Mary Poppins Couldn’t Make Grand Entrance

Churchill Downs has had an umbrella giveaway day several times, but unsuspecting fans bringing umbrellas to the track on any Kentucky Derby day will be in for an unpleasant surprise.

For yet another year, at the Derby this Saturday and on Kentucky Oaks day Friday, security people at Churchill Downs will be instructed to confiscate all umbrellas at the entry gates. On rainy and threatening days at the Derby, the track dumpsters are well-stocked with umbrellas.

At the Royal Ascot race meet, outside London, cameras are not allowed, but at least the track stores the cameras for patrons until after the races. On a rainy day at the Derby, there would be too many umbrellas to account for.

“It’s a policy we feel we have to have,” said Tom Meeker, chief executive officer of Churchill Downs Inc. “We have well over 100,000 people on Derby day, and more than 90,000 for the Oaks, and with all those people jammed in that way, we’re afraid somebody could get poked.”

Rainy weather for the Derby would be unusual. There has been no registered rainfall at a Derby since 1994, and the Churchill race has been rained on only four times in the last 17 years, for a combined total of less than two inches. Even when it does rain, the horses can still get a fast track over Churchill’s famous quick-drying surface. Since 1971, there have been only three off-tracks for the Derby.

Churchill Downs is even very cautious about the umbrellas it gives away as a premium. One year, another track executive walked into Meeker’s office, to demonstrate the free umbrella. It popped open with such gusto that it almost flew out of his hand.

“We had to find another umbrella to offer,” Meeker said. “One that didn’t act like a lethal weapon.”

The Churchill Downs gift shops don’t sell umbrellas.