If you've followed my posts, you'll know that we have a couple of horses - mostly my wife's and daughter's. Still, we are a household of horse lovers.

We tuned into the Kentucky Derby this afternoon and were absolutely stunned by the running of Mine That Bird (MTB).

Soon after coming out of the gate he got squished back by the two adjacent horses and ended up something like 15 lengths behind the entire pack - so far that I had commented that the horse must have been hurt.

The announcer was saying that a horse was coming up fast on the inside. My daughter kept saying that it was that last place horse, but I didn't believe her.

The horse wove his way through the pack and shot out in the lead crossing the finish line 6 lengths ahead of the rest of the pack.

He was a 50:1 odds non-favorite. Afterward I read a pre-comment from someone saying that MTB was "too slow to be a factor".

I suspect you'll see a movie come out of this.

One question that came out of it -- how does a gelding (snip snip) make money after winning such a big race?? Simply by winning more races? I suspect Chris has some knowledge along those lines.

Ken

I only saw a replay later, but that was a jaw dropping race from the top-down view on the replay. That view made it easy to see the horses' relative positions. It's like MTB had an extra gear that none of the other horses had. Hanging back to conserve your energy is one thing, but the way he came on on the backstretch was like afterburners or something!

Yeah, that's a good question. How do you make the big bucks with a gelding? Unless it's just bragging rights with a particular crowd.

Nice catch too at only $9500 for him. Amazing finish.

I confess to watching the race.That said, I don't care much about what is the equivelent to making human children perform olympic races.
There was a reason the british army wouldn't even look at prospective mounts unless they were mature 6 y/o animals. A lot of TB individuals are lost to produce the tiny percentile that race. The ones who see a productive life after racing are just as few.

Famous geldings pretty much give the owner/trainer/jockeys increased reputations in the industry. TB bloodlines are so intensely recorded and studied anyone can recreate an MTB.But they never will, everyone has a recipe for great horses.

If I was to breed racing TBs, first thing I'd do is visit a few
old Jack Mormon ranchers I know in Utah/Idaho. They still have some real nice working TB bloodlines with good leg. Of all things, no leg below the knee and shelly hooves are the biggest problems from intensive breeding.I'd get me a herd of babies and actually let them see and work in the real world a bit so nothing scares them like Paris Hilton in her hat today.

I'd make a million dollars my first year. Of course, I'd start out with two million to do it.

Yeah, my wife is horrified by that. Our "baby" is seven years old and he seems so childish. I can't even imagine what a three year old must be like.