There isn’t any actual horseracing in Driving Force, but for those of you Dick Francis fans who miss that sort of thing, they did run the Grand National today. That’s a BBC link, bye-the-bye, and from there you can link to a very low-rez video of the whole race, which was frankly breathtaking for me. I’ve never watched a Grand National before, and have only watched a steeplechase once or twice, I think. I’ve watched hundreds of horseraces in the US (where we only run on the flat, you know), and I was amazed by how different this is. I mean, yes, they jump fences, and not always successfully; forty horses started and twenty-one finished. The main difference for me was how long the thing was. Those horses were going for ten minutes; the Kentucky Derby tends to run about two and change. The last half of the race (or so) the jockeys and their mounts had to deal with jockeyless mounts wandering the track after being downed at one or another obstacle; at one point one of those loose horses spooked another, the two of them then cutting directly across the path of the lead runner, unhorsing his jockey (and clearing the path for a new leader). Amazing. Just amazing.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.