GREEN WEEK - Day 7
Today is the final day of Green Week, and so I'm focusing this post on my search for the color green during one of my single favorite events of the year.
Today was 137th running of the Kentucky Derby.
I try to watch it every year. But sadly, I missed it last year because I had to work. To make up for it, I doubled my efforts this year to watch every single second of Derby coverage on NBC.
Beforehand, I combed newspaper articles and the Internet looking for flashes of green, hoping to find a green-related horse to root for in today's Derby. What I found was interesting.
The No. 11 horse in the race, Master of Hounds, is owned by a woman from Ireland, a country well associated with the color green. But Master of Hounds was wearing the color blue on his haunches, and so was the jockey (the jockey was wearing blue everywhere, not just on his haunches).
I almost picked Pants on Fire to win, because the horse's trainer's name is Kelly Breen - which sounds an awful lot like the color Kelly Green. But neither the horse, nor his female jockey Rosie Napravnik, were wearing green.
However, five jockeys were wearing green: Rajiv Maragh (Mucho Macho Man), Alan Garcia (Soldat), Kerwin Clark (Decisive Moment), John Velasquez (Animal Kingdom) and Rafael Bejarano (Watch Me Go). So those were root-worthy candidates.
Finally, two horses were wearing green saddle blankets: Santiva, a 33-1 underdog, and Decisive Moment, whose odds were an even longer 39-1.
Here I discovered a cross-reference: Decisive Moment was wearing green, and so was his jockey, Kerwin Clark. It was the perfect storm of Green-osity! And besides, the horse looks like a mean sumbitch.
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| He sticks his tongue out at those who call him an underdog. |
Decisive Moment was my horse.
And he started out strong in the 137th running of the Derby. From the fifth position in the starting gates, he cruised into the top four, and climbed all the way to second place at one point.
But as most horse races go, the horses who start out in the front of the pack usually finish in the rear. He fell back to third, then fourth, then fifth, and finally aaaaaaaaaaall the way back to 14th.
Turns out the winning horse was being ridden by John Velasquez, a jockey wearing green. He sat astride your 2011 Kentucky Derby champion, Animal Kingdom.
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| What an a-hole. |
Here's where today's fortune comes in: although I wanted to, I didn't place a wager on Decisive Moment to win the Kentucky Derby. Avoiding a financial loss is the next best thing to receiving an unexpected payment. And in that way, Decisive Moment helped me fulfill the fortune.
Thanks for being so damn slow.
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