Derby Week 2020 Finds a Somber and Tense Tone at Churchill Downs

Amid racial tensions in Louisville and a still-raging pandemic, this year's Kentucky Derby will take place in highly unusual times.

LOUISVILLE—Churchill Downs is basically a giant KEEP OUT sign this week. Temporary fencing and barricades encircle the ancient racetrack. Police are a constant presence. Nobody is getting in without a credential of some kind and a temperature of 98.6 or lower.

Such is the lot of the 146th Kentucky Derby, forever a more-the-merrier celebration but now an event under siege. A bacchanal that has drawn at least 150,000 people for the last 13 years will have no paid attendance Saturday, a sign of the turbulent times.

But this is not just a COVID-19 restriction. Roiling racial tensions and the prospect of large protests also are significant factors, likely the larger ones impacting Churchill’s August decision to go from a planned 24,000 fans to zero. Hence the barricades and the cops and the general air of wariness that have defined a tense and depressing Derby Week.

Tiz the Law has dominated four straight stakes races heading into the Kentucky Derby / Jamie Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports

For months, this city has been a racial flashpoint. In March, police fatally shot Breonna Taylor in her apartment when they broke in as part of a drug investigation centered on her former boyfriend. The killing made Taylor a tragic icon of American anger—and when coupled with the fatal police brutality of George Floyd in Minneapolis two months later, Louisville became one of this country's epicenters of unrest.

In relocating the Derby from the first Saturday in May to the first Saturday in September, Churchill Downs was hoping it could have the worst of this summer behind it—both the virus and the violence. It hasn’t happened.

Kentucky’s COVID-19 case count and death count both reached new single-day highs this week. And an 82-year-old white man who has been a big part of one of the few feel-good stories in horse racing this year made things much worse from a racial standpoint Tuesday.

Barclay Tagg, trainer of heavy Derby favorite Tiz the Law, was asked after the post-position draw whether he had any concerns about protesters impacting race day. Tagg has always been curmudgeonly at best; in a few sentences he revealed something darker than mere grumpiness.

“I don’t know what these guys are going to do, these rioters," Tagg said. "Who knows? All I know is you’re not allowed to shoot them, and they’re allowed to shoot you. That’s what it looks like to me, so I don’t know what to think about it.”

Just like that, Tagg tossed a freshly lit match into the hay bales of racial kindling surrounding a flammable Derby. Rev. Tim Findley, who is organizing one of the Saturday protests, had this to say to Louisville television station WDRB in response: “We’re coming together peacefully, but we are not coming quietly. We hear those statements [from Tagg] and we see and hear a clear and present threat.”

Here in Louisville, Mr. Tagg, nobody is allowed to shoot anybody without consequence, unless perhaps it is the police officers who shot Breonna Taylor. (One officer involved in the shooting was fired and the police chief was forced out, but there have been no arrests made or charges filed. Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s investigation remains ongoing.)

At times like this, you wish the horses were the ones doing the talking.

Tagg’s remark also brought into stark relief the racial dynamics of horse racing. It is an extremely white sport at the breeder, owner and trainer levels, with most of the diversity found in the jockey colonies (a heavily Latinx population) or doing menial labor at the barns.

There is a rare Black owner of a horse in this year’s race—Greg Harbut, owner of Necker Island—and his family has a long history in the sport. And there are tens of thousands of Black racing fans, many of whom attend the Derby every year. But a sport that made stars of Black jockeys in the 1800s effectively pushed those athletes out early in the 20th century and finds itself with an optics problem today.

With protests and Tagg’s comments serving as a backdrop, Churchill Downs director of of communications and media services Darren Rogers sent out an unusual “message to our community” Thursday. It said in part:

“The first Derby was run just 10 years after the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery in America. Over 90 years later, during the 1967 Derby, protestors took to the streets around Churchill Downs, demanding equality and change.

“Today, more than 50 years after that, our fellow Kentuckians and fellow Americans are still asking to be heard; for all of us to understand the ongoing inequality that exists, and finally to adopt meaningful change.

“We are not doing enough, quickly enough. That is true in our country, in our city and in our sport.”

While a good-faith effort, that acknowledgement of the backdrop for this Derby is unlikely to mollify anyone. The situation is what it is: America’s biggest horse race will be contested in an unusual manner, and in highly unusual times.

It’s too bad for the star of the show, Tiz the Law, a brilliant runner who looks like he could compete with the greats if given a chance. Beaten just once in seven career starts—he finished third in his only previous race at Churchill Downs, last November—Tiz the Law has dominated four straight stakes races. He won the Holy Bull and Florida Derby to establish his Triple Crown race credentials, then won the Belmont in June at a reduced distance and toyed with everyone in the Travers Stakes in early August.

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Most modern 3-year-olds arrive at the Derby without having proved much. With the reconfigured calendar putting the Run for the Roses four months later, that is not the case for Tiz the Law. Combine his prowess with the injury attrition that has stripped away most quality competition, and you have the lowest-odds Derby favorite, at 3–5, since Easy Goer in 1989.

So it looks like a triumphant return to Louisville for one of the most likable ownership groups in Derby history, Sackatoga Stable. That group of ordinary (by horse-racing standards) Joes showed up at Churchill in 2003 in a school bus to cheer on their 13-to-1 gelding, Funny Cide, and wound up winning the roses. Then they won the Preakness, inflaming Triple Crown dreams.

That didn’t happen—Funny Cide finished third in the Belmont. But the “Sackatoga Six,” as the ownership group was called, was celebrated throughout its joyous Triple Crown run.

This is not the same lineup, but lead owner Jack Knowlton remains. And so does his trainer, Tagg, an estimable horseman who has never had the deep-pockets owners of some higher-profile trainers. For Knowlton and Tagg to be back at this stage as a tandem is a rare and impressive thing.

An 82-year-old trainer with a live shot at a Triple Crown—even one that would come with an asterisk, given the changes to the format this year—is a great story. But the dynamic changed when Tagg offered his thoughts on who can shoot whom, in a city that already has seen so much strife this summer.

It was one more reminder that the real world is simmering beyond the gates and fences of walled-off Churchill Downs. There will be joy in the winner’s circle Saturday evening, but anger outside the track.