In the "things I, like most people, don't actually care that much about, but still" category...

[dwenius]

Big Brown may win the Triple Crown this weekend. He is a fine, beautiful animal with a nice bag of racing tricks (and unfortunately, like his trainer, a history of drug use). but people, be real now, Big Brown is simply not that fast. He was two full seconds off Secretariat's Derby record, 1.4 seconds slower than the Preakness record.

This year's crop of horses is, as they say, "not so grate, akshually". Winning a Triple Crown is very hard and I'd like to be more excited about it but I'm just not.

This has no relation to my longstanding and well-deserved institutional hatred of UPS.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Of all the people on my friends list, you were probably in the top 5 i would least have expected to talk about horse racing.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Northern Virginia is close enough to Pimlico that you pick stuff up by osmosis. I still vividly remember Seattle Slew and Affirmed's Triple Crowns, mostly because I won about $5 off my brother on each horse (big stakes when you're 8 years old).

and I truly do think Secretariat's Belmont is one of the finest individual achievements by an athlete of any species in any sport. There aren't many other world records, especially speed records, that are 35 years old. So when I hear folks talking about how Big Brown is going to murder the field and runaway with the race, my first thought is, 2:24 flat, BB. I don't think he has it in him.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Obviously, don't remember it quite so vividly. Corrected brain fart.

[epileptikitty.livejournal.com]

another dam billionaire has a wack at horse racing

Actually pretty entertaining. American horse racing is quite the Hapsburg affair.