Kentucky Derby: What it's like at Churchill Downs for 150th Run for the Roses

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — When Lori Hennesy imagined her outfit for the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby, she wanted to create something deserving of that monumental anniversary, a celebration of Kentucky’s greatness and history.

So she got a bucket of chicken, red and white striped with Colonel Sanders’ famous face on the front, filled it with roses and attached a plastic horse. She wore it on top of her head.

“I wanted to have fun,” she said. Hennesy reckons that is what this place has always been about and how it came to host the longest continuously held sporting event in America.

She imagines what Churchill Downs must have been at that first race on May 17, 1875, when Ulysses Grant was the president, the country was still reeling in the aftermath of the Civil War and patrons arrived to watch the horses by riding horses there themselves. Women required a male escort to attend, The Courier-Journal reported, and admission was as little as $1.