A never-ending search for a winner

It was a coincidence that Edgar Hilliard and Mike Batiste both arrived in the Twin Cities 13 years ago. Edgar came from Chicago to check out the job situation. Mike and his wife, Katie, came from Louisiana for teaching jobs.

Edgar and Mike crossed paths on the third level of Canterbury Park on Saturday, although this wasn't as much of a coincidence, since these two gentlemen are dedicated racetrackers.

"My dad -- Edgar Sr. -- worked his shifts at General Motors and spent as much time at Sportsman's Park and Hawthorne Park as he could manage," Hilliard said. "The first time he took me to the track I was 8 or 9.

"And the first time I took my son, also Edgar ... he was 3. I lost him in the crowd. That's a scary feeling. I found him, but my son never quite took to the track like his daddy or his granddaddy."

Batiste gained his fondness for playing the thoroughbreds at Fairgrounds Park in New Orleans.

"I wait for the live racing, and then I get out here maybe every second weekend," Batiste said. "This is my favorite day of the season -- Derby Day."

Finding a winner was not difficult for Batiste a year ago. "I had [winner] Street Sense, of course," he said. "The jockey, Calvin Borel, lived about 10 minutes from us in Louisiana."

As usual, one of the strongest opinions came from Bill the Cigar of south Minneapolis.

"I'm all over Tale of Ekati, the 2 horse," he said. "I had Giacomo three years ago when he won, and this horse reminds me of Giacomo."

Tale of Ekati would go off at a robust 37-1 and finished a solid (but not ticket-cashing) fourth.

Another half-dozen conversations with Canterbury regulars at midafternoon led to a half-dozen winning nominations:

4-Court Vision (17-1), 5-Eight Belles (13-1), 6-Z Fortune (19-1), 8-Visionaire (25-1), 10-Colonel John (9-2) and 19-Gayego (18-1).

That's the mess the serious handicappers were dealing with as they pored over their speed figures and personal systems in every nook and cranny of Canterbury.

Batiste and his friend Dick Putnam were operating on a table in the third-floor lounge. There was a modest-sized pile of tickets sitting in the middle of the table.

"Winners?" a visitor said to Batiste.

Putnam smiled, rubbed his hands through another bunch of tickets and said, "Yes, and there are more winners here. Do you want to buy them?"

Batiste had decided on his Derby winner before arriving at the Shakopee horse palace. "I'm going to bet Pyro [No. 9]," he said. "You have to throw out his last race. It was his first time on a Polytrack."

Hilliard also was leaning toward Pyro, with Tale of Ekati and Z Fortune earning places on his exactas. He lives in downtown St. Paul and works temporary jobs. He took a bus to the Mall of America on Saturday morning and then grabbed the Canterbury shuttle.

"I don't have a car and was having a tough time figuring out how to get to the track for a couple of years," he said. "I almost had to move back to Chicago."

The lack of respect for Big Brown in this circle of third-floor handicappers proved unfortunate for all. The reasons to throw out the favorite -- three career races, far outside post position, a quarter-crack in his hoof -- were wiped away almost immediately, as jockey Kent Desormeaux took him from far outside to prime position.

He won easily, with the filly, Eight Belles, battling mightily to finish second. She was galloping out well after the finish line when she collapsed on two broken front ankles and was euthanized on the track.

That's the game: the anticipation that comes with filling out a ticket, the thrill of seeing a talented 3-year-old overpower a Derby field, and the danger that's always there for the athletes, both horses and jockeys.