Saturday April 3 is Pony Express Day. I’m not making that up. It’s also the Kentucky Derby. I’m also not making that up. Something’s funny about that. I can’t figure out what. Dammit.
The Pony Express, for all it’s cultural fame, only lasted about 18 months. For five cents an ounce, a string of wiry riders would ride an even longer string of wiry ponies across the country, delivering mail from St Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Each horse would travel about 10-15 miles, each rider maybe 100 miles at a stretch. The whole trip took 10 or 11 days, thus dramatically reducing the time it took to get messages to the burgeoning California territory. In October 1861 the Transcontinental Telegraph caused the iconic Pony Express to fold, reducing the time to send messages across the continent to virtually nil.
In 1875 the first Kentucky Derby was run. Fifteen horses ran 1.5 miles (the distance was changed to 1.25 miles in 1896). African American Oliver Lewis won the race aboard Aristides. NPR’s sports pundit Frank Deford was recently kvetching about the Triple Crown taking place in a brief five week period, but on Sportsfilter.com – a sports blog I enjoy on a daily basis – Owlhouse notes that
“Having the Triple Crown over 5 weeks is probably a good thing – racehorses are trained with a schedule in mind. They can’t race fast all the time, and tend to peak over a period of a few weeks. Once their performance drops off they are spelled.”
With all of my horsey experience (I somersaulted off of one when I was six years old. I didn’t let go of the reins when it got peckish. Thus ends my horsey experience.) I think Owlhouse makes better sense than NPR-Boy.
So. Now you know what I know about horsies.
p.s. They don’t taste like chicken
p.p.s. Don’t get excited, that’s just an educated guess…
Tags: history, kentucky derby, pony express, sports
