Knowing myself I will likely re-post this on Derby Day, but I am getting so excited I couldn’t help posting tonight. While not about the Kentucky Derby, this is the finest piece of sportswriting you will ever have the chance to read - it happens to be about horse racing.
If you’ve never had the chance to witness the sport in person I suggest you change that reality. Enjoy this amazingly heartbreaking piece of nonfictional prose.
They were going to the post for the sixth race at Jamaica, two year olds, some making their first starts, to go five and a half furlongs for a purse of four thousand dollars. They were moving slowly down the backstretch toward the gate, some of them cantering, others walking, and in the press box they had stopped their working or their kidding to watch, most of them interested in one horse.
”Air Lift,” Jim Roach said. “Full brother of Assault.”
Assault, who won the triple crown … making this one too, by Bold Venture, himself a Derby winner, out of Igual, herself by the great Equipoise … Great names in the breeding line … and now the little guy making his first start, perhaps the start of another great career
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