crazy jumping horses...

so, this afternoon, the Grand National was just run...which is England's most prestigious horse race...apparently, worldwide, its one of the most popular races in the world with 600 million viewers each year...but being a typical american, i had never heard about it let alone ever tuned into BBC on race day to view it...

it was great race to watch and absolutely crazy...let's compare England's most prestigious horse race with the U.S.'s most prestigious horse race - the Kentucky Derby...

number of horses:
Grand National - 40; Kentucky Derby - 20

distance:
Grand National - 4.5 miles; Kentucky Derby - 1.25 miles

fences/jumps:
Grand National - 30; Kentucky Derby - 0

They say that the Grand National is "arguably the toughest test of horse and jockey in the world" and based on the above stats, i'm pretty sure nobody will argue...the horse has to not only run for 4.5 miles with a huge crowd of other horses, it also has to jump 30 fences which are all much taller than the horse itself...

So, for the 2009 race i just saw, 40 horses started and ONLY 17 finished, which is apparently typical. The majority of those that dropped out literally dropped...with absolutely disastrous falls at the fences...with the jockeys abandoning into a fetal position trying not to get trampled on by any horses running behind...its mass mayhem at every jump...in 163 runnings of the race, there have been 57 horse fatalities and one jockey death. Apparently, animal rights activists have been protesting this race forever, but they will never have any luck as this is part of english tradition which is also forever...163 runnings and counting...

i was in a lottery krap shoot thing at work where we just picked a horse's name out of a hat, and that was our horse for the race...with a little prize money if our horse won of course...my horse was at 100-1 odds...which clearly was no good...basically meaning that nobody expected it to even finish...but funny enough, my horse actually finished amongst the 17 horses...it came in 14th...obviously no money to be won with that, but it still finished! And the irony in all that is that the winning horse in the whole thing this year was a fellow 100-1 odds horse...apparently, in the storied history of the race, its the longest shot horse to have ever won...

definitely a crazy fun race to watch...we'll all watch in next year when i'm back in the States...okay?