LOUISVILLE, Ky.  Sometimes this game brings you to tears. Sometimes it feels right to be wrong. And always it is better than O.K. when the tears streaming down your face are caused by a man in a black cowboy hat and an almost handlebar mustache, a Cajun jockey with more horse than book sense and a scrawny $9,500 gelding.

Chip Woolley, Calvin Borel and Mine That Bird, an improbable  no, impossible  50-1 long shot, did just that Saturday, running away with the 135th running of America’s greatest race, the Kentucky Derby.

Horse racing has had some bad big days recently.

Last year, the filly Eight Belles was euthanized on the racetrack after finishing second here. When the 2006 Derby winner Barbaro broke down in the Preakness, he brought greater public attention to the sport’s safety and welfare issues. Early Saturday it appeared to be more of the same: I Want Revenge, the morning-line favorite, came up lame in his left front ankle and was scratched.