NOT EVEN CDI CAN RUIN DERBY.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI HORSE RACING 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Things I think about when I think about the Kentucky Derby:

Mint juleps.

Fancy hats.

Roses.

Nachos BellGrande.

Is this what happens when Churchill Downs sells out and strikes a sponsor-ship deal with the parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC, making the official title of today's big horse race ``The Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands''?

Things I think about when I think about the Kentucky Derby:

Millionaires Row.

High heels.

Fat cigars.

Stuffed Crust Pizza with pork and jalapenos.

Of all the commercial links that Churchill could have dreamed up, this is the one they choose for the sport's grandest spectacle?

Things I think about when I think about the Kentucky Derby:

Secretariat.

50-to-1 shots.

$860,000 superfectas.

The Colonel's Crispy Strips.

How many millions must Churchill be collecting on this deal to make it worth attaching a 132-year-old sporting classic to instant Gorditas?

``It's not like there's a drumstick strung up between the Twin Spires,'' John Asher, Churchill's vice president for communications, said one day this week as we looked across the barns to the iconic steeples atop the grandstand roof.

I guess a lot of us feared we'd show up to find Churchill Downs festooned with bright red ``Yum!'' logos. To find little styrofoam tubs of mashed potatoes for sale at the stands where the juleps used to come from.

It hasn't happened quite that way. There are a couple of Yum! ads near the odds board and video screen over the saddling paddock, but they're no worse than the ones for Triple Crown sponsor Visa. Besides, they're way up high, unlikely to offend Brother Derek and Barbaro as they gird for battle in today's Kentucky Derby.

Whatever else the Yum! presence amounts to, it really hasn't spoiled the view.

The point here might be that no matter how hard it tries, no matter what it does to cheapen its own brand among traditionalists, Churchill Downs can't ruin the Kentucky Derby.

There's an atmosphere about this race, an aura around this place, that creeping corporatism can't overwhelm.

When I first came to the Derby in 1989, the year Sunday Silence beat Easy Goer, I remember thinking Churchill was a little like Wrigley Field. The aging grandstands, the uneven brick walkways, the little neighborhood streets beyond the gates -- these felt like Friendly Confines for the horseplayer.

That changed in the past few years as Churchill underwent $121 million in renovations, featuring the addition of 77 luxury suites (what else?) in towers that leave the Twin Spires invisible from some angles.

It's Churchill Downs Inc., and don't you forget it.

Churchill should be a goodwill ambassador for the sport. Instead, elsewhere in its vast empire of racetracks, CDI created bitterness in California by taking over Hollywood Park and then giving up on it last summer. Churchill is lucky that Frank Stronach's Magna Entertainment, its rival in racetrack management (it owns Santa Anita), inspires as much cynicism or more.

Maybe it's nostalgia talking, but the atmosphere here isn't the same.

Except today.

Credit the horses, the horsemen and the fans -- more than a century of them.

Three years ago, more than 36,000 thoroughbreds were born. No more than 20 members of that class will be in the Kentucky Derby starting gate today. One will win it and give his owners and handlers that sense of destiny that comes from having your whole life pivot on two minutes of running around by a bunch of animals.

If it were me winning something like this, I'd celebrate with a bourbon, a cigar, a kiss from someone in a big hat.

And Fiesta Taco Salads for all my friends.