LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The security of every high-dollar horse entered in the Kentucky Derby or Oaks is in the hands of a personal security guard earning $5.75 an hour.
There's no need for trainer Bob Baffert to worry, though, his Derby horse, Wimbledon (price tag $425,000), is under the watchful eye of Cindy Kortz and she has incentive to do this job well.
"This is paying for the new deck on my house," she said. "Hey, I'm being honest."
Nervous owners used to occasionally employ off-duty police to guard their horses, as co-owner Trudy McCaffery did with Came Home in 2002, but this year security has been standardized under Police Unlimited, a local firm.
Each barn with an entry in one of the features this weekend has a uniformed guard 24 hours a day. Though they do not carry weapons, the guards have instant walkie-talkie access to Louisville police.
"Besides the deck, though," she said, "I've found that this is a really neat thing back here. I'm a city girl from Louisville. I had never seen anybody shoe a horse before. I had no idea all the stuff that goes on. It's pretty neat."
Though most of their job entails shooing media from shed row windows, the underlying goal is the prevention of the kind of foul play that often made the sport seedy.
"I make sure nobody gets close to the horses unless the trainer is there or gives permission," said Kortz, a malpractice risk manager at a local law firm. "In the past there have been issues about sponging horses or giving them drugs, so anyone that comes by we make sure their license is current and if they're supposed to be there."
Much of the work is mundane, except when the odd photographer insists on angling for the perfect shot of a horse in his stall.
"I only had one media person get snooty with me, but otherwise it was okay," she said.
Kortz prepares for the day with comfortable shoes, a lawn chair, lunch cooler and a good read. This week it's Beyond Suspicion, another of James M. Grippando's page-turners in his Jack Swyteck legal thriller series.
Kortz's college-aged son and daughter even took jobs on the security detail this week. But she's pretty sure they're not kicking in for the deck.
