The theme of the this year’s Kentucky Derby Festival should have been “Wet and wonderful.” Two balloon races cancelled, a balloon glow postponed. Rain. Rain. Rain. Cold. Cold. Cold. Thurby – rained. Oaks – Rained and the Derby day forecast? Rain and Cold. But the forecast also had rain chances dropping about mid-day and an increased chance of rain later. Perhaps the loudest cheer of the day was when the sun came out and broke through the clouds. Rain coats and ponchos disappeared and the fashion of the day came out.
The track conditions were sloppy all day, but were starting to improve until the next hard rain came and re-soaked the smaller than usual 158,000 crowd driving the track conditions back to sloppy. But the Sun came back out and the crowd cheered again and then roared loudly for the 20 horses as they thundered around the four turns and twice down the front stretch. At the end, 2 minutes and 3 seconds later, Always Dreaming crossed under the finish line in front of the pack.
