The Kentucky Derby ran over the weekend, and the horse Mystik Dan won in a dramatic three-way photo finish.
I used to be a lot more into horse racing when I was a teenager, and used to go to the Saratoga Racetrack every August for the meet. In recent years I’ve dove into the business side of horse racing, joining a horse racing syndicate and investment fund that invests in racehorses.
But my appetite for watching horse racing has waned, as more and more racehorses die each year. The causes for their deaths are numerous, but the impact to the sport, and the perception in people’s minds, has begun souring me to watching the races.
I’m not naive enough to think that I’m not a part of the problem due to my investments in the horse racing industry, and that’s something I’ll have to wrestle with morally in the years to come.
There were a lot of positives in this year’s 2024 Kentucky Derby, beyond just the three-way photo finish. There was a Black trainer who saddled a horse in the Kentucky Derby, and he was the first black man to do that since 1951.
Let that sink in for a moment.
For a sport so dominated by stereotypical white males, and dependent on Hispanic laborers, its taken 73 years for a Black man to again be the trainer of a horse entered into the Kentucky Derby.
Clearly there’s a lot more progress that needs to be made in the sport of thoroughbred racing.
Mystik Dan wins 2024 Kentucky Derby in a dramatic photo finish