The Fastest Two Minutes Is The Longest Ninety

Is it just me—or is watching the Kentucky Derby on TV getting more and more difficult to endure?

I understand that in order to bring us the “fastest two minutes in sport”, NBC has to build a longer show around this brief but exciting mile and a quarter. How about a 30 minute program? If not mistaken, this year’s race consumed at least an hour and a half.

If you missed the whole show, good for you! Here’s the race itself with post race stuff, too:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYUQhefukU4

The formula is largely the same every year.

The network spends an inordinate amount of time showcasing the owners, people with whom average Americans have little in common with. These blue bloods are flushing bucket loads of cash into these animals. Forgive us if we aren’t sympathetic to their trials and tribulations about not winning the “big one”. None of them are using food stamps to buy the caviar, although they may be cutting back to only five or six times a week. My heart goes out to them. Do you have any idea how much gas a LIMO uses in an average week?

I did like the horse that was purchased for $10 grand and owned by about 25 ordinary Joes. Now THERE’S a horse to root for! Sorry it didn’t win. Not sorry that Joe Torre’s nag didn’t win, however. Sorry Joe, once a Yankee, always a Yankee.

After the owners, then we hear about the trainers. No..wait….before the trainers, we hear all about Yum! Brands, the corporate sponsor whose logo is plastered over everything but the hooves of the horses. Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken (“KFC” because they are downplaying the FRIED part of their name), Long John Silvers…..what else? Anyway, they sell FOOD in restaurants around the world. We’re hoping that no one makes the connection between the burrito filling and….horsemeat.

But I digress.

Perhaps my favorite part is the view in the stands—the ladies in their huge, ugly hats and parasols—a definite caste system when compared to the throngs of people sucking multiple mint juleps in the infield. That’s where I was.

While a student at Ohio State in the 70’s, we made the trek to the Kentucky Derby twice. Our tickets were strictly for the infield, where a ramp led us (like horses) under the track to the segregated infield section.

I’m not sure I ever saw a horse the first time I was there. Really.

The Derby is like, the TENTH race of the day. Both years I was there, it was hot, humid and we college kids believed strongly that drinking heavily was the ideal solution to staying cool in the heat. Souvenir glasses of the Derby, filled with Kentucky bourbon (and little else), insured that many of us were not conscious by the time the Derby was run.

We were not allowed to mingle with the “society people” in the Grandstand. What little money we had left over after purchasing beverages went toward betting on horses, as there were ticket windows in the infield, further insuring that those of us in steerage would not come in contact with the beautiful people on the other side. In much the same way that matter and anti-matter are kept apart in sci-fi films, there was a feeling that calamity would ensue if a woman on OUR side in a halter top were to come face to face with a woman on the OTHER side wearing a hat the size of Nebraska.

At ground level, I can tell you that—using my second trip (where I actually did see horses, if only as a blur going by), those critters can RUN. It is much faster than anything a TV aerial view can convey. How the announcer can keep them straight while calling the race is beyond me.

Nonetheless, being there from ten in the morning and staggering out at 7pm or so still seems shorter than watching the race on TV. Even Bob Costas seems bored.

One way to make it more palatable would be to show the previous year’s races in their entirety. I could watch Secretariat’s record-setting race every year. What better way to display the history of the event than by showing it’s “greatest hits” each year? And while we’re at it, let’s stop giving the horse human traits that stretch the limits of believability.

It’s one thing to say “he’s a great athlete”, but entirely another to say “he has the heart of a champion” or “he has a great attitude going around the last turn”—or worst yet, “he really has a will to win!”

Huh?

No, some horses are faster than others—and all of them have a guy on their back whipping their humongous horse’s asses with a whip. There’s your “will to win”.

As Jerry Seinfeld says, “it’s the same oat bag for everyone at the finish line”. That is, the exact same reward unless of course you break a leg.

If that happens, you get shot. If the horses REALLY knew what was going on, they’d be doing some pretty careful steppin’ around that track, as Jerry says.

Same oat bag.

NBC’s “oat bag” is currently tied to Yum! Brands. It might be a good idea to re-evaluate the whole Derby show to make it watchable for an entire hour or 90 minutes.

Watching the upper crust ladies sing "My Old Kentucky Home" is simply not "must-see TV".

If you’d like my blog in your weekday box, just let me know: tim.moore@citcomm.com