Inside the glitz and glamor of the Kentucky Derby

As thousands of visitors enter Churchill Downs Saturday for the 151st Kentucky Derby, they will be met with manicured lawns, a rainbow of dresses, suits and hats and thoroughbreds ready to race.

Don’t have a ticket? Well, here’s a look inside the glitz and glamor of the big day.

Fashion

At the Derby, you’ll see a smorgasbord of hats and adornments. Feathers. Lace. Flowers. Cowboy. Fedoras. Wide-brimmed.

“The bigger, the better. We want you to block everybody’s view,” said Rachel Carroll, a co-owner of The Hat Girls, the featured milliner at the Derby for the third year in a row.

By about 8 a.m. ET Thursday, Carroll had been zooming about after The Hat Girls packed up the store the previous night and unpacked it for a two-day pop-up shop at a hotel a few miles away from the grounds.

From January to May, The Hat Girls receives about 2,000 orders for Derby hats. About half of their customers are locals and half are out-of-towners, Carroll said.

She said hat-making requires “creativity, originality and making sure the client feels confident when they walk out of the hat shop – however we can get them there.”

Derby hat trends don’t change much, but this year, hats in shades of green or yellow are particularly popular, Carroll said. And during the past decade, visitors have gravitated to fascinators, which are headbands with some kind of embellishment, she added.

Amy Lawyer, the chairperson of equine administration at the University of Louisville’s business school, said some will try to wear the biggest hat possible, but lots of guests prefer something more functional.

“The fascinators are always popular because they tend to not catch in the wind as much,” Lawyer said. “They don’t bump into people, and they can ride over in the car a little bit easier.”

Customers are also going back to the Derby’s roots by choosing a vintage style of hat, which is characterized by a bigger and floppier silhouette, and lots of flowers and feathers, Carroll said.

The first Kentucky Derby took place in 1875, and hats became a mainstay relatively early, around 1900. They were used to signify status, and over the decades have been accompanied by bodices, corsets, Flapper skirts, gloves and jumpsuits, according to the Derby website. 

Betting

There are betting windows everywhere. Lawyer said the Derby makes betting as accessible as possible, from a betting app, to signs instructing you on how to place a bet using the proper terminology, to the demeanor of the Churchill Downs employees.

“The people at the betting window will be very patient with you, because they want to make sure that you feel comfortable and you’ll come back and bet again,” she said.

But easy access makes for a bit of chaos.

“The people in line behind you might be the people that get a little impatient, so it’s kind of recommended that you study the program before you get to the betting window, and you know which horses you’re going to pick when you get up there,” Lawyer said.

There are a couple restrictions, though.

In Kentucky, you have to be at least 18 to gamble, and at the Downs, you have to bet a minimum of $2.

There is no ceiling — but there are special windows for the high rollers.

The horses

About 20,000 thoroughbred foals are born in North America each year, Lawyer said. Breeders with hopes of getting their horse to the Derby have one shot — only 3-year-olds can compete. Their chances slim down even more because only 20 horses will take off from the starting line at Churchill Downs.

Before then, the horses must make it through year-round trials. This year’s qualifying races took place across the world, including in the U.S., Japan, Ireland, France, England and the United Arab Emirates.

“There’s a lot of people that have connections and memories with each one of those horses, and I think it’s always important to kind of remind people it’s not just a horse to these people,” Lawyer said. “It’s their passion, it’s their livelihood. It’s their hopes and dreams kind of all wrapped up in this.”

Once the crème de la crème of the horses gets to the Derby, they are flanked by a new crew, adoring fans, eager gamblers and photographers.

For many of the colts, the Derby is the most horses they’ve raced against, the most people they’ve been around and the longest distance they’ve raced — 1 1/4 miles — Lawyer said.

“That’s not necessarily a natural thing for a horse to deal with,” she said. “So it’s a lot of new experiences that the horse is going through, and it makes it really exciting and really unpredictable.”

The facilities

On the horizon of the Churchill Downs are two white steeples — the Twin Spires.

They didn’t pop up until 1895, 20 years after Churchill Downs opened its doors. They were constructed by 24-year-old Joseph Dominic Baldez, who was instructed to give the facility more pizazz.

Once visitors reach the Downs, there is a statue of Hall of Fame jockey Pat Day, who has separately won the Derby once, Preakness five times and Belmont twice. (A horse and jockey must win all three races in the same year to be deemed a Triple Crown winner.)

There are also statues of Aristides, the first horse to win the Derby, ridden by Oliver Lewis, and jockey Edgar Prado and Barbaro, who won the Derby in 2006.

“The Derby Museum is also a really special place, and if somebody hasn’t been to Louisville before and doesn’t know a lot about the Derby, or even if they do, it’s just a really great museum,” Lawyer said. “They do a fabulous job.”

Additionally, seating was recently built at the first turn of the track. It’s where photographers get their “money shot” – the horses and jockeys coming around the bend, with the crowd roaring in the background and the Twin Spires above their heads.