They have won a few races together — 131 of them, in fact, after teaming to win the sixth race here at Churchill Downs on Thursday with the appropriately named Court’s Journey, who is owned by Court’s wife, Krystal.
They have waited a long time for this opportunity — for 50 years now, Fires, 70, has watched the big-time trainers invade the backside here with their big horses. They roll them out in the morning and then hold forth on the mysteries of America’s race back at their barns.
Court, 50, has been replaced on Derby-bound horses more times than he can remember, most recently last year when he was taken off Line of David after winning the Arkansas Derby. They are racetrackers, pure and simple, and when Fires gives his son-in-law a leg up on Archarcharch, he will be thinking about the horsemen like him on the grits-and-hard-toast circuits from West Virginia to New Mexico.
“There are thousands of horsemen out there, good ones, who never got the big horse in their barn and probably never will,” Fires said from beneath a black cowboy hat in the honeysuckle drawl of his native Arkansas. “They work as hard, maybe harder, than the guys with the big names and the high-priced horses because they have to hold cheap claimers together just to make a living. I been there — it’s harder than training those high-priced colts the millionaire owners send their guys.”
There are a lot of journeyman riders who have duplicated Court’s wandering career and not ended up hearing “My Old Kentucky Home” from the back of a Derby horse. He won his first race 31 years ago at long-gone Centennial racetrack in Colorado, has been among the leading riders on the Louisiana-Kentucky-Arkansas circuit and even made an impact on the glamorous Southern California circuit, where he spent five years before returning here in 2009.
“I took my shot out there and more than held my own,” said Court, who reached his peak earning years in California, winning more than $7 million in purses in 2005 and 2006. “But I didn’t find my Derby horse. I had to come home to do that.”
The Fires-Court clans are one of the first families of racetrackers, and Barn 40 is not only a training stable, but also the staging area for one heck of a family reunion. Archarcharch was broken by Mannie Fires. He is shoed by the blacksmith Teddy Fires.
Jinks’s daughter Candace ponies her father’s horses; she will be the one to escort Court to the track Saturday. Krystal Court is a concierge in the suites for Churchill Downs.
“Earlie is coming in, and at last count we have 36 family members coming for the Derby, and maybe some we don’t know about,” said Fires, referring to another of his 10 siblings, a Hall of Fame jockey who rode in six Derbys.
The owners of Archarcharch, Bob and Val Yagos, have been sending horses to Fires for more than 20 years and count themselves as family. They have demonstrated why repeatedly in the last few months as offers to buy the colt have come in for far more than the $60,000 they paid for the son of Arch. In fact, they turned down a seven-figure offer.
“We thought about selling, but we didn’t buy him with the intent to sell,” said Bob Yagos, who owns an auto salvage business in Jacksonville, Ark. “This was our Derby horse, and it may be ours and Jinks’s only shot to get here. You can’t put a price on that.”
Fires was not so sure.
“I told Bob that I didn’t think he was a very good businessman,” he said with a laugh.
The prospect of winning a Derby appears to have taken some years off the trainer and rider. Jinks Fires has been doing some holding forth himself late into the mornings, telling stories about the first Derby he watched from here in 1961.
“That was Carry Back and Johnny Sellers,” Fires said. “Crozier ran that year and I bet on him and Carry Back just got him at the wire.”
Court is acting like the young, hustling rider he once was at Ellis Park and Hoosier Park and Oaklawn Park. It does not matter that he has won more than 3,500 races — he is galloping his and his father-in-law’s big horse each morning and posing for photographs with the yellow saddle cloth that Derby horses are given. He takes it home each night to wash.
“I’m not too old to win a Kentucky Derby,” he said. “I’m the right age to enjoy this whole experience.”
