ESPN Horse Racing

MIAMI -- If you're wondering who to pull for in the Kentucky Derby, I've got your man. His name is Bill Kaplan, and, after you've heard about him, you're going to believe in dreams again. You're going to want to put a few dollars down and cheer for a horse named Storm in May.

I first met Kaplan a few months ago, just as Derby season cranked up. The sun was rising over Calder Race Course in South Florida. Kaplan sat in his golf cart, the smell of bitter backside coffee in the air, watching his three horses gallop. Everyone who walked by knew him. Few people outside these walls did. In a few months, if everything broke right, that would change. In the first light, he tried to figure out what he'd done to deserve all this.

"It's almost fate," he said. "I'm not a huge believer in religion. I do believe in some higher power, but I don't know why this has happened to me. How do you explain it? I've got three horses on the Kentucky Derby trail, and I've got eight horses total."

Men like him are the lifeblood of the horse racing industry. He runs a small stable; corporate trainer Todd Pletcher enters more horses in Triple Crown races than Kaplan trains total. Two-year-olds are his bread and butter, and he doesn't ever have the money to buy superstars. He'll pick some nice ones, help some nice owners, win a few races, make a few people happy, pay his mortgage, get to watch that beautiful Florida sun rise every morning. Then he walked into a sale last April in Ocala, Fla.

He found three horses. Paid a total of $91,000 for Imawildandcrazyguy, Drums of Thunder and Storm in May. Storm in May, Kaplan's first Derby qualifier, cost the least: $16,000. That's right, a Kentucky Derby horse for the price of a Ford Focus.

"What are the odds of going to one sale and picking out the three best horses in Florida and keeping them sound?" Kaplan said. "I'd have a better chance of hitting the lottery."

In some ways, he'd already hit the lottery. He'd been a little bit of everything in life: a soldier, an accountant, a flight instructor, a pilot, an entrepreneur, a trainer. He's held five different professional licenses. He's a bona fide war hero, taking a grenade in Vietnam, coming home with a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and a lifetime of bad memories.

With the money he got for serving, he went to school, became a CPA and started work at Arthur Anderson in New York. But something was missing. This wasn't what got him through the long nights in the jungle; this wasn't what he'd dreamed of doing as a little boy. Once upon a time, he'd gone to the big airport near his house and he'd watched the planes. Hour upon hour, their silver, cigar-shaped bodies flew, muscling overhead. There was beauty in their movement, a combination of strength and grace. So he quit his job and learned how to fly, eventually moving down to Florida to be a flight instructor.

It didn't take long for the dreamer in Kaplan to come alive once more. It was 1976. Disney World was just opening and there were no easy flights from Miami to Orlando. This was before the airline industry deregulated. So Kaplan offered packages. For one price, he'd pick people up in Miami, fly them to Orlando, have a ride waiting for them there, include the price of the ticket, and then fly them back home again that evening. It was a bonanza. His business grew, and he added pilots and planes. The money was amazing, so much so that he bought a racehorse. Yes, things were great.

In 1981, the airline industry deregulated, opening up cheap flights to Orlando. Kaplan was out of business. But he still had this horse, so he figured, What the hell? I'll learn to train.

That was almost three decades ago. Since then, though he's never run in a race you've ever heard of until this year, he's become adept at picking good horses that other people miss. He's got to.

"How much do I put on breeding?" he said. "With my budget, I don't even look at the breeding page."

When all three horses were finished running, he returned to his office. It was payday, so people stopped by for checks, which he wrote out by hand in an old-fashioned checkbook. This mini-celebrity was new for him, and, as natural as he seemed, he was figuring it all out. A Web site would come online any day now, and he'd just had business cards printed. He seemed caught between wanting to say this was all luck and wanting others to see what he did in one sale with no resources and decide to give him a chance. But whatever the outcome, if this was just the greatest spring of his life or a springboard to a future he never could have imagined, he still didn't have an answer to the question.

He turned to a friend, who'd come in the office.

"How did I do it?" he asked.

"Luck of the Irish," they said, laughing.

A few minutes passed. He was actually considering what to say. He knew this was going to come up a lot. You could see the wheels turning.

"I just figured the answer to the question," he said, finally.

"I'm geared for 2-year-olds. I train at the best track in the world for 2-year-olds. I just think hard work met with good fortune."

He seemed satisfied, for a moment, until another friend stopped by.

"Answer the question," Kaplan asked. "How did I do it? How did I get three horses on the Derby Trail out of the same sale?"

His friend cackled.

"You're the luckiest son of a b---- I know," he said.

One more person stuck his head in the door. He said that there was a higher power involved.

"You think there is?" Kaplan asked. "God doesn't get involved with racehorses."

"No," his friend told him, "but he gets involved with people."

That was two months ago. It was an up-and-down road to the Derby. For a while, it looked like he might get all three. Then it looked like he might get none. Then one. Then none. Finally, Storm in May earned enough to gain entry. And on the Tuesday before the race, two horses were withdrawn from Derby consideration, leaving a spot open for Imawildandcrazyguy, too. Two horses out of eight, running at Churchill Downs, alongside the Pletchers and Bafferts and Zitos.

Kaplan probably won't win, but no one can ever take Saturday away.

"It's the best job in the world," he said. "Where else do you see a sunrise every morning?"

Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. He can be reached at wrightespn@gmail.com.