one hand.

Having thus far been shut out of the money in five Kentucky Derby starts, Sheik Mohammed has changed tack and taken a page from the playbook of Calumet Farm, the legendary racing dynasty that produced Triple Crown winners Whirlaway and Citation. The breeding arm of the sheik's outfit, Darley Stud, has, like Calumet, gone to a strategy of putting battle-tested winners to use in the breeding shed. The sheik bought breeding rights to last year's Kentucky Derby winner, Street Sense, and runner-up, Hard Spun. The sheik will add those talents to his already-diverse holdings: graded stakes winners now enjoying stud careers across three continents. Thus, the empire is slowly built: Darley. Ballysheehan. Gainsborough. And most recently, Woodlands Stud, his $500 million acquisition in Australia.

While many see the sheik's investments as a shot in the arm for an ailing industry, others aren't so sure. The Washington Post's Andrew Beyer called (subscription required) the sheik's penchant for limitless spending "checkbook horsemanship." Sheik Mohammed's response: "We do not wait for things to happen, we make them happen."

This Saturday, though, there will be nothing happening for the sheik: His top 3-year-old prospects faded early and have been off the Derby trail for weeks. And so, the Kentucky Derby, in its 134th year, remains a race not easily swiped, money be damned. Those two minutes on the first Saturday in May will stay long adored because it transcends any notion of buying and selling—because it is fundamentally about the drama of achieving athletic greatness. And because, when the gates fling open at Churchill, anything can happen.

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Dan Schar is a veterinarian and writes from Washington, D.C.
Photograph of Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and his wife, Princess Haya by STR/AFP/Getty Images.
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