Derby winner at the White House State Dinner.......

[a kennedy]

Calvin Borel, about as worldly as the horse he rode in on, was actually bear-hugged by the president of the United States.

"Picked me up," Borel said with a smile.

A man accustomed to risking his life daily on the racetrack was justifiably scared up until that point. George W. Bush put Borel at ease by asking him, "Where'd you steal that tuxedo?"

"I found it by the side of the road," Borel responded, relaxing.

Then the son of a sugar cane farmer from St. Martin Parish, La., greeted the queen of England. He talked horses with Colin Powell and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. He ate dinner next to the president's daughter, Barbara.

Among those at his table were "a football player, I forget his name."

Peyton Manning, perhaps?

"Yeah, that's him," Borel said.

The invitation to this elite and effete event was so far beyond the pale that both Borel and his agent, Jerry Hissam, greeted it like a get-rich-quick call from a telemarketer.

When Hissam's phone rang Sunday morning and the female voice on the other end said she worked for the White House, his antenna detected a prank. Even in the afterglow of such a compelling career achievement, there was little reason to expect the leader of the free world to suddenly desire your presence.

"I'm thinking, 'What agent put this woman up to this?' " Hissam said.

So he listened to the spiel from the woman who identified herself as Laura Bush's personal assistant and said, with no small amount of acidity, "You are going to send a private jet for him, aren't you?"

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2865646

[JoDog]

1. Borel is awesome

After the Derby, I commented to a friend of mine (a Lousiana native) that the winning jockey was a Cajun. When I told her his name, she said, "Why didn't you tell me a Borel was riding? I would've bet on that horse!" She remembered him and his brother from her days watching the sport in that part of the country.

USA Today has a great story about him:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/horses/triple/preakness/2007-05-17-borel-cover_N.htm

"Borel rode his first horse at 2 and has been racing since he became a bayou "bush jockey" at 8, in the unsanctioned Louisiana races where children once commonly saddled up in two-horse runs.

"I can read a horse," says Borel, who will seek the second jewel of the Triple Crown in Saturday's Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.

"I can tell if they got a bone chip. I can give them shots," Borel says. "I can tell when a horse is happy, when he's not happy. And I think a happy horse is the best thing in the world."

[a kennedy]

2. Yup, it'll be great when he wins the Preakness......

I'll be rooting for him.

[DS1]

3. Where'd you steal that tuxedo?

Where'd YOU steal that title?

God, I hate Bush