On the appointed day, the richness of history and flower of youth come together each spring beneath the twin spires at Churchill Downs, a reunion of time and place that is central to the Triple Crown of American racing.

The embrace of present and past is unique to the Derby, which is a watershed of dreams rippling across bedrock formed over 135 years by all thoroughbreds who have passed this way on the first Saturday of May in the third year of life, the immortal and the forgotten.

In every respect except official proclamation the first Saturday of May is an American holiday and though it comes at an early stage of the racing season the Kentucky Derby and the series it launches is also the sport’s best vehicle for widening the audience, for the exposure of a colorful and engaging past to the audience aware only of the present and then only for brief periods during a five-week span. The challenge is to engage that casual audience beyond the Triple Crown, a process that has been dramatically altered by evolving technology and the subsequent changing landscape of the nation’s racetracks.

Technology and simulcasting have moved the existing audience away from the racetracks and even the most involved horseplayers are in attendance less often than in the past. So, it becomes all the more important to maximize the events that provide exposure beyond the already initiated; to seize the opportunity afforded by commercial television exposure and other media, which have steadily in the last decade or two minimized racing coverage even in the largest and most fertile markets.

A widened exposure can be counterproductive. The allure of the Derby and Triple Crown as an introduction to the sport has in recent years taken severe body blows. The eventually fatal injury suffered by Barbaro in the 2006 Preakness and the death of Eight Belles after her courageous runner-up effort in the 2008 Derby have caused more people to turn away than to walk through the admission gates of a racetrack. The ground lost to tragedy will not be easily recovered.

The belief that the audience is aging without replacement is entirely fallacious. That canard has been passed from generation to generation, parent to child without ever having been realized. Were this true, racing by now would have no fans, no bettors, owners, breeders or trainers. Both the industry and its audience would have long ago disappeared. But successive generations of people introduced to racing by aging fans have themselves become aging fans. The difference nowadays is the method of introduction. If the audience has moved off site, the process of introducing the next generation to the sport has been inexorably altered.

Fans and bettors are made at the races – at Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs during the winter; at Keeneland in the spring and fall; at Saratoga during the summer -- not in front of a television. The exposure of major races on network television is icing on the cake, not what makes it rise. The experience is sensory, tactile and seductive. It involves exposure to horses at arm’s length, a place on the paddock rail on a sunny afternoon, a vantage point from which to experience the adrenaline rush of a head to head stretch drive. But first, someone must bring the neophyte to the races – one at a time.

Building the racing audience, now more than ever in light of general media ambivalence and limited commercial television exposure, is a grassroots, bootstrap endeavor, a process seldom discussed if universally apparent. Someone once introduced everyone reading this page to the races and last month Terry Finley, president of West Point Thoroughbreds, suggested that his partners begin returning the favor.

Finley urged all involved with West Point the audience watching a Internet broadcast last month to introduce three new people to the live racing experience before the first Saturday of May, an effort he christened, “Find a thoroughbred enthusiast,” or FATE.

“Go through your Rolodex,” Finley urged his audience.

West Point is a large and successful partnership operation with many participants, each at some point introduced in similar fashion to a sport they embraced. They became fans, then participants. Their lives changed and as a result and now each is urged to invite a neophyte to an afternoon of sport that may just change more lives. Not a bad idea. Go through your Rolodex,