Graves of Greatness. Where horse racing champions like Barbaro, Secretariat are buried

Many people travel to Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Farmin central Kentucky with flowers to place on the graves.

Often there are tears.

Once a visitor fell to his knees when he realized the remains of Taylor Special — a Thoroughbred horse with 21 wins and about $1 million in earnings — rested under the ground beneath him.

The guest had once worked at Belmont Park racetrack in New York, and for two years, that horse was his best friend.

Michael Blowen, who owns Old Friends Farm and the cemetery attached to it, has seen all types of reactions when horse enthusiasts find themselves at the graves of champions.

These incredible athletes evoke powerful emotions even from several feet underground.

Just as people travel to Louisville to visit the grave of boxing great Muhammad Ali or venture out to Colma, California, to pay respects to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, horse enthusiasts seek out their own four-legged champions.

Kentucky, with its expansive horse farms and iconic racing tracks, is so often seen as the heartbeat of the horse racing industry.

And when a horse's heart stops, often, they're laid to rest here, too.

These horses leave more than the competition in their dust. They make a lasting impression on their fans, and that doesn’t change when their racing days are done and their stud time has passed.

Ahead of the 147th running of the Kentucky Derby, I spent some time tracking down a few of our sleeping giants. Some Derby winners, and others who made a name for themselves in other ways.

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The great Secretariat, who became a Triple Crown winner in 1973 is buried at Claiborne Farm in Bourbon County.

You can visit with the remains of Bold Forbes, who won the 1976 Kentucky Derby, at the Kentucky Horse Park near the Hall of Champions show ring. War Admiral, who became the fourth winner of the Triple Crown in 1937, is also at the park near the Man O' War memorial.

Now, that's a burial story.

Man O’ War is known as the greatest horse who never raced in the Kentucky Derby. He won 20 of his 21 races, and only lost to an ironically named horse called "Upset." He came out on top in the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, but he wasn't entered in the 1920 Kentucky Derby because his owner didn't believe in racing horses so young.

When Man O' War died in 1947, a dynamic bronze statue of him was installed over his farmyard grave. His casket and the monument were later moved to the Lexington Horse Park in 1977.

Let's pause there for a moment. Man O War was so larger than life that his body was embalmed, and he was actually buried in a casket.

Elderly horses die of the same things people do — cancers, heart attacks, falling — but what happens next looks quite a bit different.

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Very few horses go into the ground the same way human remains do are. Most are cremated or buried in pieces.

Blowen actually explained this to me better than anyone else probably could have. He has 83 grave markers in his cemetery, and he only buried the first horse to pass, Precisionist, in 2006.

That happened because he didn't know any better, he told me.

A backhoe worked for 13 hours to dig a hole big enough for Precisionist, Blowen told me. The Kentucky limestone that makes our bourbon so delicious also makes it incredibly difficult to dig a hole large enough for a 1,000-pound horse.

Every other horse at Old Friends since then has been cremated. A horse hearse of sorts comes to pick up the bodies and transports them to the University of Kentucky to be cremated. When they come back to the farm, they're in a large box the size of a small chest. Remember, these animals are more than seven times the size of the average human.

Those ashes aren't going to fit in an urn on your mantle like a person's would.

But it's much easier than burying a whole horse.

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Perhaps, the most iconic horse gravesite in the country is right at Churchill Downs itself.

The statue of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro welcomes fans every year to the historic racetrack and the Kentucky Derby Museum. It’s right outside Gate 1, and it’s impossible to miss.

It’s not just a monument and selfie spot, it’s a grave. That’s actually where his ashes are buried.

Two weeks after he won the Kentucky Derby, Barbaro shattered his leg in the Preakness Stakes, which led to his untimely death.

The Kentucky Derby Museum is also home to five other horse graves. There are tombstones for Carry Back (1961), Swaps (1955), Brokers Tip (1933), and Sunny's Halo (1983).

Dust Commander, who won the 1970 Kentucky Derby, most recently joined the throng in 2013. The location of his remains had been lost to memory, and the museum worked with members of his owner's family to track the original grave down. His skeleton was discovered on a farm in Paris, Kentucky, placed in a handcrafted box and shipped to Louisville to be buried at the museum.

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Not every burial mystery ends so clearly, though, Jessica Whitehead, the curator of collections at the Kentucky Derby Museum told me. Most thoroughbred racehorses live well into their 20s, and so much time passes between their stardom and their deaths — each horse that races in the Kentucky Derby is a 3-year-old — it's not uncommon to lose track of them.

She would love to know where the first Kentucky Derby winner, Aristides, rests. He was ridden over the finish line by Black jockey Oliver Lewis and lived out the rest of his end at Oakland Farms in St. Louis.

The champion is likely buried somewhere on the 475 or so acres that once made up the farm, but it’s unclear where. You can't place flowers on that grave or honor his legacy with a visit because we don't know where he is.

One of Whitehead's favorite burial stories is about Black Gold, who won the 1924 Kentucky Derby. Black Gold was an impeccable racehorse, but he was very much an underdog. He won his first race at the Fairgrounds in New Orleans in 1923, and that's where he's buried today.

His tombstone is in the center of the track, and each year during the Black Gold Stakes, which is named in his honor, the winning jockey rests flowers on the grave.

A story like Black Gold's is a good reminder that these horses aren't just athletes, they're legends.

Listening to Blowen talk about Precisionist, I felt that, too.

In his lifetime, Precisionist captured 17 stakes wins in five seasons, and earned a spot in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Famein Saratoga Springs, New York.

To the horseracing world, the animal was known for more than $3.4 million in lifetime earnings and his 17 stakes wins in the late 1980s.

To Blowen? He was his buddy, who suffered from nasal cancer. Most nights at the farm he’d sip on a beer while the horse noshed on some carrots in the barn.

Until one night in 2006, more than 18 years or so after his last big win, the champion looked at the carrots and just wouldn’t bite.

It was time to let him go.

They all have to go at one point or another.

Their memories and their stories carry even more weight than that pillow-sized box of ashes.

Just ask anyone who travels hundreds of miles and drops flowers at their graves.

Features columnist Maggie Menderski writes about what makes Louisville, Southern Indiana and Kentucky unique, wonderful, and occasionally, a little weird. If you've got something in your family, your town or even your closet that fits that description — she wants to hear from you. Say hello at [email protected] or 502-582-7137. Follow along on Instagram and Twitter @MaggieMenderski.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Secretariat to Barbaro: Churchill Downs among final resting places