I'll Bet My Money on the Bob-Tail Nag, Somebody Bet on the Bay

Anchorage—


I’m still thinking about Mine That Bird’s amazing victory at the Kentucky Derby this weekend.

This small and previously undistinguished horse apparently bought with money from the sale of VECO went from last to first on a sloppy track at America’s premier race. A 50-1 longshot, Mine That Bird won by the largest margin seen at the Derby in 63 years. Now the little thoroughbred out of the West is apparently going to go on to the Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown. Are there parallels to the whole story of Alaska public corruption?

Two corrections: In my excitement yesterday I slightly misspelled the horse’s name—it’s “Mine That Bird,” not “Mine that Bird.” And the mud on the Derby track helped cover up the horse’s true color, which is not brown but reddish-brown—“bay” in the equine world.

(The title of this post comes from Stephen Foster’s song “Camptown Races”; the spelling is modernized.)