Netflix’s Derby Documentary: Modest Effort, Finishes Mid-Pack

[Wandering Eyes]

You should absolutely watch the Kentucky Derby segment that is part of Netflix’s “7 Days Out” series. The idea behind the series is to go behind the scenes at famous events like the Derby, the Westminster Dog Show and the CHANEL Haute Couture Fashion Show, giving the viewer an inside look at all that it takes to get to the big day and to make sure it lives up to its billing. It’s Netflix, just about everything they do is well done, and what racing fan can’t devote 45 minutes to a documentary on the Derby?

The problem is, the show is good, when it could have been very good.

You know from the start that this version of 7 Days Out is meant for the non-racing fan, which is why you have to sit through such things as Churchill Downs President Kevin Flannery explaining the race is run at a mile-and-a-quarter, is for 3 year-olds only, you can only run in it once, people like to bet on the race, the field is limited to 20 horses and, oh, by the way, it’s a really big deal.

The show goes day by day, starting seven days out from Derby Day, and takes the viewer through what happens each day leading up to the big race. So, again, the racing insider doesn’t really need to learn that the horses don’t sit in their stall munching hay for seven days, but instead are trained every morning.

What the show needs is to take you places that you couldn’t otherwise go, racing fan or non-racing. At times, it succeeds. One of the best segments, and one that shows you a side of the participants you otherwise wouldn’t see, is when Dale Romans’s daughter pulls a prank on her father. Bailey Romans catches her father eating cracklins, which is apparently fried pig fat. She knows her father, who is a large man, shouldn’t be eating something that is 50-50 to give you a heart attack, and grabs the junk from her father and runs off with it. Romans isn’t amused.

But it’s actually a cute scene that introduces the viewer to perhaps the grossest food ever invented and shows that Bailey is not only concerned about her father’s health but has a mischievous side to her.

They score again when they show trainer Keith Desormeaux serving traditional Cajun food to his family the Thursday before the Derby. Brother Kent, the jockey, is not there and we get an insight into their relationship, which has always come across as a love-hate one. In a good natured fashion, Keith picks on his brother and reveals the real reason he keeps riding him.

“I would’ve fired him 100 times already,” Keith says. “I’ve said before that I got no choice in the matter. As long as mamma’s still around, I’ve got no other rider. I can’t take that abuse.”

A few more scenes like those and a few less where you learn that, guess what, there are a lot of parties prior to the Derby, would have made for more compelling television.

The segments with announcer Travis Stone also worked well, especially the one where he explains how he believes calling a race like the Derby is no different than narrating a story and how hard he works before hand to prepare for any and all possibilities and twists.

But the show’s biggest failing is that the producers chose the wrong individuals to focus their attention on. By far the most air time is given to Romans and Keith Desormeaux, with jockey Robby Albarado coming in third.

Nothing wrong with any of those three. Romans and Desormeaux, especially, are charismatic and articulate. But by devoting so much time to those individuals, the 7 Days team completely missed out on what was far and away the most important story of this Derby, and that was Justify (Scat Daddy).

This was one of the most compelling horses ever to enter the Derby, the undefeated superstar who would try to buck history by becoming the first horse since the Stone Age to win the race without having started at two. Plus, in Bob Baffert, they had a trainer that is as witty and as charismatic as they come. You get glimpses of Justify here and there and Mike Smith provides some wonderful quotes about how special it is to win the Derby.

But, for the most part, in the lead-up to the race he is treated like just another horse. We get numerous shots of Romans and Desormeaux watching the race and about a second and a half of Baffert doing the same. After the race is over, we don’t find out what Baffert thinks about Justify, but what Romans thinks of Justify. “He might be the super horse,” he said.

Though he wasn’t as an important a figure in this race as Baffert was, Wayne Lukas is also reduced to a little more than a few cameos. When you have, at 82, the most successful trainer in the sport returning to the Derby after a three-year absence, how do you not pounce on that story?

Capturing all there is to capture about the Kentucky Derby cannot be easy, particularly if those putting the story together are racing novices. By no means did Executive Producers Andrew Rossi, Joe Zee, Andrew Fried and Dane Lillegard do a bad job. Like a horse, they just ran greenly in their first race over the track.

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