Borel: From journeyman to Mr. Kentucky Derby

For Calvin Borel to complete his improbable middle-aged trek from career journeyman to Kentucky Derby legend, all it took was borrowing from Yogi Berra. It was just some deja vu all over again.

For the second straight year, Borel, the ebullient 43-year-old Cajun jockey, dominated the Kentucky Derby with a rail-hugging ride that led into the Churchill Downs winner's circle.

One year after Borel's dramatic ride on 50-1 long shot Mine That Bird produced one of the most unlikely winners in the Derby history, Borel did it again with trainer Todd Pletcher's Super Saver.

Just like last year, Borel saved ground throughout the 136th Kentucky Derby along the inside.

Because Super Saver laid far closer to the front than Mine That Bird, there wasn't quite as dramatic a late charge.

Otherwise, the trip into Derby lore for the jockey who learned his trade from his older brother, the trainer Cecil Borel, was remarkably the same.

"It's the shortest way around," Borel said afterward of his penchant for winning from the inside, "just like my brother always said."

With the win, Borel is only the ninth jockey in the 136-year history of the race to win the Kentucky Derby at least three times.

Many of the other names on that list — Eddie Arcaro, Bill Hartack, Bill Shoemaker, Angel Cordero Jr., Issac Murphy, Gary Stevens, Kent Desormeaux — are among the elite to ever to ride Thoroughbred horses. But even as great as those riders are, Borel is the first rider in history to win the Run for the Roses three times in four years.

It's all made more impressive because Borel is a guy who seemed destined to be a career journeyman working in relative anonymity on the Kentucky riding circuit. He first broke through in 2007 when trainer Carl Nafzger gave him the mount on the highly regarded Street Sense.

"Carl Nafzger, he gave me a shot to ride Street Sense," Borel said. "I thought that was my one Derby shot." Here is a case where one decision changed a person's life.

So potent is Borel over the Churchill Downs course, he allowed Pletcher to snap his 0-for-24 streak in the Run for the Roses.

"I've said this all week, Calvin is a great jockey anywhere," Pletcher said after his win, "but he's five lengths better at Churchill Downs."

Borel first rode the horse that would become his third Derby winner at Churchill last November in the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes. Super Saver roared to a front-running, five-length victory.

The next time Borel rode the WinStar Farm horse was in this year's Arkansas Derby, when Super Saver was beaten by a neck by Line of David.

But Borel said it was that race at Oaklawn that gave him confidence for the Kentucky Derby because Super Saver showed he could rate — run off the lead. In the week leading up to the Derby, Borel's wife, Lisa, said the jockey's confidence kept building. "Todd likes for his exercise riders to work his horse, but Calvin asked if he could, and he came home so excited," she said. "Then, for how he wanted to ride this race, drawing the 'four hole' was just magic. He told me, 'Lisa, if I give this horse a good trip, he'll win.' "

With Borel having ridden almost exactly the same trip to victory in America's most prominent horse race two years in a row now, it's hard not to wonder why the opposing jockeys don't seem to do more to try to force him off his beloved rail.

"I'm not really surprised," Borel said. "When you are riding a race, you have to be in the place where your horse needs to be."

Four years ago, no one who wasn't a devout a follower of Kentucky horse racing would have recognized Calvin Borel.

As dusk fell over Churchill Downs Saturday, The Today Show was lining up an appearance from Borel. A man from India gave Borel's wife a silk necktie as a gift for the jockey.

With some deja vu all over again, Calvin Borel, the former journeyman, is now Mr. Kentucky Derby.

Me too!

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From Pat Forde --- espn.com (archive)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Calvin Borel won the hearts of racing fans and animal lovers Saturday when, minutes after winning the Kentucky Derby, he grabbed a sponge from a groom and personally bathed the neck and face of his brilliant mount, Street Sense.

So how did the critter repay his benevolent jockey Wednesday morning?

By biting a chunk out of Borel's left arm. Seems Borel was visiting trainer Carl Nafzger's barn at Churchill Downs during his usual morning rounds, and he had some carrots to deliver. But he stopped and gave a carrot first to a horse in Street Sense's neighboring stall.

Street Sense's nickname around the barn is Big Daddy Rabbit, because of his love of carrots. Naturally, Big Daddy took offense at having to wait in line, so he reached his neck out and chomped on his rider's triceps. "He got pissed off," Borel explained without rancor.

The blood was still oozing when Borel shrugged off his silks after riding the first race at Churchill Wednesday afternoon. He finished fourth in a $14,000 claiming race aboard 9-5 favorite Slews Mountain Gal.

Bloodied and beaten, life after the Derby was a return to reality for Mr. Calvin Borel.

Which was fine with the new hero of horse racing. "I'd rather be out here with people," Borel said. "Working my horses."

This is where Borel is most comfortable: among the horse people and the race fans who cheer him on. The one place you never see Borel without a smile is when he's on the back of a horse. That's a big reason why he was such a wildly popular Derby winner with the home constituency. "I'm a very likable guy," Borel said matter-of-factly. "Everybody likes me, and I like everybody."

Mundane happiness had been pretty much all the 40-year-old had known -- until those startling two minutes Saturday. And the surreal 72 hours that followed.

Between winning the roses and reporting for the first post Wednesday, an eighth-grade dropout and life-long second-tier jockey wound up in a tuxedo at the White House. He and his fiancée, Lisa Funk, rubbed elbows with some of the most powerful and influential people in the world at a last-minute invitee to a state dinner.

Calvin Borel, about as worldly as the horse he rode in on, was actually bear-hugged by the president of the United States.

"Picked me up," Borel said with a smile. A man accustomed to risking his life daily on the racetrack was justifiably scared up until that point. George W. Bush put Borel at ease by asking him, "Where'd you steal that tuxedo?"

"I found it by the side of the road," Borel responded, relaxing.

Then the son of a sugar cane farmer from St. Martin Parish, La., greeted the queen of England. He talked horses with Colin Powell and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. He ate dinner next to the president's daughter, Barbara.

Among those at his table were "a football player, I forget his name."

Peyton Manning, perhaps? "Yeah, that's him," Borel said.

The invitation to this elite and effete event was so far beyond the pale that both Borel and his agent, Jerry Hissam, greeted it like a get-rich-quick call from a telemarketer.

When Hissam's phone rang Sunday morning and the female voice on the other end said she worked for the White House, his antenna detected a prank. Even in the afterglow of such a compelling career achievement, there was little reason to expect the leader of the free world to suddenly desire your presence.

"I'm thinking, 'What agent put this woman up to this?' " Hissam said.

So he listened to the spiel from the woman who identified herself as Laura Bush's personal assistant and said, with no small amount of acidity, "You are going to send a private jet for him, aren't you?"

At this point the conversation turned testy. The woman informed Hissam that she'd been trying to reach him for 12 hours and dropped the name Will Farish, former ambassador to England and a board member at Churchill Downs, Inc. Not until then did Hissam start taking notes on Borel's proposed itinerary. Heck, by mid-afternoon he'd grown suspicious again and put out a round of calls to make sure this was legit.

When he got the call from Hissam, Borel was suspicious, too.

"I thought he was messing with me," Calvin said. Before and after that once-in-a-lifetime dinner, he worked in an appearance on "Good Morning America" and another on "ESPN's First Take." But he also turned down an offer to appear Wednesday night with Jay Leno, because it would cost him two days away from the races.

And make no mistake, the races are where Calvin Borel wants to be.

"Just another day," he said before starting Wednesday's race card. "That's how I got here. You can't forget them people. I never forget where I come from. "I'm gonna ride him [Slews Mountain Gal] just as hard as I rode Street Sense."

A hard ride didn't make much difference with that mount. Or with Bobby Jack, a third-place finisher in the third race.

But the man nicknamed "Bo-rail" for his steely ability to urge horses through on the rail picked up wins in his next two races -- both times charging through on the inside down the stretch. He booted home Pennypinchinpete by a nose in the fourth race and won in the seventh aboard Vicarian with a ride that was so inside that the horse actually hit the rail with a sixteenth of a mile to go. Even after finishing up the track on his final mount, Espoof, Borel walked off the track the way he always does. Smiling.

"Awesome day," he chirped. "Can't complain."

No, he cannot. It doesn't suck to be Kentucky Derby winning rider Calvin Borel. But in the sunny man's mind, every ordinary day prior to last Saturday was fairly awesome, too.

re: What’s so remarkable is that he is that his run is composed of races with 20-horse fields. Just getting one of them is a feat.

Yes.

Check out post # 5 .......... he's always racing.

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(snip) --

And make no mistake, the races are where Calvin Borel wants to be.

A hard ride didn't make much difference with that mount. Or with Bobby Jack, a third-place finisher in the third race.

Even after finishing up the track on his final mount, Espoof, Borel walked off the track the way he always does. Smiling.

"Awesome day," he chirped. "Can't complain."

****

From the Times-Picayune (2009)

(snip)

BELMONT, N.Y. -- Calvin Borel, who will be riding for an unprecedented jockey's Triple Crown when he rides Mine That Bird in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, has been making the rounds in New York since arriving Monday.

Borel can become the first jockey to sweep a Triple Crown series on more than one horse. He won the Kentucky Derby on Mine That Bird and the Preakness on the filly Rachel Alexandra, who won't be running in the Belmont.

On Monday night, Borel taped "The Late Show with David Letterman." The show will air Friday night.

"Me, Paris Hilton and somebody else," Borel said. "That was a kick."

On Monday afternoon, ESPN cameras followed Borel and Lisa Funk, his fiancee, on a visit to Times Square. "There's more stop signs on one corner than the whole Catahoula," said Borel, 42, who was born in St. Martinville and grew up in Catahoula. "It was awesome. We had an awesome time."

On Tuesday, Borel was in demand at a media luncheon at Madison Square Garden. On Thursday, he'll ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Friday will be a day for taking it easy, Funk said. "We'll jog in Central Park," she said.

Borel has been a guest of Jay Leno and Letterman during this Triple Crown season. The jockey traveled to California on Preakness week to appear on "The Tonight Show."

Borel wouldn't be drawn into a comparison of Leno and Letterman.

"They're both about the same," he said.

Known for coolness on the track, Borel showed his nerves before appearing on the talk shows, Funk said.

"(For) Leno, he was pacing," Funk said. "(For) Letterman, he was a little more relaxed, because he knew what to expect. But he was still tapping his foot.

"Anything that doesn't involve horses is boring to him. He didn't know who Jay Leno was, or David, and no offense to them. He wakes up at 4 in the morning and goes to bed at 8 at night. That's who he is. He rides all day long.

"He doesn't stay up late enough to know who those guys are. He watches race replays if he watches anything.

He's a horseback rider."

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