AUGUST 13th - Impossible is Nothing



On this day in 1919 Man O’ War, considered by many as the greatest Thoroughbred racehorse of all time, lost the only race of his career at the Sanford Memorial Stakes in Saratoga to a horse named Upset. While there have been numerous myths that this was the origin of the term “upset” a little research quickly debunks that notion. Still it might be the most appropriate name that has ever been doled out. What are the odds that Harry Payne Whitney (Upset’s owner) would have picked the very name for a horse that would perfectly describe that same horse beating the most formidable Thoroughbred in racing history? That kind of premonitional foresight could have been used a 100 years earlier in the Luxembourg Power Plant incident. Remember when I told you about lightning striking a freaking power plant and killing 300 people? If old H.P. Whitney had been around then, maybe he could have been like, “Guys, June 26th. You might want to stay away from the power plant. Lightning’s gonna strike. It’s gonna be bad.” Come to think of it, maybe H.P. was an ancestor of Stephen King’s Dead Zone protagonist Johnny Smith so brilliantly portrayed by the indomitable Christopher Walken in the 1983 classic movie version. But maybe H.P. was more like the SNL spoof, Ed Glosser, except he could only predict major sports upsets instead of mild annoyances. Just think, H.P. knew about Broadway Joe taking out the Colts, or The Miracle on Ice, or The Miracle on Grass, or Douglas over Tyson. I know what you’re thinking. That’s impossible without making a Back to the Future II Sport’s Almanac reference. Yet I just made a Back to the Future II reference without actually making a Back to the Future II reference. That’s right, Aleksey Vayner, impossible is nothing. Even so, perhaps H.P. Whitney circumstantially happened upon a fortuitous confluence of events in which a luckily named horse happened to get a great start on Man O’ War when the GOAT wasn’t even ready for the gun. I guess it just depends on how you see the world. But no matter how you see it, if they ever make a movie about that race, Christopher Walken is playing H.P. Whitney. In fact, he should play the horse too.



This day has been Marked.

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