Horsing Around

The Super Bowl gets a lot of ridicule for have a five-hour pre-game show.  But at least the event itself lasts well-over three hours.

They ran the Preakness today.  The pre-race broadcasts for Triple Crown events are about 2-1/2 hours.  The race lasted less the two minutes.  It was 1:57.  I can almost hold my breath that long.

NBC always has a woman reporter at these Triple Crown races who's riding a horse around the track to do interviews and dressed up in her nifty riding habit and breeches with a nifty riding chapeau.  You almost expect to see her carrying a mint julep.  Yes, I'm sure it's done for etiquette, to fit in with the style and sense of occasion.  Except that the track is full of people on horses who aren't dressed up in fancy riding gear and headgear looking so frou-frou, they're just doing their jobs as stable assistants or whatever.  It just looks so pretentious and silly when executives make their reporters do this, though I always get the sense that the reporters sort of enjoy it, and feel special.  But it's still stupid.  It's like if a sideline reporter at an NFL game was doing his interviews wearing shoulder pads, a jersey and helmet.  Reporters are supposed to be there reporter, not being part of the show.  If there was an actual reason for doing all the dress-up, to really blend in and not distract the crowd for some reason, I can see that.  But this isn't that.

In the end, the people most pissed off by the race are the Belmont Stakes.  With there being no chance of a Triple Crown winner this year, attention and caring for the third leg just plummeted.  Then again, I'm sure NBC is really unhappy, too.  Mind you, that's never been my concern, but that's the way the horse chip fly.