Indy and The Derby, two May traditions 125 miles apart

For racing fans, there's nothing quite like the Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend every year. AP

By Brant James, Special to SI.com

Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Churchill Downs are separated by just 125 miles of southern Indiana countryside and the Ohio River. That's 50 laps around the Speedway, twice as many around Churchill. But the expansive motor racing cathedral, with its signature yard of bricks, and the stately horse racing track, defined by its dignified twin spires now dwarfed by grotesque modernization, are undeniably linked. Many of their most cherished traditions seem rooted in the same values. And each became the standard by which all who compete in their respective sports are judged.

"Every horse trainer, he lives to run a horse in the Kentucky Derby and I think every good chief mechanic, every race driver in the world, his dream is to win the Indy 500,'' says four-time Indianapolis 500-winning driver A.J. Foyt, whose grandson A.J. Foyt IV will run in Sunday's race. "You can win the Formula One championship and all that, and a lot of people know about it, but when you say Indianapolis 500, I don't care if you're in Russia, people have heard of it, like the Kentucky Derby. Those are two great races, the greatest races in the world."

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The first Saturday in May and Memorial Day weekend. Elegant, antique bookends to a month that once embodied the outlasting of another winter and the emergence into another spring, when such things mattered in an agrarian country.

"Ninety-two years ago [the Indy 500] was probably like any other race," said 2005 winner Dan Wheldon. "But over time it's just created so many storylines and history for people of our generation that now it's just massive. People value that history and tradition and you just can't take that away."

A horse-breeding hub sprouted around Louisville, Ky., in the late 1700s and when Col. M. Lewis Clark, the 26-year-old grandson of the famed American explorer, envisioned a racing meet to rival those he'd seen in Europe, the Kentucky Derby was born. Perhaps it was favorable weather or the maturation of the 3-year-old colts that contest the race that finally set its date in on the first Saturday in May -- track historians claim there is no definitive answer -- but the Derby has been held there since Aristides won the first race in 1875. Run continuously since, the Derby is considered America's oldest race.

"I think [the Derby] is a huge rite of spring," says Katherine Veitschegger, Curator of Collections of the Kentucky Derby Museum. "For us, our winter pretty much ends, with the exception of a few freak, weird days, the end of April. So the first weekend in May, it's a perfect time."

Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909 as a proving ground for the many new-fangled automobiles -- 20-horsepower Model T Fords, 30-hp Cadillac's et al -- churned out of local plants and a 500-mile race, the dubbed the "International Sweepstakes" was first won in 1911 by Ray Harroun in the Marmon "Wasp." Now in its 92nd running, the event was originally scheduled to coincide with the local haying period, when farmers had a few weeks respite between crops.

"They just figured it was the best time, plus it was the late spring and coming into summer and the weather patterns were different in those days so it didn't rain all the time. They were looking to draw crowds from all over, which they did,'' says Donald Davidson, Indianapolis Motor Speedway historian.

Davidson attended his only Kentucky Derby in 1980 and was intrigued by the similarities to traditions he'd become accustomed to in Indianapolis.

"I got the same feel,'' he said. "I went to the infield and there's the infield crowd, which at the time was very similar to here, except that it's a lot smaller. The other thing is when they're getting ready to start, they're going through the ceremonies and they either sing or play "My Old Kentucky Home'' and I'm standing there and I'm looking around and people have their handkerchiefs out dabbing their eyes, and I thought, "OK, it's not doing it for me, but I understand. I understand completely.''

Race cars are pushed out onto the starting grid with the reverence afforded Derby horses as they parade past the box seats at Churchill Downs before being led in for saddling, followed closely by their connections. Drivers line the yard of bricks that forms the start/finish line in a ceremony that conjures the jockey procession to the paddock. A blanket of red roses for the Derby winner, a wreath of orchids at Indy.

Back at the Speedway, the sentimental song of choice is [Back Home Again in] Indiana. Though written in 1917, like My Old Kentucky Home and Maryland, My Maryland at the Preakness Stakes, it conjures memories of pre-Civil War era rustic romanticism, just without the undertones of racism or state's rights zealotry. Indiana's unofficial anthem has been crooned before the motor race since 1946, by Jim Nabors with little interruption since 1972. He performed the song on video last year because he was unable to travel due to illness.