Posted on 05/03/2008 5:49:03 PM PDT by I still care
Cuban emigres living out rags-to-riches fairytale with colt Gayego
Dr. Jose Prieto, left, and Carlos Juelle pose with Gayego shortly after they purchased him at the 2006 Keeneland September yearling sale. Carlos A. Juelle
Mike Brunker Horse racing editor
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Few, if any, have traveled a more improbable and circuitous route to the Kentucky Derby than Carlos Juelle and Jose Prieto. The Cuban émigrés journey to the owners’ suite at Churchill Downs traces back nearly four decades to hard-labor camps and a maximum security prison run by Fidel Castro’s communist regime.
Juelle, a 68-year-old semi-retired business executive from Rolling Hills, Calif., and Prieto, a 78-year-old medical practitioner from Glendale, Calif., are the owners of Gayego, the winner of the prestigious Arkansas Derby. The overachieving colt, purchased at the 2006 Keeneland yearling sale for the relatively paltry price of $32,000, is the only horse the two friends own.
“It’s a special sensation,” Prieto said when asked about the feeling of owning a Derby contender. “You can’t describe it. … We have a saying in the medical profession. We say, ‘If you didn’t have the measles, you don’t know about the measles.’ It is like that.”
Juelle, the more outspoken of the two men, prefers to frame the experience in political terms. “It’s all a dream, and it’s what this country is all about," he said.
Juelle and Prieto are in a unique position to appreciate the rarity of what has happened to them and to savor the experience, in large part because of the horrors and hardships they endured after the Cuban revolution in 1959.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcsports.msnbc.com ...
But just before the Derby the reporter went up to these guys, who were imprisoned by Castro, and said to one of them, "I know you don't speak much English" to which the guy said, and I quote,
"GOD AND FREEDOM!"
To which the reporter didn't seem to know what to say.
The rest of the article details how they were oppressed by Castro, how one spent years in labor camps because he was concerned how Castro would take over the education of his children. The other was a doctor who treated the soldiers, and spent years in prison for that crime.
That's enough English for me.
I thought we could use a little good news from the Derby.
The last paragraph also inspired me.
“I think God gives you the strength to go through the difficult times,” he told this reporter, shortly before he departed for Kentucky on Tuesday. “And then you think of the beauty of this country that opened their arms to welcome us and … told us, ‘It’s in your hands. How much can you do? How far can you go?’”
That's enough English for me.
And for me. In any language.
The stories around this particular Derby were inspiring in many ways. These two men surely had some dramatic story. I loved the 80+ year old trainer who went to the Derby for the first time. And, so sad about 8 Bells; her owners/trainers/jockey have to be devastated amidst all the joy.
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