Jockey Kent Desormeaux had just finished watching a tape from NBC showing his family in the grandstand two weeks ago when he won the Kentucky Derby on Big Brown.
With luck tomorrow at Pimlico Race Course, Desormeaux could help stage a replay, guiding Big Brown to victory in the second jewel of the Triple Crown before his wife and children - as well as many Maryland racing fans who undoubtedly remember him breaking out as the apprentice with the Cajun name and the skills beyond his 17 years.
If that happens, Desormeaux would be thrilled, perhaps not beyond words - because he has always had the words - but beyond our knowing.
Maybe no one can understand his range of emotions. For Desormeaux, 38, the victory meant redemption, highlighting his return to the pinnacle of the sport. It also meant joy in his family, and he could see his wife, Sonia, and sons Joshua, 15, and Jacob, 9, relish his win.
But Desormeaux's Derby victory meant even more to his family, specifically Jacob. His youngest child has Usher syndrome, a condition that affects both hearing and vision. So while Jacob can still see, his father gave him an indelible memory to cherish - and a role model for the courage he'll need to face the blindness that is closing in on him.
The syndrome has no cure.
"It has changed our lives," Desormeaux said. "We spend our time educating ourselves and reading and trying to find a cure or help to slow it down."
"That's the worst," Sonia Desormeaux said. "There's nothing out there right now. The doctors say there is nothing we can do. Just that thought - it's such a feeling of helplessness."
A long ride
It has been a long ride from Desormeaux's apprentice days in Maryland back to the top of his industry.
He rode his first stakes winner for Maryland trainer King Leatherbury in 1987, during a rookie season when the Louisiana native won 297 races in fewer than eight months. Now he's on the back of Big Brown with his third chance at a Triple Crown.
In between, there have been extreme highs - Real Quiet's Triple Crown bid, Fusaichi Pegasus' Derby win. Three Eclipse Awards. Induction into the Hall of Fame. And lows - a decline in 1997 (three years without leading any meet in wins) he described as going from "being on top of the world to falling off the face of the Earth" and another drop-off in 2005 (fewer than 200 wins combined in '05 and '06), which again forced him to re-evaluate his commitment to the sport and "start over."
