[Editor’s Note: I wrote this essay in the mid-1980s when I was working as sports editor for the Corbin Times-Tribune. When I visited the track more recently to take these photos, I found not much had changed. Keeneland is all about tradition, and that’s part of the charm. The Fall 2023 Meet begins Friday, Oct. 6.]
It’s 6:30 a.m., still a good 45 minutes until the first light of dawn, but already the track kitchen at Keeneland is abuzz with activity on a frosty autumn morning.
Exercise grooms, trainers, stable hands, and jockeys are huddled over their morning newspapers and ever-present Daily Racing Forms, still rubbing sleep from their eyes and trying to shake off the morning chill.
Two eggs over easy, biscuits smothered in gravy, fried apples, and piping hot black coffee sure hit the spot on a morning like this.
You hear little bits of conversation in the crowded dining room.
Naturally, all the talk is about horses.
“I just came in from Chicago,” someone says. “When they finish up here, I think I’ll follow them on down to Florida for the winter.”
That’s one of the advantages of being involved in the racing industry—thoroughbreds head for warmer climates when it starts getting cold. Places like Florida and California are a welcome respite from the cold Kentucky winters.
It’s getting to be daylight finally, and down by the barns, many of the horses are greeting the new day with an icy cold bath administered by their grooms.
Clouds of steam rise from their backs toward the gray sky, but the thoroughbreds don’t seem to mind. After all, they know they’re royalty, and royalty always begins the day being bathed by servants.
Out on the track, they’ve started the daily morning workouts. Trainers and owners are gathering along the rail. Some are trading old war stories. Most are just trying to stay warm.
“Let me see him go hard around the turn.” A grizzled veteran trainer, cigar stub clenched firmly between his teeth, instructs the exercise boy as he leans over the rail.
The horse saunters to his starting place, then suddenly explodes into a full gallop—hooves pounding the damp sand, nostrils flaring, and ears laid back. The still morning air is filled with the sound of his rhythmic, heavy breathing as he comes down the stretch.
The trainer glances at his stopwatch as the horse flies past. Silently, he uses a stump of a pencil to make a notation in his small notebook and slowly turns back toward the stable area, his face registering neither pleasure nor displeasure.
A little further down the rail stands Dan Issel. The University of Kentucky’s all-time leading men’s basketball scorer. Two-time All-American. ABA and NBA stand out for more years than he probably cares to remember. Big Dan. Big Number 44. They called him “The Horse” in Denver, where he finished out his professional career. It was a definite term of affection.
He’s an owner of thoroughbreds now, but he worked his way up the ranks. He became interested in the racing business as a young UK student, when he worked summers on horse farms around Lexington. He pitched a lot of hay back then. He buys a lot now.
At the moment, he’s rubbing his hands together briskly and trying to stay warm like everyone else.
Over in one corner of the bleachers, three jockeys huddle together, laughing and cracking jokes occasionally, but turning serious as a horse comes down the track in front of them.
Perhaps in a day or two, one of them will be aboard a horse that is working out this morning. They’re here to get a preview of what to expect from their future mount.
A few die-hard racing fans are also on hand, but very few. For the most part, they look to be the heavy-betting types, hoping to find that extra edge—a whispered confidence between trainer and jockey perhaps, or maybe a horse that’s being held back to make his workout times appear slower than they actually are—any information they could translate into cool green cash at the betting window.
The sun is rising rapidly in the sky as the last few horses complete their workouts and return to the barn.
These animals won’t race for at least a couple of days. The horses that will run today are still lounging in their stalls.
From birth, a thoroughbred is taught only one thing—racing. That’s what they’re bred for, and that’s what they know. You can see by the hard glint in the eyes of these particular horses that they know today is their day to compete.
Somehow they know, and they appear eager.
It’s nearly 10 a.m., and the track is clear now. In about an hour, thousands of racing fans will begin to pour through the turnstiles, feeling confident and lucky and totally oblivious to the early morning world of Keeneland.