Mary Sue the Gnome Blogs the Kentucky Oaks!

Hello everyone! Mary Sue here! This past weekend I attended ladies' day at Churchill Downs and saw the Kentucky Oaks, the female counterpart race to the slightly more prestigious Derby. Here's myself and Handler 1 in all our Oaks going finery. Do you like my hat?


Here we are at our Churchill Downs seats quite a ways (3/16 of a mile) from the finish and the famous twin spires.

It was a beautiful, sunny day. And quite hot. Handler 2 was still not at his best and the heat was not helping. As you can see, he's not doing terribly well.

We met up with the grandhandlers, who had tickets with us.

In fact, there were a number of colorful characters at the Oaks.

Some lovely decorations around the track...

And on people's heads.

Even the horses got all dressed up.

In case you were wondering what kind of view of the racing we had from our seats. This was it.

And not much else. We could see the final turn into the stretch and that was about it. There were a number of temporary buildings erected in the infield that made it basically impossible to see across the track, and so we were sort of locked into watching the giant video screen behind us in order to catch most of the racing action.

However, the view was good enough to give us a glance at one of the star performers of the day, 2009 Horse of the Year, Rachel Alexandra who was performing in that afternoon's La Troienne Stakes. Here she is hooking up with Unbridled Belle who would, unfortunately, nip her by a nose at the wire.

There was some other racing as well. Handler 1 managed to get this pretty cool picture of a break on the turf track.

Then it was time for the signature event: The Kentucky Oaks!

They're in the gate.

Here they come, 5-wide around the turn.

That's Blind Luck, the eventual winner on the far left with the blinkers and the pink jockey's silks.

After a long, hot day at the track, it was time for a little relaxation and food out of the sun. We and the grandhandlers had reservations at a place called Furlongs. Its website made it look like a classy place, and the prices they were charging also implied fine dining. However, this was not the case. It...left something to be desired. And everyone's salads got left in the kitchen...along with the grandhandlers drinks...and...lets not belabor the point. It was a poor and uncomfortable meal. Worst of all, Handler 2, after suffering all day in the heat, could only eat a few bites of his bisque.

So, as a side note, it should be mentioned that Handler 2 had spent the past few days trying to find soup (apparently the only thing he could easily keep down) and consistently failed. The bisque simply was not cutting it. To add to his pain, it turned out that some of the medicine he had been taking made him "sensitive" to sunlight. As a result, he got a wee bit sunburned.

Handler 1, being a thoughtful person, found the closest store to the hotel bought some soup, a pyrex dish and some other accoutrements. She then made Handler 2 some soup in the microwave in the hotel room and he finally managed to have a good meal.

Tomorrow, Bo will pick the story beck up with his description of the...interesting...time everyone had at the Kentucky Derby.