ESPN Horse Racing

Daily Racing Form's Jay Hovdey will be filing daily notes and thoughts from trackside at Churchill Downs all week leading up to the 135th running of the Kentucky Derby, exclusively on ESPN.com.

"I just laid my motorcycle down and broke my leg. No big deal. It's not much of a story."

No big deal. Not much of a story. Except for the fact that Chip Woolley, the trainer with the broken leg, had just pulled off the biggest upset in the history of any Kentucky Derby ever witnessed by anyone under the age of about a hundred, and did it on crutches with a horse who couldn't win a race in his own backyard at Sunland Park. A horse who had just paid $103.20 on a $2 bet, tops since Donerail back in 1913.

Fairytales like Mine That Bird just don't come true, except for those that do, every half a generation or so. This was the U.S. hockey team stuffing the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics. The Amazin' Mets winning the '69 World Series for Casey Stengel. Jack Fleck beating Ben Hogan head-to-head in the 1955 U.S. Open.

Bill Casner, an El Paso boy, hails from Mine That Bird's part of the world and cut his racetrack teeth at Sunland Park, just across the New Mexico state line. Casner tried to win the Derby with three different WinStar Farm horses on Saturday, and all they got was tired and muddy. And yet, there he was standing in his box seat long after the race was run, gazing with a wide grin into the distance at the winner's circle ceremony in the infield.

"I'll tell you what," said the tall Texan, "that right there is what the Kentucky Derby is all about. Anyone can win, but nobody says you have to. I don't care how much you spend, you cannot buy the Kentucky Derby."

Casner was on a roll now. He dug back into one of those memories that burns forever, like what happened the week after his 18th birthday, in March of 1966.

"Just like what happened today, the Texas Western College basketball team came to Kentucky and beat UK for the NCAA championships," Casner recalled. "That was Adolph Rupp coaching that Kentucky team, and they were supposed to be too good to get beat."

The all-black Texas Western team, beating lily white UK, revolutionized college basketball. Whether or not the victory of a gelding from Sunland Park in the Kentucky Derby shakes the racing game in a similar way remains to be seen. But I truly hope so.

Jay Hovdey is the award-winning executive columnist for Daily Racing Form. He has written about thoroughbred racing since the 1970s from his base in Southern California, including articles published in the Reader's Digest, Los Angeles Times and New York Times, as well as several books. Hovdey is married to retired Hall of Fame jockey Julie Krone.