They were the firsttime bumpkins of this majestic race, the old car dealer from Pennsylvania, the trainer from West Virginia and his hunting buddy, a 39yearold jockey who had ruled Philadelphia Park but had never before been within spitting distance of a race this rich or grand. It took only a little more than two minutes in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, however, for Roy Chapman, John Servis and Stewart Elliott to be rocketed from thoroughbred racing's outhouse to its penthouse, carried there on the back of a colt named Smarty Jones.

Remember the name. Smarty Jones wound up wearing the blanket of roses for winning the Derby because he outran his pedigree and 17 other horses on a swampy track that he caught like a jet stream. He is the first horse to arrive at the Derby undefeated and leave unblemished since Seattle Slew, who swept the Triple Crown races in 1977.

He also made his owners Chappie, as Roy Chapman likes to be called, and his wife, Pat rich enough to look prescient when years ago they decided to name the 100acre horse spread they used to own Someday Farm. Smarty Jones not only took down the $854,800 firstplace check for the Chapmans with his twoandthreequarterlength victory over Lion Heart, but he also earned them a $5 million bonus from Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark. Oaklawn celebrated its 100th anniversary by agreeing to bestow a windfall on any horse that could sweep its Rebel Stakes and Arkansas Derby in addition to the 130th Kentucky Derby. ''We're hamandeggers,'' said Roy Chapman, 77, who has emphysema and watched the race in a wheelchair. ''We never reached this level and never thought we would until we met Smarty.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/spo...