The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told
A True Tale of Three Gamblers,
the Kentucky Derby, and the
Mexican Cartel
Mark Paul
Copyright © 2020 by Mark Paul
All rights reserved.
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The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told
A True Tale of Three Gamblers, the Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel
By Mark Paul
1. BIO000000 2. BIO026000 3. GAM004040
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949642-28-5
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949642-29-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-949642-30-8
Cover design by Lewis Agrell and JW Robinson
Printed in the United States of America
Authority Publishing
11230 Gold Express Dr. #310-413
Gold River, CA 95670
800-877-1097
www.AuthorityPublishing.com
Dedication
To my wife, partner, and love of my life who always believes in me,
often for no apparent reason.
Author’s Note
The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told is the colorful story of a spectacular three-year-old female racehorse in the male dominated world of thoroughbred racing. The book is a dramatic narrative of an exciting and frightening time in my life. It’s based on personal experiences leading up to and during the Kentucky Derby. Hundreds of hours of research allowed me to portray and re-create the lives and actual events that occurred around the gamblers and participants in the running of this race. Occasionally places, persons, timelines, and details were changed to re-create events that occurred over three decades ago, and to protect identities and privacy. There are elements of creative nonfiction in this work (conversations were recreated) but it is based on events I witnessed or researched.
Contents
Dedication
Author’s Note
Chapter 1 Long Legged Lady
Chapter 2 Would You Bet Your Life on a 50-1 Shot?
Chapter 3 Cartel Trouble
Chapter 4 Stakes Class
Chapter 5 The Hotel Impala
Chapter 6 Girls Don’t Belong
Chapter 7 Heaven
Chapter 8 Newspaper Execution
Chapter 9 The Greatest Two Minutes
Chapter 10 Drug Dogs
Chapter 11 Mariachi Madness
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Bibliography
Chapter 1
Long Legged Lady
May 5, 1984, Churchill Downs Racetrack, Kentucky
A girl with long red hair, perhaps eight years old, was sitting high atop her father’s shoulders, watching the horses load into the gate for the 110th running of the Kentucky Derby. They were standing in the packed grandstand at the stretch near the starting gate; nearly a quarter mile separated them and the finish line. She was holding a sign that read, “Beat the Boys! Althea!” She wanted to see a female horse win the prestigious race, something that a filly had accomplished only twice since 1875.
This filly, Althea, had drawn the dreaded rail post position. She was calm when she entered the gate. Althea was waiting behind the gate because 19 additional horses were still to be loaded into the starting gates, including another female. The other filly, Life’s Magic, shared the same trainer as Althea: D. Wayne Lukas. The betting public believed the two fillies had a real chance; they were the favorites at odds of only 2.8-1, coupled in the wagering together.
After the outside gate, number 20, was loaded, the starter’s bell rang and the gates sprung open!
The crowd of 126,000 fans roared as Althea broke just a bit slow, but recovered and frantically dug her hooves into the hard brown Kentucky soil, desperate to get in front of the other 19 charging horses. She was sprinting now, taking the lead running while on the inside part of the track near the white rail, past the fans, and into the first of the two long turns.
The red-haired girl’s father yelled, “Althea’s in front!”
She smiled and shouted, “Go girl! Go girl!”
A horse named Swale, a colt, was the one most expected to battle the favored Althea, (at 3-1 odds), and he settled just off the speeding filly on the lead as they charged into the turn at nearly 40 mph. With the sound of 80 hooves pounding into the track, all horses were seeking the immortality of a Derby win for their trainers and owners.
Althea now opened up on Swale by one-and-a-half lengths into the first left-handed turn.
The 71-year-old trainer of Swale was Woody Stephens of Kentucky, and like many successful older men, he had lost his politically correct filter some years before. Just that morning he had yelled to Lukas, “Dammit Wayne, keep your fillies out of my way.”
“Althea won’t be in your way, Woody. You’ll have to catch her if you can.”
“You’re wasting your time. Keep the girls running against girls.”
Lukas had been the first trainer in history to enter two fillies in the same Derby. He had been mocked and criticized by other trainers, the media, and many racing fans, for doing so, despite how Althea had defeated the colts in three other major stakes races already in her short career. To win a Derby requires a different type of horse—a horse that can race the classic distance of one-and-one-quarter miles and survive the long stretch run against the best horseflesh on the planet.
Just before the start of this race, a male fan yelled, “You’re going to lose again Wayne…next year bring a colt!”
So far, in the 1984
