The last word

Before I take off for New York, I thought I'd leave you with a parting message intended to make you aware of just how much this trip actually means to me. This is the shirt I've created for tomorrow (so if you see someone wearing it, that's me!):
I've never known a triple crown winner, except what you can glean from grainy black and white photos and thoroughbred biographies. Sometimes I believe it's my curse to never see true greatness in my lifetime (well, that and to have something horrible happen in America every time I go overseas...long story). And I doubt even if Mr. Big was to win tomorrow, that I could really see him in the same way as I do the heroes of my youth. Maybe that's just a prejudice, the way everyone believes things were better "back in the day". People always look at the past through rose colored glasses (or at least, through fuzzy YouTube videos), but that doesn't mean that the past really was any better. If Big Brown takes it all tomorrow, few will say that he could have kept up with the likes of Secretartiat, Seattle Slew or Citation (and they're probably right), but it's entirely possible he could have given horses like Assault, Whirlaway and Sir Barton a run for their money. So he'll belong. Perhaps not in the highest choir of horse racing angels, but certainly up there.

So, if he does win, I'll probably cry. I can be an emotional little sucker like that sometimes. And if he doesn't, well I got a cool shirt out of it all which would remain relevant until next year...or the year after that. There's always a next year in the promised land of the Bluegrass, and that's why I keep coming back to this sport. That's why I keep watching year after year, although nothing in my 28 (soon to be 29) years of life has ever assured me that there would be a Triple Crown winner in my future. That's why I deal with heartrending breakdowns like Eight Belles, becuase I know that without the racing she would never have been given the chance to become more than 'just a horse' in the first place. We don't morn the loss of the pony down the road unless it's our pony; racing lets these horses to belong to all of us. It lets them live forever in our museums and memories and hearts. It gives them the chance, no matter how minute, to be somebody's hero.

So, I'll leave you with what I'd like to see tomorrow, with what we will probably never see the likes of ever again, with what cannot help but make me bawl every single time I see it (or read it, or think about it...yes I'm a sad, sad person).

Greatness is meant for the past, let us live in the now.