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Is the Sport of Kings Really a Sport? Go to Racetrack to Find Out
By Randy Gardner
Through the last 15 years I’ve talked about many different sports, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about horse racing. Is horse racing a sport? Some would say yes and some would say no.
It doesn’t have a ball, it is not timed, and points are not counted, but when you look at the Jockeys and horses, they are definitely athletes in their own manner. For most other sports, like baseball, football, soccer, and hockey, you will spend between two and three hours watching the event to determine who’s going to win.
In horse racing, all of the action takes place within about three minutes, that’s what makes this sports so exciting.
Now if you watch the race on TV like the Preakness this past weekend, the buildup to the event takes two or three hours and then the race only takes 2 to 3 minutes.
I think it is a fabulous use of three minutes of your life to watch a horse race, you never know who is going to win, the favorite or the best horse only wins a portion of the time. When you look at other sports it is a success to have 30, 40 or 50,000 people in the stands.
When you look at of horse racing, like the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, or the upcoming Belmount Stakes, there could be in upwards of 100,000 people in the stands watching. So my point is that if you have never seen a horse race on TV or in person, it’s actually a really cool event, even if you are not a betting person you can go and watch the horse races at Fairmont Park as a spectator.
It is truly exciting, it is also amazing to see how little the jockeys are. I often wonder like in NASCAR, when you put a little more weight in the car it creates down force in the car so it can go faster. How would that weight and down force translate to horseracing if you added a Jockey who weighed 200 pounds up onto a horse, with the down force would it make the horse run faster. Just something to think about.
More On Soccer Match, Family Night at Ballpark
The big international soccer match between is here in St. Louis Thursday at Busch Stadium. What a great of opportunity for all soccer fans across the region. It will truly put St. Louis in the national spotlight.
I will also go into more details on an expedition my wife when we took our children to their first Cardinals baseball game last week. As you can imagine it was all about eating, drinking sodas and going to the restroom, and of course we went to one of the longest games in the past several years with little action and no runs. It made for a long night.
And finally God bless the families and the children in Oklahoma with the tornadoes. With children of my own, I can’t even imagine the tragedy that is going on down there. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
