Kentucky Derby Diary : After Smooth Sailing in Derby, Cordero’s Trip to Garden State Goes Awry

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —  Obviously, Angel Cordero doesn’t travel as quickly without Spend A Buck under him.

About an hour after Cordero rode Spend A Buck to victory in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby--in 2:00 1/5, the third fastest time in the race’s 111-year history--the 42-year-old jockey hopped on a plane for Philadelphia, where he had hoped to ride Kattegat’s Pride in the Betsy Ross Handicap at nearby Garden State Park later in the evening.

But Cordero didn’t make it to Garden State in time. Signing autographs at the Philadelphia airport, he missed connections with a limousine and arrived at the track five minutes late. Declan Murphy filled in for him aboard Kattegat’s Pride, who finished third, while Cordero ate dinner in the track dining room and gave interviews about how he had won his third Derby in the last 12 years. Then Garden State transported him by helicopter to New York, where he lives.

Near midnight, more than six hours after Spend A Buck’s 5-length victory, Bobby Velez, the speedy colt’s exercise rider, was at a phone just off the lobby of the Executive Inn West, calling his wife in New Jersey to tell her how it felt to be with the winner of the Derby. The Velezes had met in Florida, where she also exercises horses. Their son was a year old Saturday.

The phone connection might have been good, but Velez had trouble hearing, because the Spend A Buck bunch swarmed around him. Trainer Cam Gambolati, his arm around his mother’s shoulders, waved a cocktail glass. Mary Hale, Spend A Buck’s groom, hugged everybody she knew, and some she didn’t know.

Velez, seated at the phone, hung up with his wife, then put his elbows on his knees and buried his head in his arms. He was crying with happiness.

“What’s wrong with Bobby?” somebody said.

“He’s happy,” Hale said.

Coming up for air, Velez said: “I gave up a 17-year job for this. But it’s worth it.”

Budd Lepman, a Florida trainer, wouldn’t give Velez a 10-day leave to help train Spend A Buck at Garden State Park, so the 38-year-old Puerto Rican native quit to join Gambolati. Velez received $4,068--1% of Spend A Buck’s Derby purse--and he’s looking at a potential $26,000 payday on May 27 if the colt wins the Jersey Derby at Garden State. The winner’s purse there is $600,000 and Spend A Buck could also earn a $2-million bonus that was offered by the track to a horse that sweeps a series of four races.

By mid-morning, Hale and Velez were back at the Executive West, where they bought out the hotel’s newsstand of Louisville and Lexington newspapers.

For their scrapbooks?

“No, to make sure these people know we won,” Hale said in the coffee shop, acting like a newsboy and passing out the papers to people eating breakfast at the tables.

Gambolati said he was told that Hale is the first female groom to ever rub a Derby winner. Women trainers and jockeys have never won the Derby.