Derby Day, and thoughts go back to 2013, when Angela and I spent the weekend in Louisville with friends and hundreds of thousands of strangers drinking Juleps and drenched — it was a muddy running — the women with plastic over their hats, the men wearing shoes heavy with rain. We were lodging in a haunted bed and breakfast near the river, a house whose owner was delightfully eccentric and made soft and creamy eggs for our breakfast.
I’ve forgotten who won the Derby that year, and I guess I could look it up, but I prefer to remember Barbaro, and another horse, this one a Triple Crown winner, the only horse from Texas to have ever won that illustrious title (and one of only 12 horses ever). He was foaled at King Ranch on March 26, 1943, sired by Bold Venture, winner of the Derby and Preakness Stakes. Assault’s story is an inspiring one; known as the “Club-footed Comet”, the chestnut horse stepped on what is believed to have been a surveyor’s stake early in life, and thereafter walked with a limp, an impediment that disappeared at full gallop, something Assault did with gusto.
Assault died in 1971. Think of him today while watching The Derby, and while you are, I hope, sipping a Mint Julep.
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