As NBC Sports broadcasts its 25th Kentucky Derby (G1), only one member of the broadcast team has been there for each—Donna Brothers.
The former jockey is known for her race coverage on horseback, including interviewing the winning jockey moments after the race concludes.
"She's defined that position," the network's broadcast anchor, Mike Tirico, said during an NBC Sports teleconference April 29. "A few do it. No one does it better than Donna."
NBC's first broadcast in 2001 was a 90-minute show. This year, NBC will broadcast five hours Derby Day on NBC, beginning at 2:30 p.m. Eastern, preceded by a noon start on USA Network. Friday's coverage will be on USA Network, and both days will be streamed at Peacock.
Brothers recounted how NBC's coverage has evolved, her favorite moments, other memorable moments and some broadcasts that veered off script because of technical difficulties.
"So much has changed since we first started in 2001," Brothers said. "... At that time, we thought 90 minutes to cover a two-minute race, how are we going to fill all this time? Now we're on the air for seven and a half hours on Saturday, five hours on Kentucky Oaks Day, and we are still trying to figure out how we're going to get this story in and that story in because there are so many great stories to tell."
The strangest Derbys to broadcast, Brothers said, were 2004, 2019, and 2020. In 2004, Bob Costas covered his first Derby after being promised he wouldn't be called upon to act as an expert on the sport he'd never covered.
"About an hour and a half before the Kentucky Derby, before our coverage was to go on live, we had this massive deluge," Brothers said. "All of our (communications) went down. Nobody's microphones or cameras were working. We're now an hour to going live. The only person who has any communication is Bob Costas. He wasn't too happy about that."
The 2019 broadcast forced everyone to manage a 24-minute stewards' inquiry on live television, she said. Then, in 2020, amid a global pandemic, "when we thought we might lose the Kentucky Derby altogether, we had it on the first Saturday in September. It was surreal to be there live because we didn't have a live audience of fans. It was also very interesting and memorable for lots of good reasons, in that the stories were still prevailing. ... There was also the reality of loss for many people who didn't get to the Derby."
Brothers said she loves the immediacy of her horseback reporting.
"I'm in a position to talk to the jockey right after the race, while they're still in their heart and before they have a chance to really start to intellectualize what happened," she said. "... My first question is never going to be tell me about your trip. We try to capture that (emotion) and bring it into the living rooms of people who are watching across the United States and elsewhere."
Described in other words, announcer Larry Collmus said, "one of the things that Donna tries to do is make 'em cry right away, which is easy to do after winning the Kentucky Derby."
The most memorable interviews for Brothers, she said, "are probably the ones that are memorable for the viewers, too. Those are usually ones with Calvin Borel, who is nothing but raw emotion and doesn't know how to be anything other than raw emotion, and it's what we love about him. He really expresses what is coursing through his veins."
With his first win in 2007 with Street Sense, "he started crying about his mama and daddy not being able to be there, and (to) see what he's accomplished with his life. He had tears streaming down his cheeks. The queen was in the audience. ...The next thing you know, Calvin got invited to the White House to meet the queen."
Brothers said she learned from that interview.
"For me, the reason why it was the most memorable was because of his raw emotion," she said. "I sort of forgot the questions that I had intended to ask him. It just became a conversation. ... My takeaway from that was to make it a conversation, to stay in the moment, just know what you know, let that carry you into a conversation. Made it feel more like people got a sit in on a conversation between two people that wasn't staged and wasn't necessarily meant for television -- but it was great television."
Brothers said she's also experienced many times where the broadcast plan didn't go to script, but she can laugh now. In the 2003 Preakness Stakes (G1), Derby winner Funny Cide was stabled on the backstretch instead of in the stakes barn.
Rain and problems positioning a satellite being used by NBC atop the grandstand got in the way. "If you go back and watch it, you would think I was not in Baltimore, but I assure you I was there the whole time," she said. "To NBC's credit, I got paid the same."
