Kentucky Derby

Monday

Kevin Cook

Which GOAT really is the greatest?

Shohei Ohtani had a baseball season for the ages. The Dodgers’ sensational designated hitter hit fifty-four home runs and stole fifty-nine bases to become the founding member of baseball’s 50/50 club. Even before his Dodgers won the World Series and Ohtani won the National League’s MVP award, sportswriters were calling him the best player in baseball history. His heroics bring a key question into play: is Ohtani’s 2024 season one of the greatest performances in sports history? It’s up there for sure, but there are other contenders. Jesse Owens won four gold medals under Adolf Hitler’s nose at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

GOAT

Friday

Cockburn

Jeff Roe and his campaign cash grab

GOP campaign consultant Jeff Roe is the subject of new reporting in the Washington Post that shows his company, Axiom Strategies, takes in 63 percent of every dollar spent by the campaigns it is managing. A general consultant typically only takes in less than 10 percent. So what is Jeff Roe doing with all of that extra cash? According to a recent photo being passed around among journalists, campaign consultants, and even among members of Congress, Roe is icing up. The consultant was spotted at the Kentucky Derby wearing a blinged-out dollar sign chain. A tipster sent the picture Cockburn's way: Cockburn’s sources say Roe was telling people at the horse race that it was real, but now is downplaying it as a joke.

jeff roe

Friday

Teresa Mull

Horse racing has a drug problem

Tomorrow is one of the best days of the year, Kentucky Derby Day. It means spring is really, finally, officially here, because whatever the weather, how can you not feel balmy and cheerful when you’re balancing assorted plumage on your head and have a fourth Mint Julep in your hand? This year’s Derby, however, is off to a dark start. Four horses have died this week at Churchill Downs; two sustained life-ending injuries and two others collapsed and died suddenly for unexplained reasons. The trainer of the latter two horses, Saffie Joseph Jr., was banished from the weekend after scratching all but one of his other entrants.

horse racing kentucky derby

Wednesday

Timothy Jacobson

The beauty of the Beaumont inn

It is not often these days that I get to return to the Beaumont, an old inn in the Kentucky Bluegrass first visited half a century ago. The cliché that time and distance make the heart grow fonder has truth in it, as I have relearned this season. The Beaumont has been in the food and lodging business since 1917. It is owned and operated by branches of the Dedman family whose roots reach back to the early days of trans-Appalachian settlement. The original building dates from the 1840s and was once a girls’ finishing school. The young ladies in crinolines are long gone, but not a certain air of gentility. The Beaumont has a worthy watering hole — the Owl’s Nest — refashioned from an old carriage shelter in 2003 when liquor-by-the-drink finally came to Harrodsburg.

Beaumont

Friday

Teresa Mull

Having fun again on Derby Day

The woes of the world are a’plenty. People are anxious, stressed-out, and burned-out. It seems that no matter what side of the political aisle you gravitate toward, there’s a new battle to be fought at the dawn of each day. Even innocent settings — school board meetings, comedy shows, the Magic Kingdom itself — are not immune from partisan vitriol. Luckily for us, though, this is Derby Day, which means it’s the perfect time to do something about the very real but underreported disorder that’s been plaguing our society for a while now: we’ve forgotten how to have fun. It’s a contagious disease that affects brain function and mood, and if left untreated, could result in everyone becoming a smug, humorless elitist (a prognosis worse than Covid).