LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Something screwy happened lately with the vital signs of an 88-year-old man. He had just spent four months in hospital rooms and rehab floors in quiet agony and ostensible decline. All of a sudden, the blood pressure monitor, so huffy for so long as Bob Weihe's pressure kept nosediving enough to thwart rehab efforts (and pretty much all else), chimed in with a fresh reading. It declared an impossible, impeccable 120/80.
"It was weird," says Barbara Weihe, his wife of 68 years and three months and one week. She reckons it had "something to do with getting home" in mid-April for the first time since Christmas morning. She then agrees with her son from across the family room on Friday night that it clearly has something to do with something else. From the time Bob Weihe at age 9 accompanied his mother to the 1947 Kentucky Derby, and she recommended he crawl through knees and ankles of a four-deep crowd to the rail to glimpse the indecipherable blur of horses going by, he has attended every single Derby. That means that if he somehow could attend the one on Saturday, his streak could reach a dumbfounding 80, in a world where it's so rare to hear the words "80 in a row."
No, he hadn't missed in 1954, when he and his teenaged buddies stood outside befuddled until they spotted a friendly drainpipe they could scale. He certainly hadn't missed in 1963, when he drove his Coca-Cola truck around southern Indiana recommending the overlooked Chateaugay to those who asked for a Derby tip, then went back around southern Indiana the next week distributing winnings to those who had listened. He didn't miss that time when Barbara had surgery -- "I wouldn't have him miss the Derby for anything," she said in 2020 -- so he took his 90-year-old mother while Barbara got discharged on the Derby afternoon and briefly lacked a ride home, a story that exhibits her runaway good humor. He didn't miss even in 2020, the empty, ghostly, fan-less Derby of Sept. 5 during COVID-19 restrictions, when an owner of the horse Max Player learned his streak might end at 73 straight, then kindly lassoed Bob into their owner group.
"Derby Bob," as became the name, patronized the Derby through so many crummy weather days: the heartless cold of 1957, the ruthless heat of 2008, the shameless rains of the late 2010s. He and fellow Louisville native Barbara turned up in the fleeting fashions of the various times, starting in 1957 when Bob and his dear friend from first grade entered Churchill Downs, went to the second floor, placed their tickets in rosary cases and floated them downstairs to their future wives for second usage. "A lot of times we'd fit in a box," Barbara says, "and people would come, and nobody would move." It ran all the way to the chilly, rainy 2025, when son Mark said, "I guarantee he was miserable. But he sat there all day." That made it 79, and he had daydreamed out loud from time to time about the nice, round 80. But then came Christmas morning 2025 when he couldn't get out of bed, and then came the four months of infections and setbacks that signaled the end of the streak.
"I didn't know what was going on," Bob Weihe says. "I was out of it completely. Once I knew what was going on, I thought, well, now I can convince myself that I could get better. I convinced myself [in February] that I could go to the Derby. They said I had to eat to go to the Derby. So I tried to eat, and I couldn't. None of the food tasted good. It all tasted horrible." He thought, "I don't know what will work."
Barbara says, "Even in rehab, his oxygen would dip and they'd call everybody in." Scott says, "And they had actually called in hospice, at one time. He was kind of out of his head. He'd look at you without really seeing you." And, again Scott: "He did have doctors telling him, 'You're dying,' when I was in there." Finally in April, Bob said, "I want to go home," and Mark recalls telling him, "'I want you to understand if you go home and you get sick, they're going to let you die.' And he said, 'I've had 88 years. If it's my time, it's my time.'"
By May 1, Bob spoke in the strained voice he struggles to summon, in the hospital bed that sits on one side of the family room in the house in which he grew up, the house he and Barbara have shared since 1975 (on his second turn in it), a house maybe six miles from Churchill Downs. It's a house a few doors down from where daughter Becky lives, and it's where Bob and Barbara and sons Mark and Scott watched the Kentucky Oaks on Derby eve, Bob's eyes intent on the screen during a postrace interview with winning jockey Jose Ortiz. It's a house rich in scrapbooks and memorabilia gathered by a man so ardent to collect autographs from Derby -- winning jockeys and trainers on Derby programs that sometimes, on road trips, such as while Bob coached St. Francis of Assisi High football for 24 years, he and Barbara might stop and knock on a jockey's door.
"Can I lie down and take a nap?" he jokes while lying down on Friday night at 9, because Saturday already crackled with promise. The blood pressure monitor had spoken and some heroes had intervened and Bob Weihe (pronounced WHY) seemed headed to an 80th straight Derby. The CBS reporter David Begnaud had made a video plea to help the Weihes with finding the ever-exorbitant tickets. Churchill Downs had helped out. Bob's determination had won out. Then the worries spilled out, from finding a wheelchair (which hospice provided) to an accessible van (for which fellow patrons at Mark's local bar tried to help by calling around). Where might they park? How might they access the ever-more-fortified fortress of Churchill? What about Bob's oxygen?
Come Saturday morning, Barbara says, "At first he was a little groggy and then when he really woke up, I asked him if he is ready to go to the Derby and he said, 'Yeah!'" -- as if Barbara didn't even have to ask.
What follows sends the family into a state of happy disbelief. The streak lives again. Hospice arrives and dresses Bob, including his new hat with the ribbon reading "Derby Bob's 80th." There comes a van in mid-afternoon but also -- whoa -- a police escort. The streak lives again. CBS arrives. A Churchill Downs ambassador, Gregg Cobb, arrives. Becky, grandchildren, significant others and great-grandchildren give a send-off. Bob who, like almost all Derby regulars, seldom picks a winner, gives his choices to a cop who sought counsel: 1-19-22. The van platform raises him aboard in the wheelchair. The streak lives again. At around 4:15 p.m., with almost all of the 150,000 attendees long since inside Churchill Downs, a convoy commences with two trooper cars in front, the tan van, a CBS car and one last trooper car. The van carries Bob, Barbara, Mark, Scott and eternal family friend Bill Tharp from across the street in childhood, a retired physical therapist who could help with any emergency. The short ride proves long on exhilaration. Bob marvels. "He said he couldn't believe he got a police escort," Mark says. Tharp says he noticed Bob, never a cryer, crying.
At just past 4:30 p.m., they pull into the main entrance near the statue of the late 2006 Derby winner Barbaro. The few raindrops have stopped. The sky has stopped brooding. People in vivid colors have not stopped taking photos with Barbaro. A plane whirring overhead advertises auto parts. The Goodyear blimp whirs around. As the van doors open and the platform begins to bring Bob to the ground, about 15 onlookers applaud his arrival, including a self-described caregiver who didn't know him but had heard his story.
A fence opens and the group enters, with Tharp steering Bob as the streak lives again. An elevator ride leads to a swell clubhouse overlooking the stretch. The Derby card has reached its 10th race (with the Derby coming 12th), and as Bob watches the stretch run of that, his head pivots to follow the ending and he looks not completely unlike a kid in 1947 crawling through knees and ankles. He sips some water. He looks at a program Barbara put in front of him. "It feels wonderful," he says at one point.
"Man, I've got to stop crying," Mark says.
They take Bob back to meet the Churchill Downs president. They take him to betting window (for that 1-19-22). The sky has gotten plenty blue with harmless clouds. The planes, mostly UPS, took off from nearby. People drink. "He is smiling a lot," Scott says, "He's very alert, very alert. He knows where he's at and he's glad he's here . . . He was determined, so we were determined. He was a bigger believer than we were." He goes off the oxygen all through the hours, with Tharp keeping it nearby just in case while checking Bob's oxygen saturation level, which come in at a robust 98.
Food and drinks appear even if Bob doesn't partake. A bearded man in a cowboy hat stops by to marvel, and Barbara says, "We didn't dream he'd make it this year." Scott has somebody on FaceTime, granting a sight of Bob. Mark gets himself a cigar. The Derby, presumably louder than in 1947, plays Guns N' Roses, Avicii, Flo Rida, AC/DC, Europe's "The Final Countdown." Bob appears near dozing at times but not at race time. He asks to hold a traditional Derby glass. When "My Old Kentucky Home" plays as always, he and Barbara reprise their ritual of sipping a mint julep together, as always.
"He tried," Barbara says. "He didn't quite get it down."
The biggest race churns the guts like always, and the board wound up at 19-1-22, the very numbers Bob had chosen because of the three jockeys (if not in the same order). On those recommendations in trifecta boxes, a family member has won around $56,000, the advice-seeking cop maybe $112,000.
As the hollering of 150,000 dies down and the crowd exits, Bob holds his head back and smiles for an unusually long time. While a novice might have said he smiled over 1-19-22, those in the know knew he smiled over having witnessed the Kentucky Derby for the 80th consecutive year, clear from Jet Pilot (1947) as a kid at the rail to Golden Tempo (2026) as a man out of the hospital and above the rail. "What a day," Tharp says to all on the elevator going down, and as he steers Bob through an 80th exit from a Kentucky Derby, they navigate the usual thick crowd, a sea of strangers that keep parting, their kaleidoscopic clothes making it look like he rolls through some mad botanical garden.
The platform lifts Bob onto the van at just before 7:30, after three soaring hours. An hour later, the family room buzzes with about a dozen family members and their favorite people, including that grateful winner of $56,000. Bob sleeps and even lets out a brief snore. Scott walks in at one point and said, "What an experience." Begnaud arrives with programs with fresh autographs from the winning jockey and trainer, and Bob says, "Wonderful! Wonderful!" Tharp stands by the bedside and says, "Look at him," for he looks clearly better than on any recent day. Granddaughter Courtney Wadell, a nurse by profession tending to Bob, says of the day, "It was more than we could have ever dreamed."
She aims to take his blood pressure at one point, but the monitor has gone on the fritz, whereupon the guy who has been to 80 consecutive Kentucky Derbys says it didn't matter. In that labored voice he says, "I'm still alive," and, somewhere in there around that heart and that determination, maybe as alive as he had ever been.
