On Saturday, wedged between baseball games, NHL and NBA playoffs, and the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley fight, 22 horses (as of press time) will kick off the Triple Crown season with the 137th running of the Kentucky Derby. And the field is as wide-open as any in recent history. “About the only thing we know for certain,” Jason Shandler of Bloodhorse writes, “is that someone will win Derby 137 at Churchill Downs.”  Even with a decisive favorite absent from the field (Dialed In currently leads with a relatively weak set of 4-to-1 odds), there are enough intriguing characters to attract viewers while toying with the pari-mutuels of amateur bettors everywhere. The run of upsets at the last few Runs for the Roses suggests this is almost a given. Decisive Moment will be jockeyed by 52-year-old veteran rider Kerwin Clark. Dialed In can claim Secretariat as an ancestor twice over. A weathered Jinks Fires, 70, trained horses through five decades before Archarcharch became his first Derby entry. Mucho Macho Man, nicknamed “Lazarus” by his owners, was originally thought to be dead when he was born, while his trainer, Kathy Ritvo, is aiming to become the first female trainer to win a Derby, as well as the first trainer who has undergone a heart transplant. Jockey Anna “Rosie” Napravnik, 23, becomes just the sixth woman to ride a horse in the Derby (she’ll be riding Pants on Fire, who won the Louisiana Derby). A finish above 10th will be the best ever for a female at the Derby. And Calvin Borel, an upset specialist who has ridden the last two Derby winners and three of the last four, had to scramble for a horse to ride this year after his first choice failed to make the field, finally landing on Twice the Appeal.  “Serious horse players ridicule amateurs who bet their hearts rather than their heads,” writes Lew Freidman of The Republic. “But perhaps this is the year the dart-board approach will work, especially if the track is muddy, as it has been all week.”  Part of the reason for the wide-open field, according to some experts, is a declining class of horses in the United States. The Washington Post’s Andrew Beyer suggests that a combination of factors is to blame for this: short careers for horses who then go off to stud and produce equally feeble foals, the rampant use of medication in the United States, and the scooping up of prime yearlings by prospectors from abroad. “Arab and British buyers began dominating U.S. yearling sales in the late 1970s. Japan remade its entire thoroughbred industry with the purchase of 1989 Kentucky Derby winner Sunday Silence,” Beyer writes. “Now Australians are becoming a major force at U.S. sales.”  The weak field and muddy conditions have many observers suggesting that some standard kisses of death may not be so foreboding this year. Even trainers with horses stuck in historically bad starting posts are optimistic. Archarcharch, for instance, will go off from the dreaded No. 1 position. “The last horse to win the race from that position in a 20-horse field,” Tim Wilkin of the Times Union writes, “was War Admiral, and he won the Triple Crown back in 1937.” Relative newcomer Midnight Interlude is trying to become the first horse since Apollo in 1882 to win the Derby without having raced as a 2-year-old. Nehro could be the first horse to ever win the race from post position No. 19. And David Scanlon, who breaks and trains horses early on before handing them off to other trainers, has never had a horse associated with him win in any of their seven tries. This year, Scanlon has ties to three horses: favorite Dialed In, Stay Thirsty and Santiva.  Even with all the fun associated with the Derby, it’s hardly got a spotless history. Richard T. Watkins of NPR traces the sad disappearance of the black jockey. From the first Kentucky Derby, black jockeys were the superstars of not only horse racing, but of the American sporting world as a whole. Willie Simms, who introduced the short stirrup to the profession, and Isaac Murphy, the Derby’s first three-time winner, both earned about $300,000 over their careers in the late 1800s, equivalent to about $15 million today. But, according to Watkins, white riders conspired to push out the black jockeys. In 1902, Jimmy Winkfield became the last black jockey to win the Derby. Most were eventually pushed out completely. “The black jockeys who remained in racing were reduced to exercise riders, hot walkers and stable hands,” Watkins writes, “raking horse manure from barns.”  UPDATE: A gastrointestinal infection will keep one of the favorites, Uncle Mo, out of the race, the Journal’s Pia Catton reports. Join Pia for full coverage from Churchill Downs Saturday.  The retirement of Maryland head basketball coach Gary Williams on Thursday came as a surprise to even those in the know. An open-to-the-public press conference scheduled for 1 p.m. ET Friday should shed more light on the coach’s reasons for calling it a career at age 66. After 33 years of coaching college basketballwith the last 22 at Maryland, including a national championship in 2002Williams certainly deserves the chance to kick back.  There are no public hints of NCAA violations within a mile of Coach Williams, and his disagreements with his bosses passed when former Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow left for North Carolina State. Last month, his feud with Yow spilled into the public sphere when the two traded barbs: Yow accused Williams of sabotaging the N.C. State coaching search; Williams said he did no such thing. Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun suggests that Williams’s decision might have been somehow tied to sophomore Jordan Williams declaring for the NBA draft, but says that it’s more likely that “he just reached a point where he no longer enjoys dancing with demanding recruits.” Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News points out that Williams quietly got married a few weeks ago, and may just want to enjoy spending time with his family. But he also agrees that the ugly world of recruiting as a factor that may have driven Williamsa coach he believes should be in the Hall of Fameout of the game he loves and the school whose program he helped to single-handedly revive. “He no longer needs to sweat the recruiting process,” DeCourcy writes. “He has earned this freedom.”  Los Angeles Lakers forward Ron Artest does not have good timing. With his team on the way to falling behing two games in their seven-game series against the Dallas Mavericks, Artest decided to give Mavericks guard J.J. Berea the gift of a clothesline/elbow to the head. That was enough for the NBA to hit Artest with a one-game suspension. Artest’s action came just over a week after he was presented with the 2010-11 J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award for his charitable works this season. Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Times maps out four scenarios for the Lakers in trying to replace Artest, including everything from starting Lamar Odom to putting Luke Waltonwho hasn’t played yet in the postseasoninto the starting lineup so as not to mess with the rotation.  As for Barea? While the elbow to his head may be what he’s remembered for on the court, his off-court achievement may outshine allhe’s currently dating Zuleyka Rivera, better known as Miss Universe 2006.  Found a good column from the world of sports? Don’t keep it to yourself  write to us at dailyfixlinks@gmail.com and we’ll consider your find for inclusion in the Daily Fix. You can email Nando at nandodifino@yahoo.com.
It's anyone's guess who will win one of the most wide-open fields in years. Plus: Gary Williams walks away from Maryland; Ron Artest: citizen, clothesliner; and more.