One thing we need to get out of in our heads is that there are no great horses anymore.
What we have are horses that have great success for a very limited amount of time. If Big Brown sweeps the Triple Crown as many of us expect him to, it will not be a diminished achievement in my view. In a world where a pound can of coffee no longer weights 16 ozs., professional athletes can compete in the Olympics and a kid can get an “A” in math while using a calculator, I have learned to settle.
In the words of Pink Floyd, I am comfortably numb.
Racing hasn’t been an organic game for 40 years (at least) and never will be again. We have done this to ourselves. Whether it’s the drugs, commercial breeding or year round racing, it's a game in a death dive.
It stopped being a sport when it became an industry.
We can’t bring back the mentality that created the Calumets or the Paul Mellons and we can only look back in amazement at the sportsmanship of the owners of Affirmed and Seattle Slew.
We live in the era of the short attention span and the quick buck; Big Brown is the poster boy for both, enjoy him while you can.
A horse racing blog written by an overly enthusiastic fan whose mantra is alternative content.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Life in the Land of Short Attention Spans
Posted by John at Monday, May 19, 2008
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5 comments:
If you learned to settle you can learn to unsettle. You have become comfortably numb, you can become uncomfortably numb.
If a person ,such as yourself, is recognizing the industry in a death dive, fight for it to become a sport again. I know you can.
Why can't we bring back the mentality that created Calumet?
One thing we need to get out of our heads is that there are no great people anymore.
Great people - great horses,
maybe thats why BB and Curlin have been hard sells, certainly not their faults.
I'd be curious to find out whether anyone who is not a hardcore fan remembers Bernardini - even I forget him, given how briefly he was around.
Hey Libby,
Look at the game in 1958 and try to imagine it in 2058.
Careers can't get much shorter than they are now. What's next the four start career?
Sooner or later they will have to stop chasing the quick buck and remember that this is a sport first and a business second, not vice versa.
I don't see that happening, it's ironic but too much money is ruining the game.
The looming depression, driven by petro-inflation may take the money out of the breeding game, this is the best possible thing that could happen to the game. Even though most of us will be eating race and beans while enduring hardships, I welcome the mass poverty if our game could somehow be restored to its past glory. Racing always emerges as a beacon of hope during tough times. I look to racing to enjoy a renascence in the near future.
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