Kentucky Oaks winner Rachel Alexandra almost got held out of Saturday's Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, mostly due to a cheap and perhaps sexist owner (can one be sexist against a separate species?) Dolphus Morrison and Mike Lauffer decided the filly shouldn't compete against the males, despite burning the best fillies by more than 20 lengths.
But with the second jewel of horse racing's Triple Crown come and gone, Rachel Alexandra proved that the stable that bought her, co-owners Jess Jackson and Harold McCormick, knew what they were doing entering her to race. She won. She beat the best in the field and became the first filly to win the Preakness in 85 years, all without even bringing her 110 percent best, according to her jockey Calvin Borel.
“She’s the greatest horse I’ve been on in my life,” Borel said. “She struggled and still won. It’s such a narrow track I had to give it to her. The more I did, the more she struggled.” Rachel Alexandra is the field's best. She's not the best filly, she's the best race horse. And perhaps, she's the most important step in gender equality since...well, since ever.
There's no need to go over the myriad reasons women and men aren't able to compete side-by-side in most sports. Most arguments begin and end with the natural strength capability difference between men and women. And maybe that's why Rachel Alexandra is so special, because mares and filly's aren't so obviously different and the races don't always come down to strength.
NASCAR and golf are two sports that have also flirted with breaking the gender barrier. None of the females have ever achieved nearly as much as their hype suggests, but those sports are far closer to it than say, boxing.
But what about fighting? The idea of pitting a woman against a man immediately seems offensive and cruel. Men are never supposed to hit women, right? They're the fairer sex, delicate flowers, unable to exhibit the same brute force as the men. And for any self-respecting man, winning a test of strength and endurance is expected and if didn't happen, it was the man's shame, not the woman's triumph.
But what if there were ways to change that? Currently, the mixed martial arts world has two bankable names without contracts. They're so good that they only have each other to fight with, which can be bankable once or twice, but not every month. I bet you've already figured out the problem: they're women.
Both Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos and Gina Carano have established themselves as the Rachel Alexandra's of their sport, but whereas Rachel has the ability to test her skills against the best, the same would be unthinkable in MMA.
There's nothing that can be done about our social queeziness about watching a woman get hit by a man. Most of us are programmed to feel any such fight is unfair and barbaric. But what if we started quantifying mixed-gender fights differently than regular fights? Regualr fights categorize fighters by their weight, not their power or agility.
Clearly a 210-pound heavyweight would never fight a 135-pound woman. Even a 135-pound man carries an advantage over a 135-pound woman, because the pounds are packed differently between the two body types and because force isn't simply a matter of muscle, but of how those muscles are used.
So what if that's what the league's started looking at: how much force and power certain weight-classes exerted? Look at all the tests Drago went through. You don't think some of those could be adapted to figure out how many pounds of force Gina Carano' mui-tai kicks stacked up?
My apologies, but everything I've ever learned about competition stems from Rocky IV. We're only talking about men versus women here. THAT movie showed man's ability to defeat machine.
Isn't it possible to have genuine stars-in-waiting like Santos and Carano fight better competition without turning it into a circus? If Santos can kick with the force of 350 lbs. and punch with the force of 170 lbs., isn't it possible to match her up with a man exhibiting the same numbers? Yeah, yeah. Mixed martial arts is not just kicks and jabs, but arm-bars and ground 'n' pound and sleeper locks and so-on, but isn't that all quantifiable? And if it is, can't these organizations use those quantifications to showcase their talent?
Scrapping bottoms of various barrels ain't working so far and without the ability to parade their commodities in front of fans, they have only a faint gasp of hope for other female fighters to develop into real challengers.
Right now a filly is the fastest race horse in the world and it only happened because she was given a chance she was very close to not having. Is it unthinkable to give these same chances to human females?
Horse-whipped: Rachel Alexandra was so far ahead in the Kentucky Oaks finale that by the time I squared my camera and snapped a picture, she was gone and all that was left were the losers she dusted. (Pictured: The losers)
It should have been clear that something special was going to happen during the 135th Kentucky Derby weekend the minute Scott Padgett, a Kentucky University alum and member of the NBA from 1999-2007, stepped in front of me and shot me a goofy awkward smile. It didn't occur to m then, but it should have. At the time I was holding out for a smile from such D-Listers as Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Peyton Manning (in New England, where I come from, you bet your ass Manning is considered D-List. He's lucky he gets that much credit).
The Kentucky Derby must be seen to be believed. Churchill Downs in the first week of May is like a Jay Gatsby party in which every woman in attendance is under the impression she's Daisy Buchanan. There's no orchestras and even less jazz (unless you count Taylor Swift as jazzy, in which case it's just as Fitzgerald imagined it).
What you need to remember is that the Kentucky Derby weekend is only about the 23 horse races to everyone outside of Louisville, KY. Inside the town, it's about hats and mint juleps. Seeing the mares and fillies are the Garfunkel to the Churchill Downs cocktail party's Simon. As someone who's fingers were inked with the racing forms 20 minutes after I arrived, I was unaware how passing the interests of most of the grandstand elite's interests were. Over the nine hours I watched the fillies run on Friday's Kentucky Oaks races, this passivity was something that revealed itself to me as harshly as an unwashed flasher. It took longer to understand why a woman would want to spend a day moving the wid brim of her hat out of her eyes than the basics of betting on the horses. There are 12 female races during Fridy's Oaks and 11 races during Saturdy's Derby. There are anywhere between eight to 13 horses in each race accept for each day's main event, in which there are a maximum of 20 horses.
Unlike the U.K., America sets its lines based upon the betting patterns of the masses. So if June Day is a 3-1 favorite on Wednesday, but no one bets on her by race time Friday, the odds that she'll win don't remain at 3-1, they'll decrease significantly.
American odds, like the horses existence at Churchill Downs, don't really matter. The people in attendance do. It starts there. It stops there. Don't you forget it. And while you're up, go get me another mint julep. Louisville makes me hanker for drinks that taste like mouthwash and whiskey.
Before each race, you can bet early or you can bet late. Technically you can bet whenever you want, but unless you want to be reading about horse betting for another six hours, let's go with the simplest explanation. If you bet on Senor Fuego in Friday's fourth race 40 minutes before she's set to race, you'll be basing your wager on the racing form, the analysis inside and your gut (if there's two things I learned not to trust on Derby weekend, it's my gut and men dressed in pink. Never trust any event that compels thousands of men to congregate together wearing pink). The early odds are based on the horse's, trainer's and jockey's history and has nothing to do with the people's wagers. Then again, if you bet on Senor Fuego at 8-1 odds 40 minutes before the race, by the time the bets windows close, the masses could have made her a 5-2 favorite or a 30-1 underdog and you'll be trapped into your bet.
Then again, if you wait until after the odds have been muddied with the gut-feeling wagers of the over-tanned wannabe West Egg socialites. The choice is up to you.
When you're in the wager lines, waiting for a chance to give a surely cashier money that you'll probably never see again, you have many chances to see all sorts of race fans. Churchill Downs is an old boys club to be sure. Men with money bring their wives who are living off of it to an event that they dare not miss. Twentysomethings and the very elderly alike arrived at Churchill Downs in costume. The ridiculousness was in the irony not on display. When a skinny woman in a bright canary dress spills her mimosa on her shoes because she's too preoccupied fiddling with te feathers on her gigantic top hat that she's clearly not comfortable wearing, the idea that all of here are classy sports enthusiasts is just as difficult to swallow as a second mint julep. Seriously, those things are awful.
At the races, showing up in a low-cut prom dresses and large hats or suits that make its wearers appear to own plantations is not only acceptable, it's expected. But taken out of context, if any of the people at the races los their way and wound up in another state in their getup, they would immediately be checked into the nearest looney bin.
Churchill Downs is a fraternity, replacing sophomoric paddles with cigars and handshakes and tourists affecting a southern cadence when they speak. Pledge week happens every 40 minutes and if you don't win money, you're just another sucker inexplicably wearing a bowtie.
On Friday, I bet the winning horse 3-of-7 times, came out of the day down $80 (I did win a hot dog from my girlfriend, which emotionally counted as about $25) and got to see the Oaks favorite Rachel Alexandra beat the field by 20 1/4-lengths, an Oaks record. Rachel Alexandra was such a fast horse that the common belief is that she could have won the Derby had she been entered into it. (Editor's note: Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode Rachel Alexandra to victory on Friday, also rode the 50-1 shot Mine That Bird to a shocking Derby victory one day later. Two days after that the cheapskates that owned Rachel Alexandra sold her to a wealthier stable and they will enter the filly to race among the mares in the Preakness Stakes later this month. Borel chose the female horse to ride in the Preakness instead of the Derby Winner. Rachel Alexandra is only the third filly to run in the Preakness and Borel is only the third jockey to switch off the Derby winner before the Preakness).
The win was breathtaking and brilliant, even for a novice like myself. Imagine your first basketball experience being witness to a LeBron James triple-double? What if all you knew of baseball was an Albert Pujols home run? I don't doubt that Rachel Alexandra's ass-whuppin' was on the same level and therefore bore a new race fan in me.
Afterwards, I heard Adrian Brody was at the race, along with various brats from MTV shows. When did I hear this? Les than 60 seconds after Rachel Alexandra's run, purloined from a text message off a young woman's iPhone. Then the conversation buzzing aroud the group to my left turned into Kim Kardashian's Barnstable party and where in the grandstands Michael Jordan might have been. Not the horse, or the nex day's derby or the spectator's winnings or losongs. None of that mattered because in Louisville, it's about the spectators, not what they';re are spectating.
And the only thing more shameful than the fans' attentionto the eent was how hard I tried to evesdrop the last conversation long enough to find out where Jordan was hiding.
You hafta admit, it would have been awesome to rub elbows with Mike.
Kentucky Oaks winner Rachel Alexandra almost got held out of Saturday's Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, mostly due to a cheap and perhaps sexist owner (can one be sexist against a separate species?) Dolphus Morrison and Mike Lauffer decided the filly shouldn't compete against the males, despite burning the best fillies by more than 20 lengths.
“She’s the greatest horse I’ve been on in my life,” Borel said. “She struggled and still won. It’s such a narrow track I had to give it to her. The more I did, the more she struggled.”
Both Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos and Gina Carano have established themselves as the Rachel Alexandra's of their sport, but whereas Rachel has the ability to test her skills against the best, the same would be unthinkable in MMA.
