In 1978, Columbia TriStar released a movie titled Casey's Shadow, which The New York Times gave a rave review. The film featured Walter Matthau as a tobacco-chewing Quarter Horse trainer on a run-down farm in Louisiana, whose rocket-fast 2-year-old colt, Casey's Shadow, was his best shot to win the All-American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs, N.M.
The movie, which was shot in New Mexico, included local talent in the form of a veterinarian who treated an injured horse. Nothing unusual about that, except the vet was Leonard Blach, co-owner of Mine That Bird, the 50-1 longshot who, with Calvin Borel, came from dead last to thread through the field on the rail and fly by million-dollar horses to capture the 135th Kentucky Derby.
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