The Racers

Gaius Appuleius Diocles grabs hold of his leather helmet, adjusts his grip on the reins and does not die. The charioteer beside him quickly becomes the charioteer behind him. Sixteen hooves crush the fallen man. The wheels of his writhing vehicle follow for good effect. 150,000 spectators cry triumphantly. An emperor grins. Workers rush onto the infield and scrape the torn body off the sandy track.

Gaius Appuleius Diocles continues on with his lap.

He is a chariot racer, and a rare one. He is 40 years old and still alive. He is also the richest athlete to have ever lived.

***

Calvin Borel’s helmet is sturdier, aided by an extra two millennia of technological progress. The padded shell of impact-resistant resin nonetheless falls off as he bends down to tie his shoes. He returns it to his shaved head and clumsily secures the straps. 150,000 spectators observe the feat on a Jumbotron. A queen smiles. He mounts his ride and gives the salivating horse a soft kick. A news reporter rides up on a training horse beside him.

Calvin Borel is too busy whispering to his own horse to notice.

He is a thoroughbred racer, and a loud one. He is 40 years old and oblivious to death. He will never be as rich as Gaius Appuleius Diocles, but he is about to become the modern reincarnation.

***

The Circus Maximus held its first race in 326 BCE. Built entirely of wood, a quarter of

Rome’s population can witness the activities within. On busy days, citizens take advantage of the landscaping -- squeezed between two steep hills, 250,000 people can find a workable vantage point. Peddlers and prostitutes line the outside gates. Bookies lurk in all corners. Popular events include gladiator fights and the disemboweling of slaves. They are little more than warm-up acts. The main show takes place over a track 621 meters long and 150 meters wide covered in a mixture of dirt and sand. The spina, a raised median, splits the track in two. At each end stands an obelisk, creating a 920-meter oval around which charioteers must run. The turns are perilously sharp. The ground around each obelisk is continually stained with blood.

Diocles steadies his four horses and secures his footing on the chariot. The wooden contraption cowers in comparison to its military counterpart. Small, lightweight and rickety, the chariot offers the great racer all of a six-inch axel to balance on. He emerges from the turn unscathed and enters into a straightaway. A few seconds of relative peace. He completes his first lap. There are six more to go.

***

Churchill Downs opened in 1875 as a replacement for two failed racing ventures in

Louisville, Kentucky. Built on 80 acres of grassy flatland out on loan to the grandson of explorer

William Clark, its defining characteristic was not added until 1895: two twin spires shooting up out of the clubhouse and overlooking the dirt and turf tracks. Seating accommodates 50,000; the track infield, which doubles as a concert venue, can hold another 100,000. In its inaugural year, a race was put on to mirror the gaudiness of tracks across the Atlantic. It was billed as Kentucky’s

Derby.

Borel leads his horse around the paddock in preparation for the 133rd installation. The two saunter around the small warm-up circle in tandem, lost in two different worlds. The horse

admires the ground upon which it is about to trod and carefully plants a hoof, oblivious to the thousand camera flashes creating a stop-motion movie around him. The man atop him smiles sheepishly, equally unaware of his role as actor. He is busy looking up at a vaguely cloudy sky.

He neglects to mention to the camera crew and millions of TV viewers what shapes his gaze discerns. ***

It is the year 144 and Diocles races for the red team. His tunic is dyed a bright scarlet, somehow livelier than blood. He was not always a member of the red faction; his career began at age 18 with the whites. Six years later, he switched over to the greens for a brief three-year stint before settling with the reds. The only stable Diocles never touches is the blues’. The Circus

Maximus track can fit twelve chariots with four horses apiece. Each stable sends out three charioteers, all prepared with a choreographed strategy. Teammates collude to crash opponents into the obelisks, a legal and often lethal action. Diocles, a veritable veteran in a sport where most are either retired or dead by age 30, has earned himself the role of team leader.

Diocles is not a native of Rome. He hails from the Roman province of Lusitania, an area encompassing modern-day Portugal and parts of Spain. Chariot racing has made him a superstar.

Sculptors craft statues in his likeness. Graffiti artists paint his face on city walls. Inscriptions depict him with a smooth, angular face, broad, heroic shoulders and a quietly gallant stare.

He used to be a slave.

Successfully driving a chariot requires three fundamental traits: a charioteer must be tall, light and expendable. The first two are captured in youth. The third, in conquered provinces.

Death rates are so high that no proper citizen allows their own children to take the reins.

Charioteers don a leather helmet as well as shoulder, knee and chest pads, all of which suffer a

fate of immediate irrelevance the moment a racer’s feet depart from the chariot’s axel. To control the chariot, racers must tie the reins around their waists. Every racer carries a knife to slice off the reins in the event of a crash -- an action for which there is never enough time. The knives find better use as weapons to deal with opponents who dare to venture too near. Slaves, deemed to have little to lose, are commissioned to the chariots. For those selected, the task is greeted with a rabid enthusiasm. They have been offered the rarest of opportunities: the chance to buy their own freedom.

Every race has a purse that is split among the top three finishers. The team’s owners and the driver then divvy up the winnings. If the driver survives enough races, he accumulates enough wealth to make himself a free man. Some retire on the spot. Others remain to make the most deadly of livings. Diocles chooses to remain. He has found a profession that earns him five times the salary of a provincial governor. His physical prowess is not nearly what it was two decades ago when his career first began, but his reputation as a deft and fearless rider has earned him consistent mounts in the most high-stakes races. A single win can earn him more than most citizens would dream of for a lifetime. He is idolized by the public, particularly by the lower classes. He is one of them. He is uneducated and illiterate.

***

It is 2007 and Borel races for hundreds of different owners. Most of his clients are repeat offenders; jockeying is a game of connections, of winning the respect of trainers and owners and becoming the racer of choice for an entire stable of horses. This afternoon, he races for a trainer named Carl Nafzger, a gray-haired, baby-faced sexagenarian. They both report to owner James

Tafel, a behind-the-scenes breeder who retired as CEO of a small Illinois publishing firm. It is

Tafel who selects the outfit Borel wears to the gate; he chooses a yellow jersey with stripes of steel blue.

The get-up fits snugly on Borel -- and would fit nearly any other jockey at the track. The rider atop a horse traveling 65 kilometers per hour must be small, light and aerodynamic. There is little deviation among size. At five-foot-four and 116 pounds, Borel’s silhouette would be nearly impossible to pick out of a lineup of jockeys. His mug shot is another matter entirely. Skeletal, worn and wrinkled, he owns the most disarming smile in the sport. His lips curl out instead of up, providing him a heart-wrenching look of childish glee.

When his smile wanes, a more somber portrait emerges. Borel is an old courtesan in the

Sport of Kings. At 40, he is nearing the closing stretch, limited by the brutal physicality of a jockey’s life. The ten or so minutes a day he spends in a furious stampede are certainly dangerous

-- he once left the track in a coma after breaking three ribs, puncturing a lung and destroying his spleen after being thrown from his horse -- but the real wear and tear comes from the lifestyle required to support the racing. 116 pounds is not his natural weight. He is forced daily to regulate every bite he eats in order to make a required weight, usually resorting to steam-bathing to shed extra pounds of water. Jockeys and dental care rarely appear in the same sentence; white teeth are hard to find as a result of forced regurgitation. Meanwhile, Borel wakes daily at four a.m. and is to work at the track by five to ride horses for their training.

Borel is no stranger to horse racing’s less glamorous jobs. He is from Cajun County,

Lousiana, and his accent does little to hide the fact. At the age of eight, he began competing at local bush tracks, home to unsanctioned and unregulated horse races. By 16 he was riding professionally. At 25, he won the Super Derby, the richest race in Louisiana.

Yet most of the paychecks were meager. The purse of a race is split 60-20-10 between first, second and third, with the remainder going to the rest of the field. From the cut of the purse,

the jockey receives a 10% share. A $500,000 race could net Borel $30,000 before taxes. It had happened a time or two. But most of the races he ran had purses in the vicinity of $5,000. A jockey can go weeks without a win. In a livelihood that lives paycheck to paycheck, injuries are devastating. A crash in 8th grade led Borel to take some time off from school. He never returned.

He is uneducated and reported by some sources to be illiterate. ***

Diocles completes lap number five and two remain. Eleven chariots still stand. The body of the fallen racer from the first lap has been carried off the track. Three of his horses have been returned to their stable. The fourth, injured in the crash, is killed on the spot.

A racer may have the reins and the whip, but the horses dragging him along can seize control at any moment. Swift maneuvering by the racer is imperative to success -- but success is only possible behind an even more nimble horse. The most able horse in a chariot is placed on the inside of the track to navigate the sharpest turns. The other three do their best to keep pace as the racer wills them along. Diocles’ grand stallion is a horse by the name of Pompeianus, a 200- time winner under his resourceful whip. The respect is mutual; Diocles entrusts his life to

Pompeianus every time they trot onto the track.

The audience swells and chaotically watches the race unfold. Diocles, the favorite, is near the back of the pack. In the stands, a spectacle in its own right begins to play out -- what the

Romans call furor circensis. With wine freely flowing and money exchanging hands, a mass hysteria infects the crowd and riots break out between fans of opposing teams. A raucous incident in the year 140 led to the collapse of an upper tier of the stadium and the death of 1,100 spectators. It is the largest sports-related fatality count in recorded history.

The emperor, Antoninus Pius, is an avid supporter of the green team. He does not like what he sees as Diocles cuts off one of his rooting interests around a tight turn.

***

Calvin Borel guides his horse out of a tunnel and onto the main track. He takes his place in the post parade, riding the seventh of twenty horses.

The seven horse, a striking chestnut colt, goes by the name of . He is three years old, the required age for a competitor. He has run seven races and won three times. One of those wins was the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile, the premiere American race for two year-olds. The victory earned him the Eclipse Award, the Oscars of horse racing, for U.S.

Champion Two Year-Old Colt. It also earns him the title of Kentucky Derby favorite.

Borel, meanwhile, may be locally famous in Louisiana, but is a national unknown. Most of the day’s bettors know the name of Street Sense, but few can christen the tiny man with the boyish grin bobbing up and down atop him. The audience is currently more concerned with the festivities of the day. Mint Juleps, the drink of choice for the two most exciting minutes in sports, is consumed without restraint. Tardy gamblers tear out clumps of hair in endless lines at the betting windows.

A trumpet roars over the loudspeakers and all motion stops. The horses alone continue on, plodding along toward the starting gate. It is time for the singing of My Old Kentucky Home,

Kentucky’s state anthem. The song is abruptly solemn, direct, beautiful. 150,000 sets of ears, including two protruding from a wrinkly face out of St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, are thrust into a moment at once unreachable and historical, promising and pure. Queen Elizabeth of England stands at attention.

And just like that the horses are ready to load the gate.

***

Diocles enters the final lap with a blur of chariots in front of him. He does not worry. He

is a master of the last-second come-from-behind victory. It is his signature move, successfully accomplished on 68 occasions. An obelisk approaches; he jerks the reins; right on cue,

Pompeianus cuts at a near right angle, squeezing between the spina and another chariot. Diocles takes control of the inside path -- the shortest route around the track. One by one, he passes his fading opponents, each plagued by horses tiring from overzealous starts and laps of frenzied scrambling. Pompeianus guides him around the final turn and he lets his stallions loose on the closing stretch. As though it is only natural, Diocles noses into the lead. The furor circensis finds a new level of mayhem. Diocles captures come-from- behind victory number 69.

Moments later, he ascends a podium. The race marshall places a laurel wreath atop his head. He has acquired a large collection.

In the year 146, at age 42, he retires. In 4,257 races, he finishes first 1,463 times, second

861 times and third 456 times. He amasses a total fortune of 35,863,120 sesterces -- $15 billion

U.S. dollars in the age of Calvin Borel. The figure makes him the wealthiest athlete in known history. The illiterate slave can afford enough grain to feed the entire city of Rome for one year.

He feeds their imaginations for 24.

Later that year, due to causes entirely unrelated to racing, the Champion of Charioteers finally dies.

***

Borel sits patiently on Street Sense, awaiting his turn to load the gate. It is the longest starting gate in America -- most races feature between six and twelve horses. Boasting a field of

20, the Kentucky Derby is notorious for its wild unpredictability. Borel wears six pairs of goggles to shield his eyes from dirt flung at his face by horses racing in front of him. Entire careers are

made and ruined in the opening seconds of the race, where anything less than a perfect start can doom every gallop that follows. Borel is not too worried about the start. He plans on being in last, and for a while. He intends to take his time, to scope out the scene, to save ground along the rail. He is always on the rail; jockeys at his local track have nicknamed him Calvin “Bo-Rail.” He does not make the strategy a secret. “It’s the shortest way to the finish,” he once explained.

At last his turn arrives. As though it’s anything but the most important day of his life, the man and his horse saunter into the starting gate. Borel does not know it yet, but two minutes and two seconds from now, he will be a Kentucky Derby champion. He will cruise nonchalantly from

19th place on the backstretch to 1st at the finish line, hugging the rail every step of the way.

Within the next four years he will win three Kentucky Derbies, a statistical absurdity. He will not make billions, but millions will do. He will find little reason to complain, save for the eternal grumbling of his stomach.

For now, he listens for the sound of a simple bell. When it arrives, his starting gate will fling open and his colt will leap into action. Borel, with uncanny track sense, will calmly pull

Street Sense back. Later, in the winner’s circle, the governor of Kentucky will drape a lavish blanket of roses over him, the ceremonial honor for the victor in the “Run for the Roses.” He will acquire a large collection.

In the meantime, the racing sage has a race to win. A Champion of Jockeys is waiting to be born.