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You don't pick the horses two days ahead of time. Foolish.
You don't pick the horses two days ahead of time.
I haven't, have I?
Speaking of which: back in the day, did the jockey's whip leave marks on your rump?
You asked others to.
Where? I never said they had to respond today.
No, you just expected the thread to stick around for a couple days because your threads are just so good at doing that.
I have threads with hundreds of posts over multiple years.![]()
I'm sure you're proud of that massive accomplishment.
Since I'm here in the middle of it all, when you guys finally decide just send me your dollars and choices and I'll take it out to Churchill for ya. Uh, yeah.....of course I will.
Looks wide open to me this year. Hansen looks to be the favorite, but not prohibitively so. Five or six horses have solid wining records, and most of those have at least finished in the money in all of their starts.
Post position draw was today and Hansen was one of two horses left fearing to get stuck on the rail out of gate #1. Trainers and jocks hate the rail at the start of the race because they are forced to use up too much speed too early in order to stay out of trouble as the other horses move down to the inside from their post positions farther out. The rail is great if you can get there early among the leaders and with a lot of horse still left under you. Not so great among those in the middle and to the rear.
An exception to the rule may be jockey Calvin Borel (nicknamed "Bo-rail"). Nobody knows how to better weave his way through a crowd at Churchill than Borel. People here are still talking about his ballsy rail drive aboard Mine That Bird to basically steal the 2009 Derby.
Borel is on Take Charge Indy this year and will attract a good deal of money based on his riding skills alone.
Today was also the day for the not-so-great steamboat race which I'm sure somebody won.
Tomorrow is the parade downtown and the Barnstable-Brown social-event-of-the-year-party where all the celebs go to earn their week-long room and board freebies by rubbing elbows with our home grown, boorish nouveau riche. For many D listers, tomorrow will be that last time they will ever be seen in public alive, much less actually working in the performing arts or the sports world.
This is also the 38th consecutive year that my invite apparently has been lost in the mail.
I've never gone down before Friday so I've always missed most of the build up. Sorta glad about that. It's like the infield, sure you gotta do it at least once but that doesn't mean you have to like it.
Anybody who goes to the infield these days is just nuts. Back when I went to my first Derby while in college you could at least see a pack of horses occasionally whizzing by. But now that they have viewing stands and the turf course inside the dirt track, there just isn't that much infield left.
I hate what they have done to Churchill Downs. I understand the financial realities, but for most of my life every brick and every board in that facility was an authentic testament to it's vaunted traditions. The twin spires looked down over it all.
As soon as they built another row of millionaire boxes above the spires, I was hot to get into somebody's grill work and say, "WELL FUCK YOU, you FUCKING MOTHER FUCKER!"
As soon as Yum! got into it you knew what was going to happen.