Don’t bet against Kansas in Kentucky Derby

If Saturday’s Kentucky Derby was only a race, nobody would care.

But the Derby since 1875 has staged great stories, of horses and humans, rags to riches, and Cinderella tales like that of Frances Genter and her winner, Unbridled.

There was Secretariat, the greatest of all. There was American Pharoah, the last horse to win the Triple Crown.

And now, if the horse gods smile on dry, windblown western Kansas, maybe there will be McCraken, and his shy, 84-year-old owner, Janis Whitham, who grew up on a Kansas farm and was riding ponies by age 6.

Horse Racing Nation’s editor, Brian Zipse, published a column Monday: “Why McCraken will win the Kentucky Derby.” And John Clay, the sports columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, thinks McCraken has a shot.

Janis Whitham from Leoti, Kan., has put a horse at the starting line in the biggest race in the world.

Don’t bet against them, horse experts say.

And get the hankies out.

Just in case.

‘Lifetime achievement award’

It sounds so improbable.

Many horse owners who regularly race at the Derby get there by spending millions of dollars every year, buying multiple foals sired by the biggest names in horse racing. Some horse owners specialize in arranging the siring of these foals. Others specialize in buying and training them.

“There are owners that spend a lot buying yearlings to try and get a Derby horse,” said Clay Whitham, Janis’ son. “Some are successful. Some not.”

His mother is no poor neophyte. Her husband, Frank, was a banker and rancher; her sons Jeff and Clay are bankers. The New York Times published a long obituary about Frank when he died in a 1993 plane crash near Goodland.

But Janis doesn’t spend the vast resources some other horse racing families spend.

“The North American thoroughbred foal crop is around 23,000,” Clay Whitham said. “We have five foals in training from this crop.”

Janis Whitham got to Churchill Downs this week partly because McCraken was born fast. But Janis picked his parents for mating, and has raised all her foals herself for decades. She’s good at this, her son said.

“It’s very tough to get a Derby horse, however you go about it,” he said.

Those thousands of foals compete for only 20 spots at the starting line of the Kentucky Derby.

McCraken making that cut “is what I call the lifetime achievement award for my mother,” Clay Whitham said. “She still actively plans all the matings for our brood mares every year. She picks the sires.”

She ‘stuck with it’

All of this got done by a girl born on a farm near Scott City 84 years ago. After she married Frank, she started a feedlot business with him. They started buying quarter horses, at first because agile quarter horses helped move cattle around in the feedlots, Clay Whitham said.

But then Janis’ love of horses kicked in, and the family began raising thoroughbreds too.

She kept at it after Frank died. That’s a telling detail, said John Clay, the columnist.

“Most racing families, when the husband dies, the wife gives up the horses. She stuck with it.”

“I’ve got photographs of her when she was 6 years old, riding a pony,” said Jeff Whitham, another son. “She puts a lot of love into this.”

She’s shy, and has Clay do all the talking. She’s proud of where she’s from: All her top horses, including Fort Larned and McCraken, are named after small western Kansas towns. “Although I have to say, we didn’t quite get McCraken spelled right when we named him,” Clay Whitham said. The town is spelled McCracken.

McCraken himself is a good story, Clay Whitham said.

“He’s a handful,” he said. “He thinks he’s a winner, tests his trainers. And in racing terms, he’s what is known as a closer. He’ll hang back in the pack – and then, after that second turn, he’ll make a move.”

Derby legends

Some of the better Derby legends involve owners, Clay said.

“There were these (10) high school buddies (in 2003), and they got a winner with Funny Cide, the first horse they ever bought,” Clay said. “They paid $5,000 apiece to buy the horse, and showed up at Churchill Downs together in a school bus. That was a great story.”

Then there was a tiny woman, 82-year-old Frances Genter, Clay said. When her horse, Unbridled, won in 1990, the television cameras caught gripping images as her trainer, Carl Nafzger, gleefully shouted a play-by-play into her ear. She stared off to the side, her eyes wide, her hand to her mouth.

“Her eyesight was so bad she could not see the track,” Clay said. Watching this scene on YouTube puts the heart in the throat:

“He’s going to win! He’s going to win! He’s going to win!” Nafzger yelled, as the tiny lady beside him held back tears. He kissed her on the lips. “I love you!”

Whitham and McCraken are not quite that kind of legendary story, Clay said.

Though other racing operations are larger, Janis and her family have been known and respected for years on the racing circuit.

Frank, her husband, was raising horses that got into some of the bigger races in the country as early as the late 1980s.

The trainer Janis hired for McCraken, Ian Wilkes, is one of the top-tier trainers in the country. Whitham and Wilkes teamed up in 2012 with her horse, Fort Larned, to win that year’s Breeder’s Cup Classic, one of the big annual horse races.

“So this is not quite a Cinderella story,” Clay said.

“But it’s a good story, a sentimental story,” he said.

“A lot of people in racing know her. People in the sport will root for her on Saturday. People at Churchill Downs will root for her.”

This story was originally published May 4, 2017 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Don’t bet against Kansas in Kentucky Derby."