LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Every word Rick Dutrow has spoken this week has passed through a smile. "It's all good, babe," he keeps saying, urging anyone who will listen to lay money on his horse.
Around the track, where every railbird is starved for a tip, a grin is usually intended as either a shield or a diversion. Dutrow couldn't fake this smile, though. He knows how improbable the journey has been, beginning as a child in Hagerstown, getting in trouble on Maryland tracks and culminating today in the 134th Kentucky Derby, where Dutrow's colt Big Brown is the favorite.
In between, Dutrow has packed enough living to fuel a daytime soap, to keep an afternoon talk-show host busy and to ensure that a few therapists drive nice cars. Partying, drugs and gambling are the just start of it.
A falling-out with his father, a famed Maryland horseman in his own right, was never resolved. The mother of his daughter was murdered. Multiple suspensions. And somehow Dutrow went from living in a New York barn to starting perhaps the best bet in today's 20-horse field.
"It's all good, babe," he keeps saying.
And they keep asking him questions, keep hoping for answers. But how do you explain it?
"I don't think I'm a person you look to for guidance - don't do this, don't do that," says Dutrow, 48. "The only thing I need is to be around my horses. ... When I leave the barn, trouble starts."
In the blood
He was born into the game. Dutrow's father, Dickie Dutrow, was one of the area's top trainers in the 1970s and early '80s, working out of Laurel and Pimlico. In 1975, he posted 352 wins, a record at the time, and became the first Maryland trainer since 1917 to top the national rankings for wins.
"He was a good trainer, and he knew it," says trainer King Leatherbury, who battled Dutrow for Maryland bragging rights for years. "He wasn't shy about it. ... You might call him a little cocky, but in a friendly way. I remember one time, I was slow getting started in a particular meet, he saw me and shouts out, `Hey, you still here? Figured you'd left.'"
Everyone in racing knew Dickie - he even ran a stable of horses for Orioles' owner Peter G. Angelos - and in turn, everyone knew his three sons, Tony, Ricky and Chip, who treated the track as their playground.
Rick Dutrow was the middle son, and while all three boys would help their dad in the barn, he was the most likely to wander off and find trouble. But all three boys were addicted to the track and all three dropped out of Atholton High when they reached 16, which pained their mother but delighted Dickie.
