The best way to describe the late Bill Nack’s passion for horse racing and his beloved Secretariat is to allow the master storyteller to do it himself.

“Horses have a way of getting inside of you, and so it was that Secretariat became like a fifth child in our house, the older boy who was off at school and never around but who was as loved and true a part of the family as Muffin, our shaggy, epileptic dog,” he wrote.

If you believe there’s a sense of fall this weekend at Churchill Downs, sorry. It’s actually spring in the air. The Road to the 2023 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve officially opens for business Saturday with the Iroquois Stakes, the first points race toward a start in the May 6 Run for the Roses.