L-R: Mike Smith, Jon Court, Alex Solis, Aaron Grider, Chantal Sutherland, Joe Talamo/Photo Courtesy Animal Planet
Animal Planet’s docu-drama “Jockeys” just wrapped up live airings, and this household will miss it. Even my less-horsey husband.
He admits that he wouldn’t watch horse racing if I didn’t have it on TV. Likewise, he wouldn’t have checked out “Jockeys” had I not put it on our DVR schedule.
Then, he got hooked on the stories of dreams, goals, conflicts and obstacles.
So did a lot of other non-horsey people. A second season reportedly is underway. When you click on that link, be sure to read through the comments.
For human drama, “Jockeys” had it all. Wins and losses. Romance. Big money on the line. Dreams achieved and/or thwarted.
The show put human stories behind each of the scrambling figures we see during a televised horse race.
“Jockeys” has been a good introduction to the excitement of horse racing. If you missed it, you can watch full episodes from the Animal Planet website. They’re about 20 minutes long.
The show reminded me of the independent film The First Saturday in May, except “Jockeys” focuses on the jockeys.
There’s only so much you can do in a half hour show that really only amounts to twenty minutes of program time.
Much to the relief of many, the show turned out to not be the crash&spillfest suggested by the promos. Some of that was file footage of one of Mike Smith’s 1998 crashes, not video shot at that particular meet at Santa Anita.
Overall, it was an introduction to Track Life Lite, especially for less-horsey people like my husband.
He even got a kick out of seeing the quirky horse-enality of champion Zenyatta, whose strut to the post is a shoe-in for the Ministry of Silly Walks. (If you can’t watch the video, for whatever the reason, here’s a Wikipedia entry about the Monty Python “Silly Walks” skit.)
With any luck, some racing fans will come out of the “Jockeys” audience.
Tags: Animal Planet, Jockeys, Mike Smith, Monty Python
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