“Don’t ever be ashamed of loving the strange things that make your weird little heart happy.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
winner’s circle
Today was the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby. I’ve been out of the loop since Covid shut down my Derby parties. Last year, Bob Baffert got caught doping his winner. That was a downer. Plus, for some time now I’ve felt the field too big to be safe and some of the trainers (at least the older generation that I’m familiar with) are known to mistreat their horses. The combination of these gives me a bad feeling about racing in general. Nevertheless, I turned on the TV just minutes before the race only to behold the most impressive win of any Derby I’ve seen in recent memory. Rich Strike, the 80-1 long-shot, whipped the lot and had enough left in the tank to bite his pony all the way to the winner’s circle. He was born at Calumet Farm less than five miles from my house. He was just in a claiming race last year, for heaven’s sake. He wasn’t even in the race until yesterday’s scratch made a place for him. The jockey should be paid double for the way he handled that race – it was brilliant. This past Thursday, Stacy and I, waiting for car maintenance, ambled down to the renovated courthouse and into the new (to us) Lexington Visitor’s Center where horses were featured throughout. It’s really quite fun to play hometown tourist, especially in Kentucky. There’s loads of cool stuff here, and today’s Derby revived my excitement for the race. I do love Kentucky, warts and all.
a girl & a horse
One response
[…] Here we see hometown tourist Stacy photographing Lexington’s downtown courthouse back in May. She followed the sign to seek tourist info inside. You can see those results here. […]