Before a day at the races, many years with the horses

PARIS, Kentucky — Long before trackgoers, many of them dressed to the nines, arrive at Churchill Downs in Louisville Saturday evening or Steve Buttleman picks up his bugle and plays the “Call to the Post” to mark the start of the 147th Kentucky Derby, people like Eric Buckley will have been working to make the American racehorse industry what it is.

There is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that trainers, farmhands, and horse breeders, jobs which Buckley and his family have been doing for three generations, put into the “most exciting two minutes in sports” and the jewel of horse racing’s Triple Crown.