After all that unpleasantness at Bethpage, Friday night’s start to the 42nd Breeders’ Cup is racing’s chance to pull off its own Ryder Cup without underlining how it’s a rare problem that can’t be made even worse by waving flags at it.
US racing’s grandiosely titled “World Championships” has on the whole escaped the worst jingoistic excesses of golf’s biennial diversion into a team format fundamentally at odds with its natural state.
That’s partly due to how this is a resolutely US show. The 14 Grade One races worth more than $34 million (€29 million) are essentially about selling the sport to a domestic audience. European runners add a certain credence to the “World Title” stuff, but are basically an exotic diversion.
In the age of Donald Trump, however, there’s always a scoundrel percentage in wrapping Old Glory around any sort of competition with foreigners.
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