Kids, even though I command a stud farm for unicorns I have to admit that I do not know much about horse racing.
I do appreciate it though for being one of the few things other than a play place at McDonalds that I am just too big for. Apparently I'm the Andre the Giant of jockeys and that helps me sleep at night.
I also know what the triple crown is and in case you don't it's winning a succession of horse races in a small amount of time which is particularly hard for the horses, not so much the jockeys. It's so difficult to achieve that it has not been done since Affirmed managed to finish off the triple crown in 1978. By the way, Affirmed spent one more year racing after winning the triple crown and spent the better part of the next twenty by making sweet love for profit. Our human equivalent is Wilt Chamberlain. Affirmed was mercifully euthanized after falling ill in 2001. A lot of you are probably asking yourselves if Affirmed, a horse, lived a better life than you and you might even fall back on your children as reasoning enough. No, stop right there, Affirmed sired champion racers as well. This horse was really pretty something.
Affirmed was also granted one of the greatest honors of a race horse and that was being buried whole which only adds to my suspicion that dead horses actually do get turned into glue or low-grade dog food.
Damn you, Orwell.
Anyhoo, I bring up all that triple crown stuff because just like I alluded to in my last piece (and if you didn't read it don't even pretend to know what I'm talking about now) we just recently had another horse going for the glory. California Chrome was the latest horse to challenge the triple crown and I really wanted him to do if only for the reasoning that everybody would shut the hell up about it.
Alas, Chrome came in a distant fourth in the final leg of the triple crown and while the rest of the world went back to reading their newspapers one man could not get over it. I'm talking about Chrome co-owner Steve Coburn.
Coburn looks like Wilfred Brimley in a cowboy hat and since I always picture Wilfred Brimley in a cowboy hat he just looks like Wilfred Brimley to me. After the race in which Chrome was denied the triple crown the media descended upon Mr. Coburn and he just went absolute nuts.
You see, kids, the triple crown is obviously three races. In order to win the triple crown a horse must win all three races in the same year but in order to compete in a triple crown race a horse doesn't need to race in any of the other two. In other words, if your horse isn't an immediate threat to the triple crown you can pick and choose which of the three races you want to race in.
Now before I can continue further, I must admit something more about myself. I like a sore loser. I like the guy who is beaten in something and is angry about it. I'll be gracious in defeat tomorrow but right now I'm pissed off and it's going to show whether I like it or not! See? That makes sense. That's the natural human psyche.
So when the media went to Steve Coburn and asked him about the race IMMEDIATELY after Chrome had came in fourth and was out of the triple crown it's only natural you are going to get the rantings and ravings of a pissed off dude.
I get it. He called the other horses cheaters because they didn't race in the other races. He cursed a lot. He demanded that the rules be changed. All natural responses from someone on the verge of history that just had the table cloth pulled out from under him. You get a reprieve from that, Coburn, it's completely understandable.
But then he got to sleep on it.
And then he still came out and acted a fool.
Coburn, Wilfred Brimley's body double, has the nerve to compare what happened in the race to himself, a six-foot-two man, playing basketball against a kid in a wheelchair.
WHAT THE HELL, MAN? You slept on it!
Now before I have written this, Coburn has come onto national television (of course) and apparently apologized for his 'kid in a wheelchair' comments. But I didn't listen to it because that was going to be the most in-genuine thing he's said all week so why even bother. He doesn't mean it anyways.
What's his entire basis of his tirade? He didn't like the fact that fresh horses were running in the Belmont Stakes, the final leg of the triple crown? How convenient that you didn't make this a known thing before you were on the verge of history and were denied!
Listen, douchebag, you're not entitled to anything. I know you probably envisioned yourself being played by Harrison Ford in five years in a heart-wrenching Disney movie about the 'horse that bucked the trend' but say goodbye to that sweet Mickey cash and get over yourself. Champions are champions because they tested and beat EVERYBODY. Muhammad Ali didn't fight the same guy over and over (although he could have) and he went after stronger and bigger opponents. Why? Because he wanted to make sure he was the champion. And he was.
California Chrome is a fine horse and it's going to spend a fine life making lots of other fine horses but you're not the champion, Coburn. The champion welcomes opponents, regardless of rest, and regardless of past accomplishments.
As far as your 'kid in the wheelchair' quote for that I can only hope he realized the err in his ways for liking his situation to that as a child confined to a wheelchair playing a game of basketball. But he won't, and he doesn't deserve it because we're doing just fine without him anyways.
There are a lot of therapeutic treatments for children with cerebral palsy and other muscular and cognitive disabilities and guess what...a lot of them are from horse-back riding. Turns out that riding on the back of a horse kinda trains the human body to react in ways that were shut down by certain cognitive diseases. That's amazing and beautiful and outweighs anything a blowhard like Coburn has to say. It's only fitting that the horses know it too.
You're always welcome to Studly Pastures, Chrome.
