All week long Louisville was a country carnival, happily clipping the customers. The town belonged to hotelkeepers with five-buck rooms sold out at $25 a flop, to hash houses peddling 60¢ breakfasts for $2, to taxi drivers with their meters off, charging fat, flat fees. It belonged to loud, lubricated crowds, to light-fingered dips tiptoeing daintily among the juleps. But right up to post time, the 84th running of the Kentucky Derby belonged to a big-barreled California colt named Silky Sullivan (TIME, March 17).
The smart money studied the figures and played Calumet Farm's Tim Tarn or Jewel's Reward, the Maine Chance...