150 Years of the Kentucky Derby

CIGAR AFICIONADO'S GUIDE TO THE MOST EXCITING TWO MINUTES IN SPORTS

- Jack Bettridge

There's a small city in the south that for a week or two every spring suddenly becomes the very center of the world. 

A two-minute event, which on May 4 will run for the 150th consecutive time, transforms Louisville into an extended celebration of horse racing, camaraderie and all things Kentucky.

"It's like Christmas, those weeks leading up to the Kentucky Derby," says Mark Bacon, senior vice president for Woodford Reserve Bourbon, a sponsor of the event. "It's the feeling you get around the holidays. Everybody has an extra kind word and there's an event you go to almost every night." As an investor in several race horses, Bacon has attended the Derby every year since he watched Affirmed beat out Alydar in 1978 as an 11-year-old. In Louisville, Derby time is a alendar fixture that, like Yuletide, people begin to plan for far in advance. Except that in this case the point of the kick-off doesn't occur a month or two ahead. It comes when local citizens here begin the mantra "a hundred days until Derby," counting down to the big race. In a way, post-time is sometime in January for a fixture that takes place on the first Saturday of May.