Alumni Focus: Brad Hennegan ’93

By Sarah Cox

While the Kentucky Derby may be the holy grail of horse racing, Brad Hennegan '93 actually has his own holy grail revealing the magic behind that race. Hennegan and his brother, John, felt the calling of the racetrack at an early age. They grew up around the Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga tracks, and with their father as a New York Racing Association official for 37 years, they knew racing was cool - but losing its mystique. "The major thing we wanted to do was make horse racing accessible to people. Horse racing needs to grow its fan base," says the Roanoke graduate, who quit his job to make a highly regarded film about the sport. Hennegan had been a creative director at The Independent Film Channel and then College Sports Television in New York, but in February 2006 he and his brother devoted their full attention to the film, "The First Saturday in May," which they wrote, filmed, produced, directed and edited.

It was a big tradeoff for both Hennegans. His brother, who was a freelance writer/producer for HBO and ESPN, also gave up his daytime job, but together they believed there was a good story out there, and they could tell it. Their film made its world premier at Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Film Festival on April 27th in New York City, just in time for those involved in the most famous two minutes in horse racing to see it before Derby Day.

Hennegan, a four-year lacrosse starter and sociology major at Roanoke, got a good start during his undergraduate years. "My experience at Roanoke College was an incredible one. Academically, the liberal arts education that I received at Roanoke has provided me with the general knowledge that has helped me in my professional career. Socially, the friendships I made in college are invaluable. My Roanoke College friends are people I can always count on," he says.

After graduating, Hennegan coached his sport at the college level, but changed tracks a year later, switching to the financial world. A year after that, he began his efforts in filmmaking, something he'd long had his eye on. His first job was with Martha Stewart as a production assistant. Meanwhile, his brother was following a similar path on the opposite coast. "Then, we both decided we were sick of working for other people, and we always knew we wanted to do something about horse racing. Everyone knows what the Kentucky Derby is, but they don't know how you actually get there, so we thought we'd chronicle the Derby trail," he says.

In 2005, the two-year-old horses were preparing for the 2006 Derby, so the Hennegan brothers sought out the races at Saratoga in Upstate New York, Del Mar in California, and even Dubai in the Middle East races. "It's a year-long process," he says, explaining that they chose those races because they are the ones that traditionally produce Kentucky Derby starters. They also chose people they thought were good characters. Bob Holthus from Table Rock, Nebraska, is Arkansas' all-time winning trainer and trainer of horse "Lawyer Ron." Dale Romans of Henderson, Kentucky, has built up a barn of 175 horses and has tallied over 1,000 wins. Frank Amonte of Queens, New York, has been an exercise rider and assistant trainer for 20 years. And Gretchen Jackson was the owner of famed Barbaro, a serendipitous choice that Hennegan says was "part luck and part hard work."

Working full time and filming got to be too much for the brothers, who finally quit their jobs a little over a year ago to devote their attention to finishing the film. "We started shooting in July 2005; we took some three-day weekends and worked at night, but it got to the point where we couldn't. Our various skills in television production prepared us for this," says Hennegan. So did their knowledge of the racetrack, which they knew produced stories that deserved to be told. But not in a technical way. "Some documentaries are preachy, and we tried to do this as something that's fun," Hennegan says. "By the end of the film, we've taught you how these horses came to the Kentucky Derby."

Hennegan now has more film projects in the works while he and his brother are busy trying to get distribution for "The First Saturday in May." Their film has been crafted down to 90 minutes from over 500 hours of footage captured through more than 150,000 miles of travel. Hennegan estimates that the film cost less than $500,000. The epilogue mentions Barbaro's struggles with his injury, sustained at the 2006 Preakness, the second race in the Triple Crown.

Throughout the project, the brothers had to interview and interact with an English jockey, the son of a plumber from Pennsylvania, a Panamanian jockey nicknamed "Ice Boy" and his Highness Sheik Hamdan, deputy ruler of Dubai. "There were six very different horse families involved in this, and one of our skills was in dealing with them," he says. The Hennegans learned it's tough to toe the fine line between being really friendly, in order to get the story, and trying not to be involved.

"It's hard when you show up at the race track at 3:30 a.m., and you are the only one watching; they want to talk to you," he says. But the subjects of his film have all reacted positively to it. "They've felt comfortable, and at the end of the day, it's their careers we're chronicling."

"The First Saturday in May" will be shown at another film festival running from June 12 to 17 outside Washington, D.C. It will be at the SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival held at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. For tickets, go to www.silverdocs.com. For more information about the film, visit the Hennegan brothers' website at www.thefirstsaturdayinmay.com.