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'Horse-savvy' Borel gets Derby mount
Posted: Wednesday May 03, 2000 05:42 PM
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Calvin Borel planned to watch the Kentucky Derby from the jockeys' room at Churchill Downs until he persuaded a headstrong colt to cooperate. On April 24, Exchange Rate was on the track for a workout, but balked and trainer D. Wayne Lukas said he had to see more before he would enter the colt in the Derby. Up against it, Lukas decided to work the colt from the starting gate on Sunday and called on Borel. The colt responded by covering five furlongs in a minute flat. "Exchange Rate needed a horseman," Lukas said Wednesday. "There are riders and then there are horsemen and there is a combination. Calvin Borel is a combination. He's not only a good rider, he's a good horsemen." Exchange Rate will be the second Derby mount for the hard-working, 33-year-old Borel, another top rider who began his career on the bush tracks in southern Louisiana. Borel won the riding title at Oaklawn Park in 1995 and captured the Churchill Downs championship last fall, ending Pat Day's streak of five straight titles. Although not well known outside of Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky, Borel's mounts earned almost $7 million last year -- 19th in the country. "Calvin Borel is the only guy who's here at 5 a.m., galloping eight to 10 horses in the morning," Lukas said. "Galloping and then working some. He absolutely is an exercise rider as well as a jockey. I picked him because he's got the most horse-savvy in my opinion of anybody. And if you talk to him as a trainer, you know that." Lukas said Exchange Rate is a bit of a head case. "He wants things his own way and he has a little bit of a temper, so Calvin will be a perfect fit on him," Lukas said. Borel rode a couple of horses for Lukas in the 1998 Breeders' Cup at Churchill and was 50-50 to ride Cat Thief in the Oaklawn Handicap a month ago. Instead, Lukas put Victor Espinoza on Cat Thief and Borel won the race on K One King. Jerry Hissam, Borel's agent, said that when he arrived at Churchill, he ran into Lukas. "I said, 'How many you going to run?' "He said, 'Three.' "I said, 'Are there any openings for me?, and he said, 'I think there is.'" That was the extent of it until Lukas told Hissam he need Borel to work Exchange Rate on Sunday, "If he works good, we're going to run him and you ride him," Lukas told Hissam. Borel said working Exchange Rate out of the gate might have made the difference. "He wasn't working at all from the pole," Borel said. "They couldn't get him to do nothing." Borel's only other Derby mount was Rockamundo, who finished 17th in 1993. He still remembers the sights and sounds and butterflies when Rockamundo left the paddock-to-track tunnel. "It gives you a lot of goose bumps, makes you want to cry," Borel said. "It's a thrill even in my status as an agent because it's the daddy," Hissam said. "I don't care what you say about the Preakness, the Belmont, all those other races. If you haven't won the Derby or rode the Derby, you haven't done anything." Hissam is encouraged because he says Exchange Rate had an excuse in the Wood Memorial and the Louisiana Derby. Prior to those two races, Exchange Rate was first or second in his five starts. He also points out that nobody gave the Lukas-trained Charismatic much of a chance last year when he won at odds of 31-1. "The position we like is, before we got him, we had no chance and now we've got a big chance because we have a post position," Hissam said.
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