Bryce Miller: Inside the wild tale of horse trainer Val Brinkerhoff, a Del Mar moment and a $550,000 ring

Trainer and Del Mar regular Val Brinkerhoff stands with Kentucky Oaks qualifier Where’s My Ring on Thursday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. Val Brinkerhoff is a cowboy’s cowboy, jarred and bucked and tossed about so much in the horse-racing game that the doctor in the area of tiny Fillmore, Utah told him: “You’ve got more x-rays in this hospital than everybody in the county combined.” As a kid, he would hunt jackrabbits, pheasant, deer and elk, pumping gas and changing oil at his dad’s Chevron station until he was...