Yesterday was The Kentucky Derby

Im glad you remembered it. 👍

I found mint growing at one of my homes back in California. So out of curiosity I had to try making a mint julip. Once was enough. Waste of bourbon.

It had been 24 years since I last hit the winner in the Derby. Since I pre-bet this year I had sovereignty at 10-1, not the 7-1 post time odds. I understood the favorite was undefeated and to be fair he ran a great race, but how DRF bettors missed the obvious winner is astounding to me. The horse won the fountain of youth cleanly and ran second in the Florida Derby, while not really trying. By that I mean if you look at the race the jockey could have pushed him to victory and chose to just ride him into an easy second. It was apparent that Mott was using the race as a prep and that Sovereignty was sitting in a huge effort. If you saw the horse after the race, he wasn't even tired, he was jacked, prancing and pricking his ears. He'll be a 9/5 winner in the preakness.

all those years that mott used bailey, smith, prat, etc to ride in the biggest races. finally alvarado got his chance and gave the horse just a perfect ride.

I haven't ever had a mint julip, and I grow my own mint for mojitos and moscow mules. I keep meaning to try a mint julip, but then I hear comments like shadowcat's. The only way for me to scratch the itch will be to make my own.

25 just checking up on you
What day is it?
Who is the president?
From a scale of 1 to 5 how is your pain today?

Agree w/ shadow cat. Mint julep is terrible.

The one thing I detest about the "Triple Crown" - you can enter the Derby, then you have to do the next 2, fine. However, other horses that are better tuned for the Preakness and Belmont can be entered at each to try to upset the Derby winner.

I don't see the appeal of watching horses with goofy names run around in a loop. I'll go right to the good bourbon. Unadulterated.

Just getting back to the fact that every horse in the field was a descendant of Secretariat. I’m sure some know it all can explain why it makes perfect sense, but it seems wild

Horses must breed well or something haha.

I think even most of the 20th century elite winning horses were sired by man'o'war in the late 1800s or early 1900s. If I'm not mistaken he fathered war admiral and was the grandfather of seabiscuit.

Sinclair is the subject matter expert for horses on here. Let's see if he wants to loop in on this.

@mogul1985: "The one thing I detest about the "Triple Crown" - you can enter the Derby, then you have to do the next 2, fine. However, other horses that are better tuned for the Preakness and Belmont can be entered at each to try to upset the Derby winner."

The whole point of trying to win all three races (besides the lucrative post-racing stud career) is to show that a horse can handle all three distances. If they can't, it doesn't mean they aren't good racers, just that they aren't good all around racers.

@GMD
The three Triple Crown races had existed long before the series received its name: the Belmont Stakes was first run in 1867, the Preakness in 1873, and the Kentucky Derby in 1875.
@Mogul
That’s the point of an it is supposed to be difficult, a horse qualifies as a superstar

That’s why in the many years of running these races there have been only thirteen Triple Crown winners

For the mint julep haters I personally am not a fan but in Kentucky Bourbon is perfectly acceptable as a substitute

25 used to be a jockey

@twentyfive: "The three Triple Crown races had existed long before the series received its name: the Belmont Stakes was first run in 1867, the Preakness in 1873, and the Kentucky Derby in 1875."

Yes. And they became the Triple Crown because of the difficulty of one horse taking all three. And for money, of course.

Side note: The midsummer derby, the travers States at Saratoga for 3-year-olds has been run since 1864 and is the oldest race for 3-year-olds in the land. Better experience than the derby and not just because you can bring in your own food and alcohol.

^ I think Saratoga Race track is the oldest sports venue in the United States.

Every single thoroughbred racing in the world today is a descendent of three horses: the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Arabian. Some conclude the fragility of modern racehorses and the frequency of breakdowns is due to all this inbreeding.

Fun fact, Churchill Downs is in the hood. There's trap houses and meth labs nearby. The city tries to "clean up" the area in the weeks leading up to Derby, by rousting all the homeless people, extra police patrols, etc., but everything will be moved back in by today or tomorrow, at the latest.

Note that the city doesn't actually do anything to help the homeless people it rousts out of there, just makes them move elsewhere, usually by confiscating what little property they have.

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Meghan the stallion 😂

I’ve never been to the Kentucky derby, but I’ve been to the Preakness on a rainy day. Stood in the mud in the infield where there were more drunk rednecks than in the infield at Talladega, pissing on the ground and walking around with their shirts off.
This seemed very different from the nice suits, fancy hats, and mint juleps that you see on tv at the Derby.

@Iknowbetter: Man, you should have seen the infield at Derby a couple of decades ago. Drunks, drugs, naked people, sex on the ground in front of everybody, girls flashing the stands from the rail, all kinds of debauchery.

The Downs would pay groups to clean up the infield after Derby, including school and youth groups. It got so bad for a while that they would not let anyone under 18 be in the groups cleaning. Clothes, underwear, needles, used condoms, and other stuff were among the detritus being picked up, and they didn't want kids doing it.

Now they are much stricter about what you can bring to the infield. There's still some wild behavior, but not nearly as wild as it used to be.

If you want to see the best horses on earth compete in a clean, upscale crowd, spend some money and go see the Breeder's Cup. This year it is at Delmar by the Sea in San Diego. The track is seaside so the Pacific ocean rocks the background. It is an amazing event and having seen it at Belmont, Gulfstream (2) and Aqueduct I have to admit it is the one live event I prefer over watching on the tube. Bet on every one since it began.

There will be no Triple Crown winner this year. Sovereignty will not be running in The Preakness. He will be back for the Belmont Stakes.

^sad to hear, but the effort to win against the undefeated favorite will take more than 2 weeks to recover.

^ I saw that article and thought maybe Sovereignty might have injured himself, they probably decided to protect the future value of stud fees, understandable.