LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Sean Collins may have grown up in Pennsylvania, but he says he’s a “Kentuckian at heart.”
In the days before the Kentucky Derby, the best time to get a glimpse of a future champion is at dawn.
“Yup! They get up very early in the morning. Training starts at 5:30 and we’ll go up until 10 a.m.”
That’s also when we can find Collins making his move to the backside of Churchill Downs.
“Those horses will wake you up. They are our version of morning coffee out here,” Collins says.
Collins is the Assistant Tour Manager for the Kentucky Derby Museum, handling all matter of guided expeditions along the track and through the barns and if the racetrack is “Broadway,” the backside is back stage. It’s where everything but racing happens and everything that does affects the outcome on dirt or turf. It’s context in living color, painted in coats of equine.
The backside is where the horses bathe, bed down, where training staff lives and works. There’s 1,400 stalls, and the activity is constant. A few hours on either side of sunrise is when the horses workout.
“So when you’re giving tours and you’re taking people out here for the first time, you see every reaction there could possibly be and that’s one of the things that makes the job most enjoyable. That’s what makes it fun,” said Collins.
He has the best seat in the house, a perfect vantage point to witness the drama, the action and reaction.
When talking about visitors to the backside, Collins says, “You kind of see their eyes open wide. They’re taking a look around. And then they come up to you at the end and they’re like, ‘Wow, I never realized that this is what goes on behind the scenes. They never show this on TV.’”
It’s a scene the 23-year-old can’t get enough of and being here is a boyhood dream come true. Collins, a Pennsylvania native, has always had his heart set on horses. When it came time for college, he enrolled in the University of Louisville’s equine business program.
“So horses brought me out so I maybe from Pennsylvania. I might be a Pennsylvanian, but I’ve always been a Kentuckian at heart. I feel like because the horses have always called me this way,” Collins explains.
He’ll attest if you’ve only ever seen a race, you owe it to yourself to learn the full story, and visit the backside.
“I think back to all the times in school and I would try to talk about the horses with people and usually you know some of them would listen and others would like, ‘OK, you’re talking about horses again you don’t need to keep talking about that.’ And so to be out here now and be surrounded by it and by people that love it as much as I do, well, is a dream come true for me.”