On the morning of the 40th Kentucky Derby that the grandfather would see in person, he picked up his daughter and son-in-law so that they could go to Churchill Downs together. It was a splendid first Saturday in May, the warming sun promising relief from the previous day’s rain, and the grandfather felt the old joy stirring, yet again, as he was met at the door by his older granddaughter, age 5.

She has her mama’s smile and hair, and the grandfather thought briefly about the Derby Day, many springs ago, when he took the child’s grandmother to see the great race. It was 1967 and the grandfather, so young and so intoxicated with love, bet $2 on the longshot Proud Clarion, for no good reason other than he had witnessed the colt’s final Derby workout and written a newspaper story about it.

So imagine his feelings late on a cold and rainy afternoon when Proud Clarion came splashing down the stretch to win. He collected his winnings, the remarkable sum of $62.20, and plucked a rose from the traditional winner’s garland to give his girl. And he left the track that long ago day convinced forever that nothing he would ever encounter in life would be more wonderful or romantic or thrilling as the Kentucky Derby.

Now here was his granddaughter, showing him a picture she had drawn of the horse she was picking to win the Derby. She was going to root for Eight Belles, she had decided (probably with a nudge from her mother) because she was the only girl horse in the Derby. Besides, she loves princesses. Eight Belles was a princess with four legs.

The grandfather admired the drawing, which was more or less a stick-horse version of a race horse. But he knew who it was because she had printed the name right above in her squiggly, 5-year-old scrawl. Yes, indeedy, said the grandfather. That was surely Eight Belles, only a fool could fail to know it, and he told the child, quite seriously, that she just might have drawn the Derby winner.

Only 20 years earlier, after all, he had taken her mother to the Derby in honor of her 16th birthday. It was 1988 and there was a filly in that Derby field, too. Her name was Winning Colors, and late on that Saturday, the grandfather was standing next to trainer D. Wayne Lukas, who was still looking for his first Derby win after several unsuccessful attempts.

When Winning Colors hit the finish line ahead, Lukas turned and whacked the grandfather on the arm with his rolled-up program. “My turn!” he shouted. “My turn!” And then he was gone, off to see his filly and get his roses and claim his place in racing immortality.

So the grandfather knew that a filly could beat the boys in the Derby because he had seen it twice in his lifetime, the other coming in 1980 with Genuine Risk.

Earlier in the week, he had spent some time with trainer Larry Jones, a humble and decent man from Hopkinsville, Ky., who had finished second in last year’s Derby with Hard Spun.

Peering from beneath his trademark cowboy hat, Jones had explained, in compelling detail, why he had decided to run Eight Belles in the Derby and his other marvelous filly, Proud Spell, in the Oaks. It had nothing to do with ego or pride, and everything to do with putting the fillies in the best spot for each to achieve their maximum potential.

Eight Belles was much bigger, physically, that Proud Spell. She had dominated her competition, winning all four of her 2008 starts. She met all the traditional criteria for running a filly against colts. So, reasoned Jones, with the full approval of owner Rick Porter, why not take a shot? As Dan Fogelberg sang, the Run for the Roses “is the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance.” Maybe the gods of racing would again smile kindly on a filly in the Derby.

On Saturday, as the grandfather was admiring the drawing of Eight Belles, Jones was the happiest man in Louisville. The previous day, Proud Spell came splashing through the slop – much like Proud Clarion in 1967, the grandfather noted to himself – to win the Oaks. Now here was Eight Belles, poised to make him the first trainer ever to win both races on the same weekend with a pair of fillies.

The grandfather’s 40th Kentucky Derby was a treasure. The weather was warm enough to make him doff his sport coat early in the afternoon, and the breeze was just strong enough to keep the women clutching at those marvelous confections known as Derby hats. He loved seeing his daughters together, laughing and talking. Their mother stopped by to say hello. Before he knew it, he was on his feet, singing “My Old Kentucky Home” and squinting at the horses as they came on the track for the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby.

As the horses paraded past the grandstand, passing through the lengthening shadows of the twin spires, the grandfather looked at Eight Belles and thought about the little girl at home. He hoped the day would come when he could take her and her sister to the Derby. He hoped they would inherit his love of horse racing in general and the Derby in particular. He hoped they would come to believe in the power of hopes and dreams.

Then the starting gate sprang open and the crowd of 157,700 roared its unique julep-induced roar and here they came, 20 thoroughbreds pounding toward their place in history. As always, the field thundered around the first turn and flattened out down the backstretch, the crowd noise slowly gathering force toward the explosion that would come when they turned for home and headed down the stretch, only 440 yards away from the grandest prize of them all.

Out of the pack charged Big Brown, the horse named for UPS. He had started from the No. 20 post, on the far outside, but now here he was, on the lead and pulling away with each powerful stride. The grandfather knew greatness when he saw it, and he saw it now. He understood why the colt’s trainer, Rick Dutrow Jr., had been so confident going into the race.

At the finish line, Big Brown was a winner by 4 ½ lengths over…could it be possible? Yes, it was! The filly, Eight Belles, had finished second. Larry Jones had known exactly what he was doing. The grandfather hoped a certain little girl was watching on TV at home.

But then it got strange at Churchill Downs.

The cheering and whooping that normally accompanies the Derby winner as he’s pulled up and jogged back toward the winner’s circle became muted. Something had happened to one of the horses. Who was it? How bad was it?

The truth was hard as it gets in the racing business. A quarter of a mile past the finish line, while rookie Derby jockey Gabriel Saez was trying to pull her up, Eight Belles took a bad step that snapped both her forelegs. Despite advances in veterinary medicine and surgery, there is no recovery from such injuries.

Less than five minutes after her electrifying run to glory, Eight Belles was put out of her misery by lethal injection. Her trainer, Jones, elated that she had run so well, didn’t even know it until he had fought his way through the mob to the track, where he got the bad news from winning jockey Kent Desormeaux, still aboard Big Brown.

“We were devastated,” Jones said. “I’ve never even heard of an injury like that. Both legs and a quarter of a mile after the finish. It wasn’t the race. She ran great and was never under any stress. There’s no way to explain it, no way to understand it. We cried all night.”

The grandfather didn’t know how, or even if, his daughter and son-in-law were going to break the news to the little girl. She didn’t seem to be aware of it when they got home. She knew that Eight Belles had finished second – she had noted as much on her drawing – but didn’t know about the accident.

They told her the next morning, just before the grandfather picked them up to go to the track.

Ordinarily, the morning after the Derby is a wonderful time to be on the backstretch. The crowds are gone, the pressure is off, the mood is a mixture of relief and relaxation. But this time there was the awkward juxtaposition of triumph and tragedy. There had been a death in the family.

Racetrackers know that every horse is just a step away from death. They accept it as part of the game, the price that must be paid by the animals and they people who love them. Horses are bred to compete. They have no other purpose in life, except to bring the world an ineffable sense of beauty and grace.

When an accident happens, racetrackers don’t point fingers. They don’t blame the trainer or the track condition. They only drop their heads or brush back a tear or give somebody a hug. Then they go back to work. The horses must be fed and groomed and exercised. Life must go on.

The grandfather told the little girl he had no explanation, except that maybe God just decided he needed a fast horse and so it was time for Him to call Eight Belles home. She listened, brow furrowed. She thought. Then she said she wanted to take her drawing and a rose to the track to give to the people who took care of Eight Belles.

And so she did, plucking a rose from the vase in the kitchen.

On the morning after the 40th Kentucky Derby he had seen in person, the grandfather watched the little girl give the drawing and the rose to Larry Jones and his wife. They promised the drawing would be put on the first page of the scrapbook they were going to make.

The door to stall No. 11, Barn, 43, where Eight Belles had lived in the days leading up to the Derby, was closed. But they opened it so they could lay the little girl’s rose on the floor.

“These animals,” said Larry’s wife, Cindy, tears streaming from swollen eyes. “It’s not about the money or the trophies or even winning. They love us and we love them back. We become a part of each other. That’s just the way it is with horse people. It’s just so hard when something like this happens.”

She nodded toward Stall No. 9, where Proud Spell was housed.

“She hasn’t stuck her head out since yesterday afternoon,” she said. “That’s not like her at all. But she knows. She knows something has happened. I promise you, she knows.”

The Kentucky Derby is supposed to be about a dream made real, not about a nightmare that will haunt forever.  It is supposed to be about life, not death. It’s supposed to be about all that’s wonderful about Kentucky’s signature industry instead of about a grandfather trying to help a child understand life’s eternal mysteries.

Yet as is the case with any endeavor worth the doing, and the striving, the worst must be risked if the best is to be attained. That’s how it has been for 134 years on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs, and it can only be hoped that’s how it will be forever. The great writer Joe Palmer once wrote that Man o’War come closer than anything to a being a living flame. The same might be said of any race horse that causes the heart to beat just a little faster.

The grandfather hoped the tragedy of Eight Belles didn’t deter the little girl from growing to share his love of horses and the people who care for them. She must understand that, yes, horses can break your heart. But they also can bring out the best in even the worst of us.

On the day after the 40th Kentucky Derby he had seen in person, the grandfather watched the little girl shyly and bravely walking up to Eight Belles’ trainer with rose in one hand, drawing in the other. “Thank you,” he said, softly. “You know how to make people feel good.”

So do horses, even those who die in the trying.