The Great Story of Rich Strike's Win... Which ESPN Can't Be Bothered to Cover

Let us take as given that there are some serious problems with horseracing: unscrupulous owners and trainers, doping, horses bred for speed at the expense of overall health, all that.  And it is certainly a sport for rich people.  All those great stories about a group of friends kicking in a few thousand bucks (pounds, Euro, etc.) apiece to buy a racehorse that subsequently wins The Big Race against colts that sold at auction for millions—these are heart-warming tales, but they capture our collective imagination precisely because they’re so rare.

Of course, it would be difficult to name a sport that isn’t dominated by the obscenely rich.  With the occasional exception of a team like the publicly-owned Green Bay Packers, virtually all sports teams are owned by individuals whose net worth is three or four zeroes more than yours or mine. 

And, in this country, one of the premiere sporting events of the year is the Kentucky Derby.  Few people care about gymnastics, swimming, or figure skating on an ongoing basis, but Olympics competitions in those sports attract a lot of viewers.  Similarly, the nation’s indifference to horseracing in general disappears, briefly, on the first Saturday in May.  Nearly 150,000 fans showed up at Churchill Downs in Louisville; television viewership numbers haven’t been released as of this writing, but predictions were in the range of 15 million.  That’s a lot of folks.  And, all told, a record $168.8 million was bet on this race alone.

Side note: the Kentucky Derby is also special for completely other reasons to Curmie and Beloved Spouse.  Watching the 1981 Derby from my apartment on the other side of Kentucky was sort of our first date.  We “bet” on Tap Shoes.  He… uh… did not prosper.  On the other hand, a year later, on the second Saturday in May, we were married.

This year, there were lots of potential stories.  How would the horses initially trained by the suspended Bob Baffert fare?  Would this be the year a Japanese horse won the roses?  Would jockey John Velasquez win his fourth Derby?  Or would Mike Smith, at 56, become the oldest ever to win, aboard a horse who’d only run in two previous races (winning them both, including the Santa Anita Derby)?  Or would Steve Asmussen, the winningest trainer in the country, finally get a Derby win after 23 losses?  And do I go with the morning line favorite or the post-time favorite?

The answers to the above: not very well, no, no, no, no, and neither.

Sonny Leon guides Rich Strike to victory

There are Disney movies that don’t strain credulity as much as what actually occurred.  The aptly-named Rich Strike did indeed strike it rich yesterday.  This was a horse that didn’t qualify for the Derby on points, and was added to the field at literally the last minute Friday morning when legendary trainer D. Wayne Lucas pulled Ethereal Road, allowing Rich Strike to become the twentieth and last entry into the field.  A former claimer, Rich Strike was sold by the famous Calumet farms for $30,000.  He just won $1.86 million.  Someone at Calumet is muttering a big “Oops” about now.

The horse was listed, probably optimistically, at 80:1.  The odds were even that low because there wasn’t a really clear “super-horse” favorite.  But a late entry without speed racing from the far outside post?  A trainer (Eric Reed) and jockey (Sonny Leon) who had precisely one Grade 1 win and no Kentucky Derby experience between them?  Yeah, 80:1 was probably wishful thinking.

At the half-mile pole, Rich Strike was well to the back of the pack, in 18th place, perhaps 10 lengths off the lead.  Even coming into the home stretch, he was in 13th place, surrounded by other horses, with no apparent chance of breaking through, no matter how fast he might have been capable of running.  Except that he did.  Leon, who had never won a Grade 1 race, gave as masterful a ride as Curmie has ever seen (seriously: check this out)—finding the gaps and shooting his horse through them.  That young man’s phone IS. GOING. TO. BLOW. UP.

By the time they’re into the final furlong, Rich Strike is up to fifth and on the rail.  Leon guides him outside to pass a fading horse, then straightens him out and charges towards the wire.  The announcer continues to talk about the battle between morning line favorite Zandon and post-time favorite Epicenter: “Coming down to the wire, Epicenter and Zandon, these two, stride for stride!”  He doesn’t even mention Rich Strike until he’s already caught the favorites at the 1/16 pole.  Needless to say, that merited an excited “oh, my goodness!”. And it was a clear win—no photo finishes, noses, or necks.  Officially, it was ¾ of a length.  Curmie would have said a full length, but he’s not going to quibble.

On the way to the winner’s circle, one of Rich Strike’s connections is screaming “we shocked the world.”  Indeed, you did, sir.

This has to be one of the most memorable horseraces in history.  Was there luck involved?  Boatloads.  The scratch of Ethereal Road just soon enough to allow another entrant into the field.  And taking nothing away from Leon’s utterly brilliant ride, sometimes the holes just never appear the way they did yesterday.  But this plucky colt, his modest Kentucky-based trainer, and a jockey who rode the race of his life—they deserved the win, however much Steve Asmussen wants to pout. Train your horse better next time, Stevie.

This story has got everything: luck, huge underdogs across the board, an exciting come-from-behind finish… you name it.  So what sports reporter wouldn’t be all over this?  The answer to that question is apparently “anyone who works for ESPN.”    

Seriously.  It’s over 18 hours after the conclusion of the race, and what’s on ESPN’s webpage?  Gasping coverage of game threes of NBA conference semifinals, a couple of reports on soccer leagues in foreign countries, NCAA women’s softball scores, even a story on not-even-close-to-being-a-sport WWE.  The biggest horseracing story, at least in this country, in a decade or more: not a freaking word.

Now, Curmie could understand if ESPN decided that horseracing isn’t really a sport (WWE is?), or if the downside of the sport makes it ethically unpalatable (unlike, for example, the clear linkage of football to chronic traumatic encephalopathy).  But pre-race coverage—which horse to bet on, mostly—is still up.

ESPN has long been known for insufferable announcers.  As a college basketball fan, Curmie will definitely turn off the sound if not the game itself if Dick Vitale or Bill Walton are within hailing distance of a microphone.  Even Jay Bilas—who, unlike the two just mentioned, actually analyzes the proceedings instead of spouting idiocies and catch phrases they think are cute—allows himself to be an accomplice in ESPN’s belief that people tune in to see and hear “their people” instead of, you know, the game.  Curmie can but hope it’s against his will.

And if the front-line announcers are this bad, imagine what the guys covering the game between the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople and Pigeon Puke Ag and Tech are like.  But this is all, of course, a matter of personal opinion.  Somewhere, one supposes, there’s someone who doesn’t work for ESPN who thinks Bill Walton adds to fans’ enjoyment.

Less forgivable was last fall’s airing on their main channel of what purported to be a high school football game between IMG Academy (a “school” devoted almost exclusively to athletics) and “Bishop Sycamore” (a school that doesn’t even exist).  Curmie wrote about this incident last September, and the situation kept getting weirder and more sinister after that.  ESPN was unquestionably complicit, but one could argue that they were simply too fucking lazy to exercise even cursory oversight of their product.  And what they did wasn’t criminal, right?  I mean, yes, they abetted criminality, but they were too incompetent to know any better, so that’s OK, then.

But now we pass from sloth and logistical ineptitude into the range of YOU CAN’T CLAIM TO COVER SPORTS IN THE US IF YOU DON’T HAVE AT LEAST 500 WORDS UP WITHIN A HALF AN HOUR territory.  There is literally no excuse for an omission this egregious.  But just as ESPN thinks they’re more important than the game, they also think it isn’t really worth covering if they weren’t the ones to do the live coverage.  They are as arrogant as they are incompetent, and that’s saying rather a lot.

Correction: It appears that ESPN did indeed post a story.  It didn’t appear on their homepage, and it was not the featured story even on the horse racing page, which you have to search for (there is, however, a direct link to the NBA’s G-League, even though a). they're a minor league, and b), their season has been over for weeks): ESPN pundits’ predictions about the race occupied the featured position until days after the race was over.  But there was a story; the link was hard to find (Curmie specifically looked, twice), but it appears it was there.  With this minor correction, Curmie’s indignation stands.