Hello from Lexington, Kentucky where they’ll stage this year’s annual Breeders’ Cup at beautiful Keeneland Race Course. I’m naturally skeptical about how this event will go off given the string of Cup failures at sites of this size.
You gotta give it a chance, I suppose, given how special this place is, but we’ll find out tomorrow and Saturday.
I flew from Newark to Nashville on Thursday morning. Jeff D picked me up at the airport and we enjoyed the 3.5 hour car ride to Lexington under sunny skies. We stopped on the perimeter of Kentucky Downs to see it and then stopped for lunch in Uno, KY at a great down-home spot on a rural highway called Mama Lou’s Barbeque and Gifts. We both had the pulled pork platters. “Welcome to Mama Lou’s,” is the greeting to each customer on the way in.
On the flight to Nashville, I was discouraged to read Tom Pedulla’s story in the Times about Keeneland’s upcoming two days on the big stage. He spoke to the Presidents of both Keeneland and the Breeders’ Cup.
Bill Thomason (Keeneland) and Craig Fravel (Breeders’ Cup) told Pedulla independent of one another that Keeneland’s switch back to a dirt surface on the main track from the artificial, cushioned surface was NOT a condition or requirement for Keeneland to get a turn hosting the Cup.
This is a dubious claim.
More of a problem is an overt boast by Fravel that running the Cup at Keeneland is full-on deference to the corporate crowd even if it keeps 30-thousand or more of the sport’s more regular guy racing fans at home.
Said Fravel on the Cup’s shifting philosophy in returning to small tracks which will offer live views to no more than 20-thousand fans instead of the more reasonable 75-thousand plus at Santa Anita, Churchill or Belmont. “We’re more tuned into the overall experience, to provide premium seats and premium activities,” said Fravel.
Ugh. At a time when the sport is trying to hang on to every last guy who wants to attend this event, why not make space for him?
It’s because the Cup wants to tip its cap the sport’s breeding industry which does its business here. And it has a twisted view on who its real fans are.
-On the last several departures out of Newark, a new security hurdle has emerged and it appears to get under the skin of travelers. Third party vendor workers wearing blue sport coats oversee entry to the three large security checkpoints that feed into terminal C. Their primary function is to insure passengers have a boarding pass and are conforming to baggage limitations prescribed by the airline that operates out of that building. On the last half-dozen trips out of Newark, I’ve noticed that these workers are making a habit of denying access to a checkpoint for what appears to be no good reason – instructing them to use a different entry point up the escalator (if it’s working) and perhaps 60-70 yards away. All three checkpoints funnel into the same terminal and this tactic isn’t being applied to evenly distribute people across the three checkpoints. In fact, on the last couple departures out of Newark, I was asked to walk from a near-empty checkpoint with TSA workers at the ready to one that was overwhelmed with a line that backed up a good 20 minutes. All I can surmise is that the blue jackets are attempting to link one’s gate of departure with the nearest checkpoint. If that’s the case, it’s a head scratcher because all three checkpoints lead to the same single terminal. When folks get to the airport via assorted modes of transport, they inevitably go to the nearest checkpoint to get that part of it over with. To be told they have to walk to another checkpoint that leads to the same Promised Land makes ‘em crazy. The donning of blue jackets give some illusion that it’s the airline that’s imposing this disorder. All this before you even reach the TSA and you’ve got the New York crowd all worked up.