Amidst the dangling pearls, stubby cigars, and sour odor of bourbon wafting through the air, there is a horse race.

Welcome to the experience at Keeneland, a race track in Lexington, where names like “Tidy Up,” “Tin and Lint” and “Thor’s Daughter” represent the horses dashing around the dirt track. Tiny jockeys weighing little more than 100 pounds perch precariously on top of these half-ton mammals.

Such an extreme combination of a human athlete and an animal athlete make this sport unique. Not only that, but the horses run the eliptical one-and-one-sixteenth mile course at about 50 miles per hour, so the entire race lasts less than a minute and a half.

But the excitement of the day is less about the horses, jockeys and speed of the race as it is about the overall atmosphere of Keeneland. It’s about betting a thousand dollars on two seconds. It’s about the classic style and romantic nostalgia of horse racing. It’s about dressing up in Italian leather shoes with a double-breasted jacket, and it’s about pearls and large hats and parasols.

It’s all about one Friday afternoon in October at the races.

Nathan Morgan is a junior photojournalism major from Nashville. Reach him at nathan.morgan@wku.edu.