Paul Hornung someday hopes to saddle a starter in his hometown's Super Bowl

Before winning the 1956 Heisman Trophy, Paul Hornung was just another kid obsessed with his hometown's world-famous race. "I had such a love for the horses growing up," he said. Sixty-four years later, long after starring for Notre Dame and the Packers and making the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Golden Boy vividly recalls a golden day at Churchill Downs.

"I was only 13, and you had to be 17 to be an usher, but I was a little bit big for my age. So I told them I was 17 and got a job," Hornung said. "I got paid $45 my first Derby Day, which was a lot of money. Then after the race, we'd go down the aisles in the grandstand, steal the Derby glasses and go outside and sell them for a buck each. I brought $100 home to my mom. At 13, that was huge, and that stays in your mind."

It never goes away. At 77, Hornung's bucket list has an unfulfilled dream: to watch a horse he owns walking in the post parade while the band plays "My Old Kentucky Home." He took a shot this spring with Titletown Five, but he ran poorly in the 1 1/8-mile Louisiana Derby, dropping his record to 1-for-6. Hornung wasn't about to give up, so trainer D. Wayne Lukas, one of the colt's five owners, entered him in the mile Derby Trial last Saturday at Churchill Downs.

Titletown Five needed to win to have any chance of qualifying for the Derby, and at the top of the stretch, he moved into second. Unfortunately, that was his brief, shining moment before he faded to fourth.

Hornung said he's attended every Derby since childhood except for 1963, the year he was suspended the entire season for gambling on NFL games. Packers coach Vince Lombardi suggested he stay away from the '63 race "so I could have a clean slate and get reinstated." He was, and in 1964 Hornung started another Derby streak.

"So this has been a special race for me," Hornung said. "If I could be part of a winning Derby, for heaven's sakes, that would be the biggest thrill of my life."

Lukas, also 77, has entered a record 47 Derby runners, and Saturday he sent out two colts in search of his fifth solid-gold trophy. Long shots Oxbow (sixth) and Will Take Charge (eighth) failed, but you can be sure the old Wisconsin cowboy will try to return next year. One more and he'd be only one behind all-time leader Ben Jones.

SEE PHOTOSTriple Crown winners

Hornung, a running back and placekicker, won four championships in Green Bay and had two of the best all-around seasons in NFL history. He scored 176 points in 1960 and 146 in 1961, when he was MVP. Lukas is a giant, with 13 Triple Crown wins and 19 Breeders' Cups. Yet even in their late 70s, these all-time greats are in awe of the crazy spectacle on the first Saturday in May.

"The Derby is the Derby," Lukas said. "People say that when you win one, it means less when you win a second one, but I think my enthusiasm is greater for it now after winning four of them. I enjoyed the fourth one more than the first one ."

Many Derby winners turn out to be one-hit wonders, but that doesn't matter. They're part of racing history forever just because for one day, everything went right. Orb joined the club Saturday.

Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps' family has been a major player in American racing since 1926, but Orb was the clan's first Derby winner.

"I think it's terrific, absolutely wonderful," Phipps, 72, said. "It's really the culmination, and I'm thrilled to be here today."