Lady Still in Waiting

Sahadi, looking more tense than she had all week, sat in an uncomfortable white wooden lawn chair flanked by Irwin and McCarron, whose thinning reddish hair was still damp after riding in the ninth race on the afternoon's card.

Sahadi, Irwin and McCarron would have to wait until 15th to choose a post position in the unusual two-tiered draw: Sahadi hid her disappointment with a wan smile for a camera.

She had hoped to be somewhere between positions 5 and 12. Instead, the choice looked as if it would be between being in the auxiliary gate--Nos. 15 through 20--or close to the rail.

It didn't help that Captain Steve, the Baffert-trained colt who finished third in the Santa Anita Derby but impressed Sahadi with his progress at Churchill Downs, drew the first selection and chose the No. 8 post position.

Fusaichi Pegasus had the 12th selection, and Drysdale picked a position in the auxiliary gate for his famously fidgety horse, taking No. 16, away from the crowd.

The Deputy's turn: The choices were 1, 11, 17, 18, 19 and 20.

"Seventeen," McCarron said as Irwin prepared to walk to the front of the room to make his selection.

Irwin stood up.

"Barry!" Sahadi suddenly called after him.

The reason was quickly clear: Post position 17 was right next to Fusaichi Pegasus, who delayed the start of the Wood Memorial when he was reluctant to walk to the starting gate and threw a rider at Churchill Downs the week before the race.

McCarron and Sahadi had talked about it only that morning.

"Eleven!" Sahadi said after quickly conferring with McCarron.

Irwin took 11, and McCarron leaned over when he returned.

"Very good audible she called," he said.

A day later, The Deputy moved to No. 10, just outside War Chant and More Than Ready--after Globalize was scratched.

"You move one in and you go from loading first to loading last," Sahadi said. "That's a huge benefit."

After the draw, for the first time, Sahadi begged off a news conference, leaving for dinner with McCarron and his wife, Judy.

"I tell you, I'm completely exhausted," she said.

Usually, three or four hours' sleep is enough for her, but that night, Judy McCarron found a pill to help her sleep, and Sahadi went to bed at 10 p.m. and got up at 5 a.m.--her longest night.

Derby Day

First light at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May. Can a horse know it's Derby Day?

"He knows he's running the minute you braid his hair," Sahadi said shortly after arriving about 10 minutes after 6, wearing jeans, sneakers and a yellow Polo sweat shirt.

"Are you going to be a good boy for me today?" she asked The Deputy, slipping him two peppermints as her husband went to attend to his own horse, Falcon Flight, who was running in the seventh race, immediately before the Derby.

"Everything all quiet last night?" Sahadi asked Camargo, who already had taken The Deputy's temperature, as he does every morning.

Veterinarian Alex Harthill stopped by to check on him and speak to Sahadi.

"Ready for the day?" he asked the horse.

Sahadi kept The Deputy away from the commotion of the track, and just had him walk the shed before Camargo gave him a bath.

"I'll be back around 1:30 or 2," she told the groom as she and Cecil left to rest at the hotel and avoid the Derby Day crowd. "I've got my phone if you need me."

They returned by early afternoon.

"She's been amazingly calm," her husband said.

"Until I barfed about an hour ago," Sahadi said.

"Jenine's nervous enough for everyone," her brother Scott said.

Gary Barber, the Hollywood producer of "The Sixth Sense" who co-owns The Deputy with Team Valor, waited at the barn to make the walk over.

"I've already received eight scripts about racing and the Derby," Barber said. "None of them are good."

Then Cecil left with his horse for the seventh race--the Woodford Reserve Turf Classic--and Sahadi waited anxiously until she slipped into a room in the barn to watch on TV.

At Santa Anita the day The Deputy won the Santa Anita Derby, Falcon Flight won his race too.

Not this time.

"No, he's not going to get there," Sahadi said with disappointment as she watched the horses down the stretch. "He's going to run second."

With his horse running in the previous race, Cecil couldn't make the walk to the paddock with Sahadi, but he was waiting when she arrived.

"No other horse got quite the reception," he said. "That was kind of nice."

And They're Off

They start playing "My Old Kentucky Home" as the horses leave the paddock.

"Anybody who tells you he doesn't get butterflies is lying to you," said McCarron, who has ridden in 17 Derbies, winning on Alysheba in 1987 in a masterful ride by avoiding disaster after clipping heels with Bet Twice, and again on Go For Gin in 1994.

He didn't have a winner this time.

The Deputy broke fine, but never really challenged.