Robert Courtney

"I told them," he says. "You can't make a hardboot out of a Virginia redneck. And that's all I've ever been. Never pretended to be anything else. Just a Virginia redneck that loves horses." When you have spent as much time as Beau Lane among these unerring vehicles of humility--from the Appaloosas of his youth, to two Kentucky Derby starters in the last seven years--you tend to develop total immunity to self-importance. Even at 80, you never know what's coming next; nor, when something does happen, whether it will turn...