For the first time in its history, the Kentucky Derby has disqualified the horse that crossed the finish line first, Maximum Security. That gave the victory to Country House.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

OK, so what happened at the Kentucky Derby? Maximum Security was the favorite to win. So it was no surprise that the thoroughbred claimed an early lead going into the first turn and held onto it. But then officials announced an objection, and the race results were labeled as unofficial. The objection held, pushing Maximum Security back to 17th place and handing the win to a longshot colt named Country House. That resulted in the second-highest payout in Derby history. Joining us now from member station WFPL in Louisville is reporter Ryan Van Velzer. Good morning.

RYAN VAN VELZER, BYLINE: Good morning.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right, so how did it feel in those moments after the race? Take us there.

VAN VELZER: Picture this. There are about 150,000 people at Churchill Downs rooting for this race, plus millions more watching at home. But from the vantage point of the people in the stands, all they see are the pink silks of Maximum Security’s jockey pulling out ahead and crossing the finish line on a muddy track. So first, there was cheering. I mean, Maximum Security was the favorite to win, and a lot of people were betting on that horse.

Then there was 20 minutes of confusion. You have the objection. You had these unofficial results on the board, saying that Maximum Security won. You have people trying to cash in their tickets at the betting windows. Other people are leaving not knowing who won. And in the press room, we were just sitting there stunned, waiting for the official call.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why did racing officials disqualify Maximum Security?

VAN VELZER: Yeah, so in the final bend, Maximum Security drifted wide into another horse’s lane. That caused a domino effect, disrupting the progress of three other horses. Country House’s jockey, Flavien Prat, was the one who filed the objection after the race. So three stewards, which are basically, like, referees, reviewed the footage and interviewed the affected jockeys. Eventually, steward Barbara Borden gave a brief statement saying that they unanimously decided to disqualify Maximum Security, then walked away without taking any questions.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wow, it sounds like a political conference. All right. Has anything like this ever happened before?

VAN VELZER: So one other horse was stripped of his title after the fact. That was because he essentially failed a drug test back in 1968. But no, this – this was a first. And the outcome of this year’s Derby was just so unpredictable. The original horse couldn’t even compete. And the second favorite, Maximum Security, lost even though he crossed the finish line first.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right, so give us the story with Country House briefly. His trainer is named Bill Mott. Did you hear from him?

VAN VELZER: Yeah, so Country House is a chestnut colt, bred in Kentucky. He was a longshot, with 65 to 1 odds of winning ahead of the race. The payout for his winning ticket was $132.40. That’s the second-highest in Derby history. He started out the race slow but picked up momentum throughout. He definitely saw his opportunity going into that last turn. And he took it.

In a press conference after the announcement, Mott himself said he was a little bit surprised to see how well the horse was doing. He called the victory bittersweet and said it’s not how he wanted to win, but he knows it’s a race that will be remembered for years to come.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I can’t imagine this is done. Is there any chance for an appeal?

VAN VELZER: There is. It’s possible that the trainers or the owners could file an appeal with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. And in the meantime, Country House has a chance at the second jewel in the Triple Crown at the Preakness Stakes later this month.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That’s Ryan Van Velzer of member station WFPL in Louisville. Ryan, thank you.

VAN VELZER: Thank you.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Madeleine Pape, who once competed against Caster Semenya, about the issue of female runners with unusually high levels of testosterone.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Caster Semenya won what may be her last 800-meter race this past Friday in Doha. Her dominance in the event may be at an end because of new regulations that come into effect Wednesday. The new rules ban women like Semenya, with naturally occurring high levels of testosterone, from running certain events in the women’s competition unless they take medicine to reduce those levels. When asked whether she would submit to the new regulations, Semenya replied, hell no.

Madeleine Pape was an Olympic runner for Australia who once competed against Semenya. She’s now a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And she told us about when she competed against Semenya in 2009 at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin.

MADELEINE PAPE: I lost to Semenya, amongst other people in the heats. And I was, after that, very quick to join the chorus of voices around me that were beginning to accuse Semenya of having an unfair advantage. And that really reached fever points on the evening of the final, when the IAAF, who’s our governing body in track and field, announced publicly that they were going to be conducting investigations into Semenya’s biological sex. So that really set the tone for how people then proceeded to talk about her.

And for me, you know, I guess I wasn’t really encountering any alternative points of view. That was the single point of view that was being voiced around me at the time. So I certainly fell in the camp of jumping on the bandwagon and repeating the things that were being said around me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And how did you come to change your mind?

PAPE: Yeah, that was a – it was quite a long journey, actually. About a year after those World Championships, I sustained a career-ending injury, and I decided to move to the United States to start a Ph.D. in sociology.

And I happened to chance upon this topic and the very vast literature that’s been written about it from the point of view of women’s sports advocates who have examined at length the very many scientific and ethical dilemmas that surround the exclusion of women who have high testosterone.

Initially, I was very confronted by this discovery. And it really was over time that my own view shifted. And I would say that something that was really critical in that process was meeting women who had high testosterone, becoming friends with women with high testosterone and thinking about how they were personally impacted by these kinds of practices in sport.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is a story, of course, about regulating women with naturally high testosterone levels. But it’s also important to remember that this is also a story about one particular athlete and one particular woman, Caster Semenya. There is the issue of her sex in this, but there’s also the issue of her race in this. Do you think that plays a factor in your view?

PAPE: To be honest, I think those concerns are fair. I mean, I think there are questions to be answered about why Caster Semenya, in particular, has attracted this level of scrutiny and this level of determination on the part of the IAAF to exclude her from competing because when we compare her margin over her competitors to other successful athletes of this era, they enjoyed greater margins over their competitors. And yet, for some reason, we fixated on Caster Semenya as the athlete whose margin of victory has become problematic for us.

So I think it’s a complicated issue, but I think it is very fair to be asking why women of color from the global south and from sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, are overrepresented amongst the women who’ve been accused of having an unfair advantage.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And there is, of course, the issue of her sexuality. Semenya is a lesbian.

PAPE: You know, when we think about why Semenya, and why have her performances, in particular, raised the ire of a number of people, you have to wonder whether sexuality plays into it. I mean, she’s openly a lesbian. She is – I would describe her as nonconforming in terms of her gender presentation.

And I think the sport of track and field, as much as I love this sport, and, you know, it’s the No. 1 love in my life, I think we have a little way to go still when it comes to accepting both diverse gender identities, and also abandoning our ideas about heterosexuality.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The words fair and unfair get thrown around a lot in this conversation. What do people actually mean when they call something fair?

PAPE: I think really what underlies a lot of people’s motivations in this, you know, no matter which point of view you adhere to, people really want to see women’s sport get stronger and be valued.

And so what I look to for inspiration, really, on this topic is the leadership that we’ve seen from women’s sports organizations, like the Women’s Sports Foundation here in the U.S., also the International Working Group on Women and Sport, activists like Billie Jean King, who have spoken out in support of Caster Semenya and who see Semenya’s presence as a good thing for women’s sport.

So I follow their lead in saying that, you know, women’s sport will benefit from Semenya being a part of it, and we have room to include her here.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That was Madeleine Pape. She was an Olympic runner for Australia who once competed against Caster Semenya. Thank you so very much.

PAPE: Thanks so much for having me

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

The Portland Trail Blazers defeated the Denver Nuggets 140-137 after playing four overtime periods. That hasn’t happened since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The art of fiction is dead. Proust, Tolstoy, Atwood, move over. While half of America slept, the Portland Trail Blazers defeated the Denver Nuggets 140-137 in a game with four – count them, you almost run out of fingers – four overtime periods. That hasn’t happened since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Yes, a man named Eisenhower was president. NPR’s Tom Goldman is in what’s beginning to look like title town USA with organic ramps and fiddlehead ferns – Portland. Tom, thanks for being with us. And I’m breathless.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: I wouldn’t miss it.

SIMON: What a game – what a game.

GOLDMAN: Three and a half hours of sport as diversion, entertainment, unmitigated pleasure unless you’re from Denver.

SIMON: (Laughter) Pleasurable until the last second – last 5.6 seconds, really – yeah.

GOLDMAN: The best summing up came from Portland head coach Terry Stotts after the game. He said, I have no idea what happened in the first half or the second half or the first three overtimes. Rodney Hood came in and played great. It was a hell of a game. I’ve never been involved in a game like that. It was an amazing effort by both teams. Rodney Hood, who he did mention, came into the game…

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: …Two minutes left in the fourth overtime after sitting on the bench forever. He was the freshest player on the court. And he scored seven points, including a monster three-point shot at the end, which pretty much sealed it. Sadly, Scott, that leaves out so many other players…

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: …From both teams who competed magnificently. But if I’ve piqued your interest, set aside 3 1/2 hours today and watch a replay.

SIMON: On the other hand, it’s just two-game-to-one lead. Do the Blazers have enough in the tank?

GOLDMAN: I think both teams will summon the physical energy. This is what they train for. But I think Portland has a psychological advantage right now. Losing a game like that after that effort is pretty demoralizing. And Denver has to deal with that. And it probably puts them in a more vulnerable position. If the Blazers get by Denver, probably Golden State lurks in the next round.

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: Blazer fans are just thinking…

SIMON: Lurks – Golden State looms.

GOLDMAN: Looms – but Blazer fans are just thinking about tomorrow’s Game 4 against the Nuggets at this point.

SIMON: Kentucky Derby, of course, today – but this year’s race comes in the face of a lot of controversy surrounding the deaths of the greatest athletes in that sport. And, of course, I mean the horses.

GOLDMAN: Yeah. Today starts the Triple Crown period – three big races, the Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont Stakes, over the next month. This time always captures even the casual racing fan. But as you say, horse racing already is in the spotlight with the deaths of 23 horses in recent months at Santa Anita in Southern California. Those deaths prompted calls for reform – some of it starting to happen.

SIMON: Some changes have been made, right?

GOLDMAN: Yeah. Well, Santa Anita has responded, putting into place several changes related to medicating race horses. And just this week, it was announced the track is going to start using scan technology to study horses and diagnose injuries before they become catastrophic. That’s considered a very big deal. And on a larger level, an organization called the Coalition For Horse Racing Integrity – it’s starting a nationwide campaign to support a current bill in Congress that would regulate racing and unify an incredibly balkanized industry.

SIMON: Yeah.

GOLDMAN: Thirty-eight states have racing. And there are 38 sets of rules. And it makes it really hard to get any kind of measure passed, particularly safety measures that would protect the horses.

SIMON: Something I’ve wondered about in recent weeks – Tom, does horse racing have a problem the way football has a problem with concussions, that there is just damage in the sport itself?

GOLDMAN: That’s a really good question. There are those who say that’s definitely the case and that horse racing should be abolished because it’s inherently cruel to the animals. But there are certainly others, many in the industry, who say racing can go on safely without horses being mistreated. But if the industry wants to both benefit a lot of humans and be humane toward the animals at the same time, it has to be a lot better. There has to be reform because, if the public loses interest, reform efforts stall. As one animal rights activist told me, complacency is the enemy of the horses. And that could doom a whole industry.

SIMON: Yeah. NPR’s Tom Goldman, thanks so much.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Saturday marks the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. NPR’s Scott Simon talks to Los Angeles Times reporter Kurtis Lee about some of the unknown history behind the legendary race.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Today, 20 horses will step into the gates at Churchill Downs for the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby. There is a long history of horses and jockeys hoping for Triple Crown immortality. Some of that history lies in a neglected cemetery in Lexington, Ky., called African Cemetery No. 2, spread over eight acres. The site was created during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras when blacks and whites were buried in separate cemeteries. Thousands of African Americans are laid to rest there. And among those thousands are some of the early black jockeys and horsemen who were an important part of creating the legacy of the Kentucky Derby.

Kurtis Lee is a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He visited that cemetery earlier this year and joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.

KURTIS LEE: Hey. Thanks so much for having me.

SIMON: You described the cemetery in your article as neglected, cracked, chipped, crumbled. How did you find it?

LEE: I was on assignment in January doing a story on tobacco farmers who are growing industrial hemp now. And, you know, just driving through rural Kentucky, staring out at one of these horse farms, I just thought to myself, how many of these are black-owned? And, you know, the history of Kentucky in the South with slavery and Jim Crow – deep down, I knew that the answer was zero. And when I got back to my hotel room, I did a simple Google search. And I found that to be true. But I stumbled upon this cemetery, which was, you know, not far from my hotel – African Cemetery No. 2 where these black race – horseracing legends are laid to rest in this cemetery. And, you know, it’s really this forgotten history that not a lot of people know about.

SIMON: Well, tell us about some of the names that you discovered and learned about who are laid to rest there.

LEE: Absolutely. So there’s Oliver Lewis. He was the first jockey to win a Kentucky Derby in 1875. And also, you know, James “Soup” Perkins – he was one of the youngest jockeys to win. He won the Derby in 1895 at the age of 15. And, you know, also buried there was the late great Isaac Burns Murphy who rode in 11 Kentucky Derbies. And, you know, he won three. And of the first 28 winning jockeys of the derby, 15 were black men. And there just isn’t that much emphasis on it every time the Kentucky Derby comes around, you know, the first Saturday in May.

SIMON: I didn’t know it until I read your article. How do we explain that?

LEE: You know, you saw a lot of black jockeys winning the Derby in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And then Jim Crow laws come along. And by 1922, there were no blacks in the Kentucky Derby, no jockeys. And that continued on all the way until 2000 when Marlon St. Julien rode in the Kentucky Derby. And there was another break even until 2013 when Kevin Krigger was the last black man to ride in the Kentucky Derby.

SIMON: You a derby fan?

LEE: I am. Growing up, the Kentucky Derby was always on in May at my house. And, you know, growing up, my father would always talk to us about black firsts. You know, Doug Williams was the first black man to win the Super Bowl, Tiger Woods the first to win the Masters and Thurgood Marshall the first to sit on the Supreme Court. And, you know, I never knew that the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby was a black man. And, you know, I think that just – it just is a testament of just how much – there isn’t that much knowledge around this.

SIMON: Kurtis Lee, national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, thanks so much for being with us.

LEE: Thanks so much.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

The Kentucky Derby is fast. Really fast. The famed horse race is often won by fractions of a second. This has owners, trainers and jockeys looking for any way they can cut time.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Tomorrow marks the 145th Run for the Roses, better known as the Kentucky Derby and often referred to as the fastest two minutes in sports. In past years, the race has been won by less than a second. While there’s plenty of debate over the impact of performance-enhancing drugs, Ashlie Stevens of member station WFPL in Louisville wondered – what are some other ways jockeys, owners and trainers shave seconds off race time?

ASHLIE STEVENS, BYLINE: In the days leading up to the Kentucky Derby, horses and their trainers parade through the paddock on their way to and from the track for practice runs.

(SOUNDBITE OF HORSE TROTTING)

A. STEVENS: For now, the horses are moving at a pretty slow pace.

(SOUNDBITE OF HORSE WHINNYING)

A. STEVENS: But on Saturday, that won’t be the case. These horses are 1,000-pound elite athletes. And this race is just as competitive as any marathon or Olympic swim. Since its start in 1875, there are numerous examples of the derby being won by a fraction of a second. Which made me wonder – has anyone ever shaved their racehorse to get a better time, like how some human endurance athletes shave excess body hair to eliminate drag?

CHRIS GOODLETT: To my knowledge, there’s never been hair shaved off a horse to save seconds.

A. STEVENS: That’s Chris Goodlett, the chief curator at the Kentucky Derby Museum.

GOODLETT: I don’t know if it’s written rule – maybe because of the absurdity – but my guess would be it would be frowned upon.

A. STEVENS: Goodlett says, ultimately, the Jockey Club, the governing body of professional horse racing, probably wouldn’t approve of a bald horse. They can get sunburns, and owners are prevented from making any major alterations to a horse’s appearance – though there are plenty of other modifications trainers and jockeys have made for faster runs, such as using lighter horseshoes. Gary Stevens is a retired three-time Kentucky Derby-winning jockey.

GARY STEVENS: They’re not steel shoes. They are aluminum. And they are very, very lightweight. And they have toe grips on the front and grips on the rear end as well.

A. STEVENS: Stevens also says jockeys’ colorful shirts have undergone some aerodynamic updates since the 1980s. The silks now fit much tighter, like what bicyclists wear.

TERESA ESTES: The aero fits tighter to the body, so you don’t have it flapping in the wind when the horse is running.

A. STEVENS: That’s Teresa Estes. She and her business partner run Triple Crown Silks in Winchester, Ky. They are designing silks for three Derby hopefuls this year. Estes says many racehorse owners now want something more tailored to the jockeys’ bodies to reduce drag.

ESTES: In the satins, you can’t do that because there’s no stretch to it.

A. STEVENS: More of their clients are shifting away from those traditional race day materials to more aerodynamic fabrics.

Even with all the improvements, jockey Gary Stevens says a large part of the Kentucky Derby is still the luck of the draw, specifically the draw for post positions, or which gate the horses get to start out of. The worst one is closest to the inside rail.

G. STEVENS: And the one hole is dreaded in the Kentucky Derby because if you don’t break well – if you don’t get a good start, it’s like a giant wave of 19 other horses trying to get over close to the rail to safe ground going into that first turn.

A. STEVENS: And even with a good post position, sleeker clothing and lighter gear, Chris Goodlett of the Kentucky Derby Museum says there’s one more thing to try.

GOODLETT: Trainers will all joke with us that if you want more seconds – you want to do a little bit better in the race, you need to buy a faster horse.

A. STEVENS: While having the fastest horse is really the only sure bet for winning the Derby, that won’t keep trainers and jockeys from trotting out new tricks to increase speed.

For NPR News, I’m Ashlie Stevens in Louisville.

(SOUNDBITE OF PARQUET COURTS’ “WIDE AWAKE”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.