May 10 - Mine That Bird

The story begins on the Tuesday night before the Kentucky Derby, the night of the Trainer's Dinner. I was seated with the mcs Chris Lincoln and Paul Rogers. We noticed the table beside us was filling up with these guys all in black and most had on cowboy hats. If we were cats, we would have died as we were overwhelmed with curiosity, and I was the one tasked with gathering the intel on the situation. I walked up to the table feeling very confident that I had a pretty good handle on all the horses in the field - "Who's your horse?" and they replied - MINE THAT BIRD. I was blank, I hadn't even studied the horse. I had nothing except a polite encouragement as I could offer - "Good luck!"

I returned to our table and Chris looked at me with inquiring eyes. "Mine That Bird". Hmmm…

When it was time for Mine That Bird's trainer to speak, Chip Woolley approached the stage on crutches. When he got to the stage, he set his crutches aside and hopped on one leg onto the stage that was three to four feet off the ground! Impressive . . .

Then, Chip hopped over to the mic and proclaimed that they had the best horse, the best jockey, and they were going to win the damn race. The room was mostly silent, with a few chuckles. Somebody at our table whispered, "I wonder who peed in his cereal?"

If only I had my wits about me and realized that Mine That Bird was sired by Birdstone, who I had painted for Marylou Whitney, that would have been a nice conversation starter, especially this being Birdstone's first foal crop. But no; just "Good luck" and slithered away.

We know now that Mine That Bird won at 50-1 odds and in the process became an instant legend. They even made a movie about Bird called 50-1. Watch the movie and you start to see how all week long building up to the Derby that Team Mine That Bird was disrespected everywhere they went. To answer the question, I guess we all were the ones that peed in their cereal and before the week was over, that Bird made us all eat crow.