JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

The year was 1984, the year before Patty and I married, and I was spending a lot of time at racetracks.

My favorite tracks, owing to my Kentucky heritage, were Churchill Downs in Louisville (of course) and Keeneland in Lexington.

On Oct. 11, 1984, a few friends and I went to Keeneland for the inaugural running of the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup. For once on a trip to the track, the racing wasn’t the biggest draw for me; it was the presence of Queen Elizabeth, who was making her first trip to an American racetrack. The queen was 58 at the time and an avid horseback rider and Thoroughbred breeder.

Keeneland had created the race in her honor, and that day would mark the inaugural running.

The race, the featured race of the day, was the fourth on the day’s program, which consisted of eight or nine races. It’s unusual for the featured race to be run so early in the day, but I suppose the reason was that the queen had other commitments later in the afternoon.

I remember that before the race, the jockeys lined up in the paddock area, which at Keeneland is a grassy area behind the grandstand, with large trees. The queen walked along the line, greeting each jockey with a smile and a few words. I and hundreds of others stood at the edge of the paddock area, watching the pageantry not more than 50 feet or so from the queen.

After completing the greeting, the queen was escorted under the grandstand and out to a track-side box in the home stretch.

My friends and I made our way up into the grandstand, and we caught glimpses of her in the box well below us.

I don’t remember much about the race — I think I would have remembered if I’d had the winner — so I had to consult Wikipedia. The winning horse was Sintra, owned by Cherry Valley Farm, and the purse was $106,625. (That meant the connections of the winning horse would have received about $60,000 to $70,000, which was very meager compared to the $300,000-plus the winning connections are getting for current renditions of the race.

I found an old United Press story about the occasion, and it described the scene like this…

A crowd of 12,666 gave the queen a standing ovation Thursday at Keeneland track as she presented a trophy to Seth Hancock, co-owner of Sintra, the winning filly in the first running of the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup.

The queen acknowledged the applause with a smile and a wave, which caused another burst of applause.

She presented Hancock with a 1-foot-high, silver Georgian-style trophy she commissioned and paid for. Its price was not disclosed.

Immediately after the race, the queen left the track, and those of us in attendance turned our attention to betting on the remaining four or five races.

If you’ve ever been to the track, you know that as the day goes on, the atmosphere tends to get less and less ebullient as people — the vast majority, anyway — lose money. The number of furrowed brows and downcast faces increases dramatically, even on Derby Day at Churchill Downs.

As I recall, I was one of those whose brow was furrowed by the sixth or seventh race.

By the last race, many of the 12,666 patrons had left, but we were still there, sitting in the grandstand with a perfect view of the stretch.

With relative quiet in the grandstand, the horses came out onto the track, their numbers on their saddle cloths, and walked past the grandstand before breaking into a slow, galloping warm-up.

Suddenly, the almost-somber atmosphere was broken by a wag standing on the concourse behind us. The guy began shouting, “The queen’s riding the five! The queen’s riding the five!”

Everyone within earshot began laughing. The pall was broken. Money losses were momentarily forgotten. Good humor had returned to the premises. The queen was gone, but we still felt the warmth of her earlier presence.

…Today, the queen is really gone, and tonight I’m still feeling her presence from that crisp, fall day in central Kentucky.