The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - PTFO - Does Nikola Jokić Love Horses More Than Basketball?
Episode Date: May 7, 2024The MVP is obsessed with the ancient sport of harness racing — because it may be hiding in plain sight as more exciting than the NBA playoffs. Acclaimed documentarian Mickey Duzyj talks to a GOAT an...d plays stable boy, then heads to the track to root on the official stallion of the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find
out what this sound is. Brushing dingleberries out of a tail. That's the
clinical term? Yeah, it uh you know made me feel a closeness that I've never felt
for a horse before. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe King's Network.
So, I, you know, when I was cleaning the stall, I was stepping in, like, a lot of fecal matter. Yeah.
I just, like, got right into my car and drove like the two hours. Oh God.
And about like five minutes in I was like, Jesus what? Crawled in the car and died.
And it only dawned on me an hour in that oh there was like all over my boots.
Okay, so we're going to explain that. We're going gonna explain how it is that Mickey Dujay,
my friend, who also happens to be my favorite illustrator slash documentarian slash animator
hybrid in sports, ended up soiling his Volvo.
Mickey, by the way, is an Emmy nominated creator of the Netflix series Losers and lots of other
cool stuff.
But today he has just come back from an assignment for me, a reporting assignment for PTFO, and it
might be the most absurd assignment we've given to a correspondent to date, which is
saying a lot.
But before we get into all of that, I do need you to become familiar with the viral video
clip that kind of inspired all of this, a clip that we here cannot stop thinking about.
Because this video is of Nuggets superstar Nikola Jokic.
One of the most walled off, press averse, and seemingly self-loathing celebrities on the planet,
insofar as the guy is the best player in the NBA, a two-time MVP, the defending champion,
currently facing the Timberwolves in the playoffs, and
yet he doesn't seem to like basketball.
What he would rather do, pretty visibly, based on this clip, is just be alone, hunched atop
a tiny cart pulled by this shiny brown horse on a dusty track in Sambor, Serbia, sleeveless
and utterly, confusingly serene.
It's a golden age for eccentricism in the NBA and he's probably the number one.
He bobs and weeps. He does not let us into his world. Or if he does, he gives us little tantalizing
scraps here and there. There's a veil of secrecy
Let's say yeah, and he clearly enjoys it. He clear
I mean I I should say I don't even know if he necessarily enjoys it so much as we hate it
the idea that he's gonna win an NBA title and
Then say like this. So I'm curious if you're looking forward to a parade coming up in Denver.
When is the parade?
Thursday.
No.
I need to go home.
How soon till you're back in Sao Paulo?
On the Sundays I have my horse racing in my house.
Horse racing?
I was going to get to that, the horse racing.
There are two opposing forces in him.
He's one of the toughest, most physically imposing guys in the entire league.
Let me just say too, that he's not your kind of conventional, tough guy,
muscle bound at the gym.
Yes.
His arms are constantly bleeding as people are trying to like scratch and claw at him.
When I look at Jokic, I see him more as being like kind of like underworld, kind of tough.
Where I don't know how many dicey situations you've been in, but when like the giant guy
with the scars all over his body shows up, like things are about to go down.
And the accent.
Yeah, it's like you're in trouble.
So like you don't want to get on this guy's bad side.
Legitimately one of the most intimidating players
in professional sports.
But then there's this other side of him
that loves to be around horses.
He's got this total soft side.
And it may sound like we're overstating
Yogi's feelings about all of this,
but this is what he told his teammate, Michael Porter Jr. on Michael Porter Jr.'s podcast. After the careers over, how I want to see
myself is to be around the family and spend the rest of the day with the horses, you know.
I have a couple horses outside of Serbia, in Italy, in Sweden, in France, go maybe race.
Actually that's kind of my secret goal to be a driver,
like to have fun, travel the world or Europe
and race horses, that sounds fun.
Come on, tells you straight up.
Yeah, but in the meantime,
the thing he's using his phone for,
he watches horse vids in practice.
Jamal Murray was asking him like, what are you doing?
He watches horse vids in practice. Jamal Murray was asking him, like, what are you doing?
Who's that?
Wait, wait.
No, no, I'm scouting horses.
You're scouting?
How many do you have?
Right now, like seven, eight, oh, 10, 12.
Like, it's the one thing he wants to talk about
and the one thing he cannot stop talking about.
And it's the only thing he'll also, like,
make advertisements about, basically. Just like, as only thing he'll also like make advertisements about basically.
Just like as long as it has a horse in there somewhere,
he's like, okay, he'll consider doing it
for the American audience.
You sure this is cool?
Relax, this place is pet friendly.
There are probably people who don't know
about his passion for horses that only see him in ads.
And they're like, why the hell is he with a pony?
This is a pony.
There is actually one ad from Serbia
where it's like him riding on this like cart
and someone throws him a basketball
and he throws it over his head as if to say
in obvious terms, fuck this, I'm here for the horse.
I think a normal person might reasonably ask,
like why does this seven foot tall underworld character
want to be the largest jockey in the world?
Like why is that his obsession?
It's not a jockey.
He wants to be a driver and there's a distinction there.
The sport of harness racing is very different than thoroughbred racing.
Don't have jockeys, you have drivers, you're not racing on thoroughbred horses, it's a
totally different breed.
You're already betraying your bias here.
You're betraying the reason why you're sitting here actually, in truth, because you came
at me upon my first conversation with you about this with one of the most contrarian
takes that I have ever, certainly decided to platform on this show.
It is my belief that harness racing is actually hiding in plain sight as being a much more
exciting sport than American basketball.
That's stupid.
I want to make this clear for everybody. You spend months on assignment to try and prove that Jokic is onto something and that
you have this unique insight, at least among my friends, as for understanding where and
why he wants to go home as soon as he can, as soon as this postseason is over.
Let's do like a little bit of an A-B test.
I thought we would do a very classic thing and go tailor the tape on this.
Great.
We're going to take basketball on one hand and we're going to compare and contrast it
with harness racing, better known as chariot racing.
Let's start with the age of the sport, right?
NBA famously did the NBA 75 a couple years ago, 77 years old.
Harness racing descended from chariot racing.
Chariot racing has a 15,000 year history.
I already resent the fact that you've chosen this theme song to be underneath us as you're doing this exercise.
I mean, it does help, by the way.
So we're giving the edge to Chariot Racing.
77 years, these guys are Johnny come lately.
15,000 is a lot.
Okay, so let's move on to iconic venues, right?
In the NBA, we've got the Mecca, Madison Square Garden.
The most famous arena in the world.
So they say, chariot racing
raises you and lays down the circus maximus. Bam. Let's talk about notable tactics. Okay,
in the NBA, a lot of talk about the triangle offense, the pick and roll. In chariot racing,
we have a couple tactics called tripping it out and one
called right in the two hole which I'm not exactly sure what that is it sounds painful
but what do you think? Tripping it out feels like something that you can now only do in certain
states legally and right in the two hole feels like something that I, a less mature version of me would have made a joke about already.
Moving on to famous practitioners, okay?
In the NBA, let's just say Michael Jordan,
very famous, globally known chariot racing, King Tut.
King Tut, Michael Jordan.
I didn't realize that you were going to be
drafting throughout literally all of time. King Tut, Michael Jordan. I didn't realize that you're going to be drafting
throughout literally all of time.
So let's call that one a draw.
Let's call that one a draw.
Yeah, what did King Tut ever win?
Moving on to famous fans, okay?
The NBA, famous for Jack Nicholson
sitting front row at Lakers games.
Chariot racing, what about Caligula? What about Nero? Also, more
recently, slightly more recently, Ric Flair. Huge harness racing fan. Wow, I was
unaware that Ric Flair was in the company of the guy who fiddled while
Rome burned and the guy who f***ed that horse. He is indeed. And for that reason, we are,
we're gonna give the edge to, to chariot racing.
Yeah, it's a heart, a hearty woo.
Yeah.
Woo!
In that direction.
Definitely.
So I don't know what the overall score is yet,
but I think chariot racing is ahead.
Moving on, best nicknames.
Barclay has one of the greatest for the NBA,
the round mound of Rebound.
Yes, don't know if he ever loved it,
but it is truly memorable.
And on the chariot racing side, we've got Money Man.
The Minister of Speed.
Who deserves that?
Okay.
We've got the Bionic Man.
What could possibly warrant being named the Bionic Man
if you're a harness racer?
I'm gonna give the edge to chariot racing there too,
which is all to say that the comparison and my claim,
it's bigger and better, not as ridiculous
as maybe you originally thought.
Yeah, the only issue with the case you're making so far is that it is currently
situated upon the grave of a guy who died in 17 AD.
And so I think we might need to just have you actually bring us some reporting
that's a little more present, a little more contemporary.
I can do that. I can do that.
So I should say that I've casually looked up harness racing in preparation for our conversation here,
for you to bring me your findings.
And I wasn't very good at
finding out even the basics about the sport online. You should know that
harness racing is not really an internet thing. There's like not really an
equivalent of even harness racing Twitter like NBA Twitter. So what the
fuck is harness racing? As it was described to me, harness racing is different from thoroughbred racing in that the horses are actually like of a different breed.
They're standard bred horses rather than thoroughbred horses.
The main difference being that they run at a different gate.
They don't gallop so much as they trot.
And what that does is it allows them to drag, you know,
the cart or like the chariot behind them
quickly and effectively.
So the visuals on the chariot I want to establish here
because the driver, the chariot driver,
in your terminology here is fully horizontal,
almost like he's on a medieval rack
being dragged behind a horse
whose tail is like flapping over his legs.
Hold on, you're looking at this wrong.
Are you sure? Because he's looking at a horse's actual butt.
As the famous poet Snoop Dogg once said,
laid back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind.
What is on my mind as I watch this is,
am I gonna get horse sh** basically thrown into my face? Or maybe you're a badass
totally leaned back coasting to millions of dollars in victory winnings. You're
the coolest guy out there. Where is out there? Where is this taking place?
Harness racing happens around the world. It is most popular in Europe and in New Zealand. In the United States it exists
from coast to coast. It used to be more popular. When was peak harness racing? I
would say between the 20s and the 40s. Okay great. So really, a really relevant enterprise.
I asked you to bring me Jokic.
To make sense of like what he finds interesting in all of these conflicting aspects.
And what was his response?
He said no Pablo. He said no many times.
How many times are we talking here? So I will say that his team and actually the Denver Nuggets were really encouraging of
this because you know they think that there's more to learn there as well.
Unfortunately, Nicola disagreed and four times he turned us down.
Sad.
So yes, I failed you.
I failed myself.
We were ready to blow our budget.
The public drive-by's-out budget was gonna be spent
on sending you to Serbia,
if in fact Jokic gave you the green light.
And I really wanted to go though,
because that's where his story began.
As a young boy, his dad took him to the races
when he was about 12 or 13 years old,
introduced him to the sport.
He fell in love with it so much that he got
one of his first jobs as a stable boy,
tending to the horses.
He went to his dad and said,
hey, this is what I wanna do with my life.
I really wanna go even deeper into this.
And his dad looked at him and he was like,
Nicola, you're seven feet tall.
Before you go all in on this,
could we at least try to have you play basketball?
We think you could be good at this.
Yeah, good advice.
One of the most charming things about Nicola
is that in the last few years,
on off days during the NBA schedule,
when the team is criss-crossing America,
he will take a day or a morning and rendezvous with people in the harness racing community
at different stables, at different harness racing racetracks. So we've gotten confirmation that at
least two times this season he's gotten off a plane in the middle of the night
and gone under cover of darkness
to meet up with the bionic man himself, Tim Tietrich.
Well, I knew he liked horses
and I followed that a little bit.
And it was really cool.
He just kind of reached out and wanted to talk horses.
And he didn't know anybody in America
that knew anything about horses. He knew that they had horse you know he didn't know anybody in America that knew anything about horses you know he knew that they had horse racing but
he didn't know anybody you know we got to reach out you know that's kind of how
it started. You should first know that Tim Tietrich is harness racing royalty
he's won over 13,000 races which is like a legendary number he has career purse earnings of over
250 million dollars. Oh my god, and this guy's not he's not the money man. That's a different guy. Not the money man
he's nicknamed the bionic man because this guy is such a badass that he's had to
Surgically replace through the wear and tear
many different parts of his body,
just so that he could get back in that cart,
strap the legs back in and win thousands more races.
I guess I should be not surprised
that the guy who has won 13,000 races
while in a torture device has had body parts replaced.
He wouldn't tell me all of the parts that were replaced,
but it would allow. Yeah, the parts that were replaced, but it wouldn't allow it.
What parts are bionic, Tim?
Just to paint the picture here, because Jokic is famously about seven feet tall, 285-ish.
The bionic man is measuring at what?
He's 5'9", 150.
So slightly different.
They're like a harness racing version of twins, like that
old movie.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this Danny DeVito ends up being the guy that Jokic
actually is not just enamored with. This is the guy that he'd rather be.
He explicitly said to Tim, hey man, you've got my dream job.
And when I talked to Tim, he described the first time that they got together, which was
at a farm.
We met at one of the local farms there in New Jersey.
I said, I'll be here.
And I told him the address and he met us there.
He got out of the, you know, his not limo, but his car service.
Just Tim, he jumped out of the backseat of the car and he had his, you know, his uh, not limo but his car service. Just him, he jumped out of the back seat of the car and he had his uh, you know,
sneakers on and stuff because he didn't really bring the right clothes.
Steve McLaughlin Tim described that he just came out with a sweatshirt
and a stocking cap. He wasn't wearing boots, he was just wearing sneakers.
And Tim said that he had this like crazy infectious enthusiasm.
Tim He talked to me like we were been friends for years and you know, he kind of
thought I was the king or the champion, you know, and he said, all right, I want
to go in the bar and hang out with the horses.
He just wants to get into the, into the stables.
He's like really, really, really into this.
And T-Trick grew up as a basketball fan.
He grew up in Illinois during like Jordan Pippen era.
And so he's like kind of in
awe. It's kind of funny like I like to talk about basketball you know and because all I do in my life
is race horses and um and talk about horses to my owners and trainers and the fans that want to do
it it's all about horses and for me when I got with him I wanted to talk about basketball and
he's like no basketball just horses. Let me read you a quote from Jokic himself about his his love
of this world. Since I started falling in love with the horses,
it put me in some other dimension and makes me feel some
connection. And there's not many people around.
You can just relax in the nature and the horses. When you spend a little bit more time in them, you can
find a you can find a way to talk to them. So that's what I
want to do when I finish my career and that's what I want
to be around my whole life. It's a pure love end quote in
that poetic language, right? That you'll get used to this
other dimension, this pure love
I do want a better sense of what that actually looks like
What did Tim tell you about?
Jokic's interactions with his surroundings Tim didn't use like the exact same poetic language
Like we were in the paddock and we have a grandstand where you could most of people go to watch the races
And he wanted to go to the paddock and we have a grandstand where you can most of people go to watch races and he wanted to go to the paddock. I said do you want to go upstairs and set a really nice
you know box and have dinner and stuff? He goes no I'm here where I want to be I'm right
down in the slum. I was kind of surprised I'm like you want to go eat dinner and hang
out with the you know the big wigs upstairs? He goes no I'm down here with you guys I want
to be with the horses I want to smell the horse poop and be around it you know I just
want to be in with the horses. I want to smell the horse poop and be around it. I just want to be in with the horses.
This is a sensory experience for Nicola. He loves to be there. He loves to smell it. He loves to
dip his hands Amelie style in the horse feed. This guy, he's like mind, body and soul into this. The one night at the METAL ANTHEM, he went there, we were there.
He was there by six o'clock for an hour before the race had started.
And we sat around there till 1 30 and just hanging out and talking.
And all the catch drivers stayed and there was probably 15 of us that stayed in there.
And he wouldn't leave.
He said, I don't want to leave yet.
Cause I said, you know, you've got a game tomorrow in New York.
He goes, that I don't care.
I'll be fine.
Hey, this, this is my dream right here.
This is my dream.
And I was having fun and, um, and you know all the guys were great. We had a few beers
and told stories and you know he was just he wanted to be one of the guys and didn't
want to be he didn't want to be seven foot tall. He just wanted to hang out with the
horse people.
Yeah, this isn't like the Kentucky Derby where you're wearing a fancy suit and you're cheering
for your horse and you're surrounded by celebrities. This feels like actually definitionally the opposite. We tend to project our fantasies onto people
like Jokic thinking that oh if we had that level of prestige or money or fame that we would be
I don't know out on a yacht somewhere or something, but there is a difference between fame
and fulfillment.
And I think for laymen like us,
there are probably things that we could point to
that are really labor intensive
that give us a feeling of fulfillment too.
I mean, if you're thinking about a live animal too,
there's also like a pet component of this too, right?
It's like you have this amazing animal that's really an athlete that you're coaching up
that's like winning races and you it's there are many, many levels to why this is super
satisfying.
Right.
There's a level in which this is a Pokemon.
Yeah.
To Nicole Jokic.
See, if that's what's going to engage you with this sport, I'll take it.
Nicola Jokic just wants to catch them all.
This is beginning to click for me.
So I mentioned that his family has a stable.
The Jokic family.
Yes, you have the brothers, of course, infamous for beating up people.
Most recently, one of them punched a fan in the first round of the postseason.
A TikTok video captioned, Jokic Brothers going wild appears to show his brothers pushing their way through the crowd.
They exchanged some words with a man in a blue shirt before one of the brothers punches the man in the face.
You can see in a...
That same family, their father has become the head of the Serbian Trotting Association.
So he's really, really involved in all sorts of stuff.
Trotting related things in Serbia. All of this sounds very ominous. He was going to give us an
interview but said that he couldn't participate because he had a cracked kneecap. Which is not
something that I've ever heard as an excuse, but it seems like
for this family, there are a lot of cracked things, cracked skulls, cracked kneecaps.
Yeah, I would ask you how the knee got cracked, but I don't think I want to be legally liable
for knowing any of it.
Yeah, I don't think we want to know.
So to recap here, we didn't get to interview Jokic.
We didn't get to send you to Serbia,
but you have befriended Jokic's best buddy. And so what did you do next?
I had to shovel some sh** Pablo.
Finally. So we value journalistic fidelity here on this program, Mickey.
How did you seek to retrace the steps that Nikola Jokic took with Tim Teitrich, his best buddy in the world of
harness racing. So we planned an epic day. We were going to start the day at a horse farm,
which was actually the exact same horse farm that Teitrich and Jokic first met at.
This morning we're at Gateway Farms. This is one of the biggest stables and
housing facilities for harness racing racehorses in New Jersey. We're here
being given a backstage pass into this sport that has enchanted Nicole Leokage.
We're here to discover its secrets.
I really couldn't be more excited,
even though it's cold, wet,
and the air is thick with the smell of horse poop.
Turns out it was the worst possible day to do this.
It's like pouring rain.
How much do you really love this thing,
is what God is already telling you?
The plan was for me to live out my stable boy fantasy, do barn chores, do free labor.
Just the weirdest fan fiction imaginable.
And, you know, I was really there to discover the hidden charms of harness racing.
Who was your guide as aspirational stable boy?
So there was a guy there named Kyle who was a horse attendant and he walked me through the paces.
Here we are. Hey Kyle.
Hi Mickey, how are you?
Very excited to be here. Who do we have to work with today?
This is Lineham up. She is a six-year-old mare out of bedding line, which is where her name comes from.
She started racing as a two-year-old,
and so she's raced every year since then.
So the last four years, five years, this is year five.
Does she win?
Yeah, yeah, she's got a couple wins on her card.
She seems very chill.
She is very chill.
Hopefully, we're talking about winning,
hopefully she can win today.
That would be nice.
I wanna get the full experience here.
I want to get immersed in this.
So if you don't mind, I would like the full stable boy
experience here.
Yeah, so first we'll get her out.
We'll get her out.
We'll put her in some cross ties.
And then you can clean her stall.
We'll get you a wheelbarrow, and off you go.
You can back it into the stall.
Don't mind me.
You know, cool your heels.
You're in good hands.
That's a pile right there.
It's kind of like a giant litter box.
You know, just thinking about Nicola,
who's obviously one of the richest and most famous
athletes in the world, I think people get surprised that he would want to come
to a stable to do this kind of work.
There's peace in it.
Yeah.
You know, there really is.
I'm not sure I'm feeling it quite yet.
Yeah.
Well, what do you think?
How did Chor Boy do?
I think he did a pretty good job.
Yeah? Yeah.
Solid eight out of 10, for sure.
I'll take it.
We're headed this way.
What happens kind of like the morning of the race
to prepare?
One of the big things is making sure they look good
when they get to the track.
And that involves brushing.
We start with her mane.
I think she likes it. Yeah, she does, for sure. And then once we're done with her mane. I think she likes it. Yeah, she does, for sure.
And then once we're done with her mane,
we'll move to her tail.
She's not gonna kick me or...
No, she's not gonna kick you.
No, you don't have to...
Poop in my face.
You don't have to worry about that.
And then the last thing we'll do
is just brush the rest of her.
So you just kind of start up here
and then brush her all the way down and
then go to the same side and do it again. So it's not a small amount of work to be done.
It takes a lot on race day. You know, if she wins tonight, I'm going to probably take a
little bit of credit. Of course, as you should. Yeah, as you should. Crossing the finish line.
Yeah, as you should. He was actually very excited that someone else was going to...
I can imagine.
You know, brush the horses.
Not sure there was a lot of competition for the credential that you got to do this.
Brushing dingleberries out of a tail.
That's the clinical term?
Yeah, it, you know, made me feel a closeness that I'd never felt for a horse before.
They put me to work and they made a man out of me.
I actually pulled out a piece of paper
and did something I'm much more comfortable with
and did a nice little portrait of our dear line-em-up,
which she stood for and...
Seemed to appreciate based on this footage.
Yeah.
Got the finished drawing here.
What do you think, girl?
You like that?
That's you.
It actually looks like she's looking at it.
I know, it does, doesn't it?
You like that?
Yeah.
I'll just leave this here for her.
Leave that there for her.
You can set it right there.
As far as I can tell, it's still hanging there in her stall.
So we bonded.
We bonded.
Aside from drawing her, you know, I gave her some final words of encouragement.
What's the motivational speech post-Stinkleberry brushing that you're giving Line-Em-Up?
Well, I wanted her to really, you know, give her all, even though it was a really gross
day out.
You know, I told her that the cameras were rolling, that we were all, you know, placing
heavy wagers on her.
The super boost, the Line-em-up super boost.
We were taking full advantage of this.
In the last turn, I want you to really turn it on.
No mercy today.
I'm going to win.
And then march her up onto the trailer where she was loaded in for the couple hour drive
to Poconos Downs.
I think we're set up for victory today.
Let's go.
And so now you're leaving South Jersey for the mountain range, the glorious mountains that are the Poconos and Pocono Downs.
That's right.
And that voyage, I imagine, is just epic.
As I mentioned to you before,
the entire cabin of my beloved Volvo was thick
with the smell of horse poop from my boots
that I didn't wash off.
So that was the mystery.
Some things you learn the hard way, I guess.
But we get to Pocono Downs.
As we walked up to the grandstand,
I was like, oh my God, this is happening. Still in the cold, still in the Pocono Downs. As we walked up to the grandstand, I was like, oh my God, this is happening.
Still in the cold, still in the rain.
We come to you now from Pocono Downs,
AKA the Circus Maximus of Pennsylvania.
The grandstand is behind me.
Can't really hear the crowd from here,
but we're all really excited to be here,
to cheer on, line them up to glorious victory where she will prove
once and for all that harness racing
is a better and more exciting sport than basketball.
Seeing the homemade artisanal flag that you brought
that says, light them up on it.
Getting soaked is, it saddens me, man.
There was a saturated felt.
For sure. How would you describe the crowd that we're seeing
on this video at this point?
I would say that calling it a crowd
would be a gross exaggeration.
It really was a ghost town.
There were, there was nobody around.
I think there's one person that was there.
One dude with the umbrella who was just kind of doing a thousand mile stair into the mountains.
There were a couple people inside who seemed to be also just gazing with, you know, blank
stares at screens of races that were like happening in New Zealand.
And they were, you know, smoking their cigarettes down to the butts. And I was just like, man, it is
it is a weird scene. There was a strange energy. I was mostly thinking like, where was everybody?
So speaking of everybody, where are the people that you're supposed to be interviewing?
The plan was for us to kind of flank around to the side where there was this like gray
concrete building that looked like it had razor wire on it like a jail.
And they were like, that's the paddock.
That's where all the action is. So,
you know, just to, it was kind of like, hey, walk out onto that pier. Like,
Yeah, where's the bionic man? Oh, he's in, he's in the, he's in that prison style building.
Yeah. They're just like, just keep walking. And they have me go down there. And it's in
that building that they said, hey, in there you're gonna meet Lineham Ups trainer,
and that's where you're gonna rendezvous with the bionic man.
There are like a million more people in here.
This is where all the action is.
Here we are. Look at her.
Ready for racing.
With us here is Jen Boniorno.
She's the trainer of Line'em Up, this beautiful steed that we saw this morning.
And with us also the legendary, globally famous, Tim Tietrich, one of the great drivers of all time,
who will be driving,
line him up to hopefully victory today.
You know, on paper, she looks like she fits right in here.
She's just one good drive away from happiness.
What's like the plan for victory today, if there is one,
given that it's like really sloppy out there,
and I don't know seems like it
could be a free-for-all. You know once the gate opens a lot of things change I
like to go in with three or four audibles. Okay. No set plans things that I
want to happen but you know we want to win and it's you know I'll park my mom
for the right horse. So I know a lot of horses they like make a real big kick at
the end and have breakaway speed and things like that.
Is there anything that we should look for in line them up
that might be like an advantage for her in the race?
Well, right now she hasn't been finishing
as well as I would like her to.
So it's kind of been her weak spot.
She's been getting a little hot.
So, you know, we made a few minor changes
and we're hoping Tim will be able to either have her on the front
where she's not getting grabby behind another horse, or, you know, keep her more calm and come from off the pace that way.
But she actually finished up better last week, so I think, you know, maybe she's getting back to figuring it out a little bit.
I've never been more invested in a race than I am today. I'm, like, really nervous.
Is there anything, like, good good luck wise that we should do
or like think about as we're like sitting
and waiting for the race to go on?
I actually brought you a special horseshoe
because in racing we say that horseshoes
are good luck charm.
Amazing.
So my gift to you.
I am going to clutch this very, very closely.
One for me too.
Well, I can go pick you out one.
Hopefully for the best today, best of luck,
and we'll be cheering from the stand.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So we brought a little something for you
as like a good luck charm from the Pablo Torre Finds Out team.
It's a little sticker Pablo, an insufferably proud
alum of Harvard.
So we're just going to stick that on the back here.
On the bike for good luck.
A little Ivy League good luck charm.
You never have too much luck, I figured that out.
That's looking pretty good.
I like it.
And you know, just in case, got another one as well.
If you can't have too much luck,
can't have too much Harvard either.
There you go.
Love it.
Thank you, man, I appreciate it.
Go get them.
Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Go get him.
Thank you.
Yeah.
We couldn't lose Pablo.
Vicky is waving around his felt pennant in his left hand.
In his right hand is the same horseshoe that he was given.
And I have never felt,
I know the Harvard stickers were meant as a joke, but I actually just
now feel this in my bones.
Sport is winning you over, Pablo.
I've never been so invested in any animal before.
And I just feel like the two of us, yeah, there's a Jokic brother dynamic here.
I will fight a fan for this horse.
For light them up. I will do anything
This is the right kind of energy that led us right into the race this Harvard graduate and this Ukrainian illustrator with an impossible to pronounce Surname are about to kick this out of you if you spent six months chasing down this story for
us.
Yeah.
All of which culminates in what we're about to watch here. Yeah, as I was sitting there waiting for the 11th race
to go off, which is the one that line them up was in,
I was thinking about the bizarre quality
that this sport has where for all the expense and labor
and prep that goes into it, how it could even exist with like virtually
no fans in the stands?
Yeah.
I came to understand that most of the people watching the race and betting on the race
that day were doing so via simulcast from places like New Zealand and Sweden. So it was counterintuitive that for a sport
that everybody was telling me that its main currency
is to be experienced in real life,
working with the horses, smelling the textures of all
of this and that. This dimension is a sensory dimension.
Exactly. That's really the thing that gets its hooks into you.
That for all of those things,
this sport was essentially just like a TV show
that most people were watching from thousands of miles away.
But luckily, that's our f***ing comfort zone, baby.
You say there's a weird TV show
watched by vague amounts of people in which lots of things are happening that are worth seeing
That is where Pablo Torre finds out comes in. I
Don't know how this race turned out. We are saving this reveal for right now
What did you have writing on this personally because of course my ego is fully now invested
well emotionally I had a lot riding on it.
But safe to say that not only me, the entire crew that was there that day got
really swept up in things.
So I would say each and every one of us wagered financially on line them up,
which we also as a sure thing to win.
We all put our money down and we rocked out.
Yeah, the music, that music now finally deserved.
So Pablo, do you feel your heart fluttering?
I'm already surprised that okay,
there is a truck that like let them sort of off
at the same time, so to speak.
All right, forget about that.
Our boy and girl are the one with the yellow wheels.
Oh my God.
There we are.
Second place.
Yep.
Charging ahead.
Looking great.
I mean, striding through the mud and the rain.
It's feeling good.
It's okay, Forgot the Wallet A is currently leading the race
and right behind him is our girl.
That's right.
And behind her is Big Big Plants.
So, you know, Jen, the trainer, she told me,
she was like, all right, this horse needs to stay up
near the front of the pack.
I'm feeling great.
Yes, so Forgot the Wallet A, the green horse here, is a big
favorite, one to five odds on winning this thing. And line them up with the
Harvard insignia right there reflecting the the modeled light of the
betmohigan.com broadcast upon Pocono Downs is a 7-2 chance.
But look at us, we're stalking, Pablo.
Yes. Look at this.
It feels like, look at where the horse is basically-
Just the mud splattering everywhere.
This weird horizontal angle,
never looking more regal, finally, to me.
There you go.
Aerodynamic.
And you're there watching this.
Yeah.
And how are you feeling as you're watching?
I mean, they're separating.
Well, at this point,
I'm thinking Tim's gotta make a move.
Yes.
The Bionic Man needs to live up to his name.
Bionic Man's gotta do something here.
We heard line them up doesn't really have closing speed,
but come Right.
Come on!
Oh, come on.
Tim.
Oh, God.
No.
No!
It's a photo for the place between Big Big Plans and Line'em Up.
Elysium Seelster was third, forgot the wall at the Aussie, does it again in 154 flat.
It's actually hard to relive that.
Second place.
Second place.
This is what we got.
You know, you get swept up in it where, of course, you want to watch this horse that
you cared for be victorious and celebrate with her. And you also want to kind of have the labor that went into
all of the prep be in some ways paid back to you. Right. It's like a moment of positivity.
All those dingleberries. Yeah. I wanted some kind of, and not just financial payoff, but some sort of,
but some sort of, you know, feeling that we did something.
Right. But instead, feeling like Nikola Jokic ended with a scene
that was a lot like the problem we were presented with,
which was a wall.
We're obviously here in America
obsessed with results and winning.
I do think that the things that draw him to this sport are these like intangible process
things, the sensory things, the journey of the preparation and the teardown, more than
than the winnings.
For all that we have heard about Nicola
and all that I've heard secondhand from people that know him,
never has there been a part of his passion
that has anything to do with him wanting to make a lot of money in this sport
or have his horses be these like crazy champions.
That is kind of secondary. these like, like, you know, crazy champions.
That is kind of secondary.
So as I sat there with my pocket lightened a little bit
after wagering on line them up to win,
I just thought like, as much as I'm upset about losing
that that really wasn't the point of this.
If I really wanted to see and it kind of embody
what it was, what it is that Nicola loves about this sport.
Yeah, I will confess that like the ending of this episode would have been a lot better
if Lineham up, if Lineham up delivered for us.
But now I am sort of just like wrangling with a strange feeling which is you converted me into somebody who really gave a significant shit
about what was gonna happen in this weird sport
that I actively thought was terrible.
But now I gotta confess, I still don't feel like Ben Herr.
The scene that you've painted for us
The scene that you've painted for us leaves you feeling what about what this sport actually is.
I started this journey really asking the question, is harness racing a better and more exciting
sport than basketball?
Yes.
For all its charm, for all the things about
it that are completely unique, I have to say that I don't think that you can
really say that with a straight face. Thank you for your journalistic
integrity. Listen, I wanted to pressure test it. And in the end, as I sit here and I think about, Oh, this quest to learn to love
something that's probably the greatest basketball player on the planet loves
more than anything, it dawns on me that maybe we were asking the wrong question.
That it's not how and why this sport is superior
to this other sport that he plays.
We should really be thinking about how this sport that he loves so much actually helps
make him the all-time great that he is and how for people who play in a league like the NBA, very wildly visible
billion dollar broadcast deals.
Gossip, soap operas, every Instagram stories, right?
It truly is the case that the NBA is on one side of the spectrum and on the other side
is the thing we've been talking about now, all episode.
It's probably for someone like Nikola who has talked about how harness racing is
something that he does to recharge his batteries. That these things actually
exist in harmony with each other, in him,
there's really something there to learn for all of us.
As we see footage of Nicola out in Sambor
without a helmet on, you know, with the tank top,
you know, riding on the back of his cart,
just looking out into the distance as the birds chirp and the
butterflies are fluttering past. Yes, having that kind of familiar now sort of
like middle distance kind of gaze into nothing. Yeah, I mean that looks pretty
great. I would actually bet the farm that Nicola, Nicola goes a whole hog into, into the racing world after he hangs
up his sneakers and that we'll probably not see very much of this guy.
But even though we, we aren't going to see him, we should know Pablo that that's somewhere somewhere. Nicole is out there riding on the back of a cart, just doing laps on a dusty
oval somewhere in the Balkans. And this man is out there as the happiest man on earth.
Mickey Dujay, thank you for your reporting.
It was a genuine sensation, Pablo, in so many ways. I'll never be the same,
actually. Neither will your car.
You should also be aware, by the way, that Mickey has a new short film titled Confessions
of a Jumbotron Addict, which is excellent, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival
next month on June 12th and June 14th.
This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out,
a Meadowlark Media production.
And I'll talk to you next time.