The last wartime Kentucky Derby (1918) launched the career of a great U.S. race horse: Willis Sharpe Kilmer's Exterminator (Old Bones), who went on to win 50 out of 100 races, earn more than a quarter of a million dollars. Among the 15 three-year-olds who went to the post at Churchill Downs last week, none could hold a hoof to Exterminator. But this year's Derby drew nearly three times as many spectators (80,000), was worth four times as much ($64,000) to the winner.
Missing were the private carfuls of big spenders, the planeloads of Hollywood merry-go-rounders and the toney tipplers who have...
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