Lianne Downey

You can’t go wrong by listening to your Inner Advisors! This year’s Kentucky Derby reminded me of the year a flash of inspiration sent me—and my college roommates—blindly traveling hundreds of miles on a “whim,” where by “pure chance” we witnessed one of the most extraordinary events in horse racing. Decades went by before I understood that the inner prompting on that cold night in Lansing, Michigan, came from Those I now refer to as my Cosmic CoAuthors.

It was May 7, 1973, late on a Friday night at Michigan State University, where I was a freshman oddly assigned to a dorm suite with two seniors and another freshman, in the first co-ed dormitory experiment the university ever attempted.

Down the hall and through a lobby lived most of MSU’s all-male wrestling team, a bunch of guys so rowdy (they threw the Coke machine out our third-floor lobby window) that putting them on a floor shared with women, breaking a long history of gender-divided housing, seemed to the administration a “good idea” to help the boys calm down. It didn’t work.

So we were all wondering whose door they’d pound on that party night, or if they’d continue to harass the only black woman on our floor. We were muddling over which kind of pizza to order to make up for the bad dorm food, and what studying we might attempt in the ruckus. Somehow—remember, no internet, cell phones, or other forms of instant communication—it suddenly came to my attention that this was the eve of the Kentucky Derby.

In high school, I’d read all those horse-racing books young girls read back in the day (The Black Stallion). How exciting! How romantic! Because at that historic moment, I also connected to the fact that my suitemate had her parents’ big, sprawling American car for the weekend! We were bored, restless, and only about eight hours from Louisville, Kentucky. We could drive to the race in that gas-powered boat (we could all chip in) and make it in time! I was certain of it!

Fueled by a strange fervor, I pitched that spark of an idea and it took fire in my roommate’s kindling of boredom. The girl with the car heartily agreed.

The fire spread, and before you could count the olives on our pizza, we had filled up her car with eager travel mates: two male friends and about five women. Honestly, I can’t recall the exact number—except that there were three in front and at least four of us in the big, roomy back seat. Which wasn’t roomy after we all squeezed in, elbows tight at our sides but adrenaline rushing through our youthful veins.

In early May, Spring was still a dream in Michigan—but in Kentucky! We might see blossoms and leaves after the long, icy, slippery-sidewalk slushy winter in mid-Michigan’s dreary white flatness. Bonus: we could witness the most well-known horse race in the country!

Bless her, my roommate stubbornly drove the entire distance, unwilling to risk the family car with another driver. After all, her parents had no idea about this wild and crazy plan.

It was dark in East Lansing when we left but the races of the day had already begun by the time we pulled up at Churchill Downs. We’d made only a couple gas & pee stops, and one little rest-and-food pull-over. We were in a frenzy to get there because we didn’t know that the actual Derby runs after many other races. We’d done very little advance research. We simply went, driving off only a few short hours after that first spark became a conflagration.

I remember pushing through a milling crowd outside the track to reach the entrance, stunned by the green glory of spring all around, just as promised. (And yes, some guy grabbed my breasts as he went by. Honestly, in 1973 this happened to women more often than you’d think, the rapid-fire molester shirking away into the mass of moving bodies before you could strike or yell. But that’s another story.) I was so bleary by then, I really felt as if it were all a dream anyway.

We made it to the infield, where the fee was cheap and you could press right up against a chain-link fence that separated the grass we sat on from the dirt track. In those days, the horses ran right past anyone standing at the fence. (Now on TV I see that this is no longer allowed.) Someone spread out blankets or sheets one of my roommates was savvy enough to bring and we settled in, waiting for the Big Race to begin, watching the lesser races dash by from a safe distance.

I was of legal drinking age but not so inclined, though after watching the others swizzle down frosty mint juleps in the Kentucky sunshine, I was beginning to change my mind. A Derby tradition, I learned.

Maybe after the big race, I told myself, I’ll get in the bar line. Those look so refreshing…It was so hot, and we’d lounged in the unremitting sun for hours. We were already sleepy from the long drive and a few of my friends seemed more than a little tipsy.

But then the crowd on the infield started to wake up and move. It must be time!

I picked up my flat little Instamatic camera and hurried for the fence. Maybe sobriety gave me an advantage because I got a prime spot in the front.

Soon a mass of bodies taller and stronger than mine pushed against me. I had to exert all my strength to keep the chain links from permanently embedding in my flesh. The smell of human sweat overwhelmed the fumes of alcohol and baked dirt from the torn-up track.

My heart was pounding as the uproar from the crowd in the stands and behind me grew deafening. I could feel the hoofbeats thundering toward us but I couldn’t really see because I was too short. So I reached my camera up as high as I could and snapped a picture as the horses ran by! No idea what was in the frame of my lens! Just a hope that it included thoroughbreds.

And then it was over.

The horse who won that day?

Secretariat.

Fastest time ever recorded for the Kentucky Derby. Under two minutes, a record that remains unbroken. One-of-a-kind in the history of horse racing.

Years later, we all learned that Secretariat’s heart was abnormally large, giving him everything he needed to win that day. In fact, he set records in all three of the Triple Crown races that year, winning the Belmont by an amazing 31 lengths! Although Secretariat died in 1989, he’s still setting records: for this year’s 2025 Kentucky Derby, his peerless genes featured in every single horse running the race.

Moreover, AI tells me yet another astonishing fact: “Secretariat's final [Derby] time was 1:59.40 for the 1¼-mile distance. Remarkably, he ran each quarter-mile segment faster than the one before, with successive splits of approximately 25, 24, 23 4/5, 23 2/5, and 23 seconds. This negative split pattern showcased his extraordinary stamina and speed.”

And my random photo snap? It shows an astonishing horse running right into history! A race for the ages.

One not to be missed.

To this day, I attribute that strong inner push to be there that day (We have to go! We have to get there in time for the Derby!) to my higher angels, my Cosmic CoAuthors. The Ones who’ve helped me all this lifetime survive and live a fascinating life.

It was another reminder never to ignore those flashes of inspiration, nor question those strong inner promptings when they arise. You might miss something extraordinary!

Epilogue: I never got my mint julep, much to my dismay; bars closed the minute the race ended. We stopped at a motel on the way back, all seven of us collapsing in one room to save money and give our driver a much-needed rest. I don’t even remember where or how we each found a place to collapse in that room, we were so exhausted. No idea how long we slept but we made it back in time for Monday morning classes, and the wrestling boys hadn’t fully destroyed our housing. Yet.

(If you wonder why I’m not posting my special photo: sadly, a former friend who had long coveted my treasure stole it from my album during an overnight visit a few years ago. Perhaps by now she’s sold it on eBay for a high price.)

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NBC has kindly posted the entire historic race. See the crush at the fence? I’m there somewhere—with my trusty Instamatic:

https://youtu.be/LV4drumXbA4?feature=shared