In another lifetime, many years ago, I held a role as a pedigree writer.

This rather intriguing title required two key requisites – immaculate hand-writing (what people used to do in the era pre-computers) AND a quiet and subdued office manner.  Somehow, I managed to end up in the very hushed and hallowed halls of Wrightson Bloodstock as a member of the pedigree writing team despite failing monumentally on both fronts.

For some reason, known only to her (and possibly regretted every day of the mercifully short time I spent there) the late Jane McClintock Bunbury took a punt and signed me on.

My role – well, the only bit I remember – was to update the race record cards of the NZ-bred horses which raced in Australia, by carefully (the neat hand-writing bit) transcribing their performance from the Australian Racing Calendar.  This information was used to create the pedigrees of those blue-blooded youngsters which made it into the yearling sales catalogues.

These cards – there must have been thousands of them – were stored in a giant circular contraption known as the whirly-gig. I can only imagine the celebrations when computers meant the end of all that neat writing in tomb-like silence!

Fortunately for the sanity of the aforementioned Jane Bunbury and my fellow pedigree writers, my time at Wrightsons was blissfully short and I was off to my natural calling, working at NZ BloodHorse magazine.

While the days of rubber-band fights and breeding debates were over, we stayed in touch.

As we all shared a passion for thoroughbred racing and breeding though, many of my weekends involved excursions to the races with my former workmates.  Or, more relevantly to this time of the year, extensive sleuthing to discover somewhere we could watch the Kentucky Derby.

As difficult as it is to believe now, there was once a time when racing could only be viewed on-track or, in the case of international racing, by finding somewhere with an extremely flash, state-of-the-art dish capable of picking up coverage.

This led to some interesting venues for our Derby brunches.  I have a vivid memory of watching one renewal of the Derby from the all-but-us-deserted back bar of a cavernous North Shore pub better known for hosting bands the likes of DD Smash – at least the screen was a decent size.

The effort which went into finding a locale where we could enjoy the most exciting two minutes in sports, as the run for the roses is billed, was akin to the preparation to scale one of the seven summits.

Of course, it all got so much easier when we could watch it from the comfort of someone’s home rather than schlepping all over Auckland.

One of the highlights of Kentucky Derby viewing over the years has been the quality of the coverage. It seemed that every horse had an incredible back-story and, no matter whether he was a 100-1 longshot or the raging favourite, that story was given the full treatment.

The pre-race interviews were insightful and professional, and the emotional impact was clear, and allowed to shine without any interviewer cheesiness, after the event.

There was a stage I recall having to watch the coverage on ESPN via Sky, the reason why escapes me, it may have been that Trackside chose not to provide coverage.  Equally, it could well have been their coverage was limited to the odds and race pictures only, I didn’t care the ESPN coverage was perfect for the race fan.

This weekend will see the 145^th running of the Kentucky Derby.  While I won’t be enjoying a race day brunch to mark the occasion, I will be joining the international viewing audience to see whether Bob Baffert can add to his impressive tally.

I’ll also be re-watching the Kentucky Derby episode of 7 Days Out an outstanding Netflix insight into the behind the scenes lead up to Justify’s 2018 victory.