This might seem like a simple question. California Chrome
won the race in 2014. That is to say, the horse by that name won. As the Derby
is a race, a jockey would have played a decisive part in the win. The aptitude
may well be in the horse, but the racing skill lies with the person perched on
the animal. So the jockey, Victor Espinoza, won the race. If his role was
essentially that of coaching or directing the horse, which unlike a racing car
is a living creature with a brain to boot, then could the argument be made that
the horse’s trainer—in this case Art Sherman—also won? Although Sherman quipped
during a post-race interview that he had felt like he was on the horse for the
last 75 years, surely a distinction can be drawn between a player and a coach.
After all, Babe Ruth hit all those homeruns—not his coach. To win a race, the
winner must presumably be in the race—and
not vicariously. Least of all can it be said that the “horse’s owner”—an
expression like “slave owner” in that a living being is “owned”—won the race.
Otherwise, a person could simply wave money around in lieu of actually running
to qualify for an Olympic context in track and field. To give wealth such power—coming
at the expense of reason itself—would surely point to a rather distorted set of
societal values. I contend that both NBC Sports’ post-race coverage and the
Derby’s trophy ceremony reflect and in fact affirm the hegemony of business
values in American society.
Just before interviewing the jockey, a NBC Sports journalist
prefaced, “We interviewed the owner, then the trainer, and now the jockey.”
Lest it be pointed out that the jockey had been busy, the trophy ceremony
followed the same pattern. Kentucky’s head of state handed to trophy to Steve
Coburn, who with the other owner, Perry Martin, were all too pleased to speak
on their win. In fact, the governor
made it quite explicit by announcing, “To the Martins, to the Coburns, our
victor.” The horse and jockey were not even in the camera shot. Wealth had won
the race without breaking a sweat. Next came the trainer’s turn, and then, last
and apparently least, the jockey.
Imagine running a race, and winning it only to watch the
metal being given to your sponsor. “To Coke, our victor.” In enabling a runner,
horse, or jockey to train, a sponsor is not the winner (for otherwise the sponsor
would be enabling itself). While it is understandable that wealth is highly
esteemed in the business sector, the imposing of this “top dog” in society
itself distorts non-business activities into the prism of commerce. In the
context of managerial capitalism, particularly where managers style themselves
as “coaches,” it is no accident that coaches and trainers in sports come to be
treated as ends rather than means—as the
winners rather than as facilitators on the sideline. It is important to
remember that Art Sherman was not on
the horse that won the Derby in 2014.
In short, the priorities evinced by NBC Sports and the Derby
reflect those in the business world at
the expense of the world of sports; overreach can thus be seen rather
clearly. Put another way, the horse race provides us with a snapshot of just
how much American society has formed around the ideological crucible of Wall
Street. At least from the jockey’s standpoint, the over-reach both in terms of ownership and managerialism violates the ethical principle of fairness (i.e., the
trophy should have gone to the jockey, as he is the person who actually raced). Sadly, the exaggeration or
over-reach was already so engrained in American society even before the race
that I bet few if any Americans even noticed how very odd the trophy sequence is.
