Everyone loves a longshot winner

Published: May 3, 2009 09:07 am EDT

Of course, people playing the chalk in races don’t love longshots because they kill their chances of cashing, but it’s hard not to love the stories that go with longshot winners.

Yesterday’s Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird was a perfect example. Have you ever seen a happier winner than jockey Calvin Borel after his gelding galloped off from his foes? That has to bring a smile to your face.

Last year’s Derby might have brought smiles to a few faces, but the enduring story was the breakdown and death of Eight Belles, the filly runner-up to Big Brown. Even when the focus was put on Big Brown after his Preakness triumph, it certainly didn’t put horse racing in a favorable light. The connections of Big Brown simply reinforced the public and media image that horse racing is a game of “drugs and thugs.”

The horse’s trainer readily admitted that he’d given Big Brown steroids and when the horse flopped so badly in the Belmont, the first reaction I heard from outside horse racing was, “Didn’t they give him his drugs today?”

The trainer said later that he’d be willing to take Big Brown off drugs, but he meant anabolic steroids. He refused to race the horse without Lasix.

Maybe a Cinderella story such as Mine That Bird can be the story of 2009 and give racing some of the favorable public attention it got with horses like Funny Cide and Smarty Jones.

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