"If he don't fall, there's no way he'll get beat," [Calvin Borel] said in his drawl, aware that if today's 1 3/16th-mile test really is his toughest of the three, as many say, then Borel is stopping just shy of predicting the first Triple Crown winner since 1978. "If we get by this, then I'll be very comfortable with the next one," he said of the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes in three weeks.

"He was out sweeping his back porch at 8:30 in the morning after winning the Kentucky Derby," said Lauren Hofstetter, who lives next door. "I had already congratulated him the night before and I went over and hugged him again and he gets teary-eyed. He said, 'You'll never guess who called me.' I said no. He said, 'The president just called. Invited me to dinner tomorrow night.' "

Barbara White, Roger's wife, seconds that. She said Borel has gone from being "our neighbor Calvin" to simply "our Calvin." Barbara White has another name for him: "a night in shining armour," referring to one wicked night recently when the alarm on her sister-in-law's Toyota went off outside her house at 1 a.m.