Borel forced to balance stardom with Preakness prep

	With a host of new obligations after his Derby win, Calvin Borel has found time tight to prepare Street Sense for the Preakness. Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Calvin Borel looked tired Tuesday morning. It might have been because he got up while it was still dark out, drove his gunmetal gray Chevy truck from his home in the Louisville Highlands to Churchill Downs and worked three horses before most people sip their first skim latte of the day.

It could have been because he is a 40-year-old jockey who has been working since puberty to keep 114 pounds -- and not a pound more -- on his 5-foot-5 frame. (You look at his thick-chested older brothers and you know this is not easy), and that can wear a man down after a while.

But Borel does these things every day of his life, so I'm going with another culprit: Winning the Kentucky Derby. In one regard, there is almost no event quite like the Derby in this respect: It turns ordinary people into overnight successes and the world wants a piece of their story. Borel has been a good jockey for a long time, but now he has been put in a box, with a title: The modestly educated little man who worked long and hard, finally won the Derby on Street Sense and dined with the Queen and President at the White House.

Borel leaned against his longtime agent, Jerry Hissam's car, just past nine in the morning, as the Kentucky spring sunshine geared up for a sticky, daylong visit. Borel was wearing jeans, riding boots, a golf shirt and his protective helmet with the chinstrap dangling. "I talked to [Street Sense trainer] Carl [Nafzger] about all the excitement," says Borel. "He said, 'Just enjoy the ride.' So that's what I'm trying to do."

This happens every year, and I plead guilty to feeding the machine as relentlessly as anyone. When Funny Cide won the Derby in 2003, we turned his 10 Everyman owners into, um, 10 Everyman owners (that was an easy one). When Smarty Jones nearly won the Triple Crown a year later, we glommed onto his wheelchair-bound owner, the late Roy Chapman, and the horse's near death in a starting gate accident. Barbaro? You all know what we did with Barbaro, and I'll do no more of it here and now.

It's a little different for each of a Derby-winning horse's connections. The owners? They have to take a few more phone calls -- "A lot more phone calls," Street Sense owner James Tafel told me last week -- and if their horse wins the Preakness, they have to start dealing with the mind-numbing dollars involved in syndication and breeding. But they can handle that.

The trainer? He has to conduct more press conferences and answer the same questions over and over again, but if he's relatively organized, that's very manageable. Nafzger has been a delight, responding to the growing crowds outside his barn by putting a coffee-and-donuts spread out for the media. He can handle it, too.