Al Gold was on a family vacation in the Catskills in the summer of 1972 when he visited Monticello Raceway, a Standardbred track in that part of the upstate New York region. “The place was packed – completely different from the way it is today – and it was enjoyable,” Gold said. The following day, Gold was in the gym of the hotel his family was staying at when he overheard a conversation between two men discussing how a particular race was going to play out that night at Monticello. “They were talking about how this one horse was going to go wire to wire in this race,” Gold recalled. “I went back that night and the horse went wire to wire and it paid a big price. “I was 16 years old. I didn’t have any money. I made a small bet, but I said: ‘Wow, this is fantastic. They know who’s going to win ahead of time.’ What a great career this would be.” Though he ultimately went into a career in commercial real estate, Gold has been a horseplayer since that summer. As he soon came to find out, gambling on horses is not so easy. Further, in 2004 Gold became a horse owner, a hobby/profession also not easy. After 18 years of trials and tribulations, Gold scored his first Grade 1 victory when Cyberknife won the $1.25 million Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. Saturday, Cyberknife will be Gold’s first starter in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. “We’re going to be 20-1, I imagine, but what the hell,” Gold said. “We’ll see what happens. There are four or five horses that are faster than us, from a purely numbers standpoint, disregarding pace, class, anything else. I’m happy that I got my Grade 1 already. I’m not going into this race with confidence no matter how well he’s working.” If Gold sounds a little jaded, well, he has good reason. In 2006, Gold believed he was ripped off of “a few million dollars” by a bloodstock agent whom he had known for 15 years and whom he used to attend the races with at Monmouth Park in New Jersey. Gold eventually sued the agent, Buzz Chace, and while he was successful in the suit, Gold said it didn’t make up for the money he had lost. “You never win a suit,” Gold said. “I got out better than I went into the lawsuit; he got out a lot worse. From that way it was beneficial.” Still, Gold is often asked why, after that experience, he continues to own horses. “I love the game,” he said. “I can’t sing and dance, I can’t write a book. I figured this is my only enjoyment. This is what I do – I go to the racetrack.” Ironically, Gold’s first graded stakes winner was a horse he named Chace City, after the aforementioned bloodstock agent. That horse won 3 of 4 starts, including the Grade 2 Saratoga Special. Shortly after that, however, Chace City colicked and died. “That horse was a star,” Gold said. “He really would have been special. He just had a lot of talent. It was a shame he died.” Gold remembers another horse, Projector, who got beat a head in his debut at Gulfstream Park, finishing 10 3/4 lengths clear of the rest of the field. He got an infection and ultimately perished. “There’s good and bad, as you know,” Gold said. He said the best horse he had was Rule by Night, a son of Malibu Moon who earned just shy of $250,000. He wanted to sell him as a stallion, but there were no takers. In recent years, Gold has increased the amount of money he will spend at auction. At the Fasig-Tipton select yearling sale in September 2020, he paid $400,000 for a yearling by Gun Runner out of the Flower Alley mare Awesome Flower, selected by his agent, Joe Hardoon. Gold gave the horse to Brad Cox, a trainer with whom he previously had only one horse, Bird Orr Brady, and that was in a partnership. Gold, who says he employs five trainers for his 20-ish horse stable, said he wanted to reunite with Cox given his recent success. Gold said Bird Orr Brady was a horse with a lot of mental problems. Cyberknife was quite similar when he first came to Cox’s barn, rearing up in the mornings, and he even got loose a couple of times during the summer at Saratoga. Gold typically has fun naming his horses, using sitcom references, some obscure. Wendell Fong and Daphne Moon came from the show “Frasier”. Floyd Unger was the brother of Felix Unger from “The Odd Couple”. Cyberknife is a serious name. On Dec. 7, 2020 – his 65th birthday – Gold was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Cyberknife is a non-invasive procedure that delivers radiation to the cancerous tumors. Gold’s cancer is now in remission. “They give you five 18-minute sessions with this cyberknife,” Gold said. “You come every other day for five days. You’re lying on a table and listen to music. I usually give my horses silly names or TV names or names associated with the [New York] Mets. This one I gave a serious name because it’s a serious thing.” :: Get Kentucky Derby Betting Strategies for exclusive wager recommendations, contender profiles, pedigree analysis, and more Emblematic of Gold’s experiences in the sport, he did not attend the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. The private plane Gold and his friends and family were scheduled to take to Arkansas had mechanical problems shortly after takeoff and was forced to return to a Florida airport. Oh yeah, Gold also has a fear of flying. It gets better. Gold is superstitious. A week before the Arkansas Derby, Gold had a horse win a maiden claimer at Turfway Park. He watched the race by himself on his iPad. When he got back to his home following the aborted flight to Arkansas, Gold decided to watch the Arkansas Derby race outside on his iPad. During the race, his iPad froze. “My iPad froze just as he was about to make that move between horses,” Gold said. “I ran in the house, I go to another room, and I couldn’t find the remote. By the time I got it on, there was 10 seconds left in the race.” Gold has since watched the race, by his count, 500 times. “If I’m watching something or lose a bet, I put that on and watch it again,” he said. Despite his fear of flying, Gold planned to fly from Florida to Kentucky on a private plane Wednesday. “I talked to the pilot,” Gold said. “He said, ‘Every time I got in a plane it landed where it was supposed to go.’ ” That information is pure gold.