Flightlines Breeders Cup Classic win is the best two minutes of sports in 2022

June 25, 2024

If you are looking to add to your collection of inspirational sports speeches, there’s a scene from the 1985 movie “Vision Quest” that is close to artistic perfection. The lead character, Louden Swain, played by Matthew Modine, is a high school wrestler who has just turned 18 years old and the film takes viewers on Loudon’s quest to drop two weight classes so he can wrestle the state champion at 168 pounds, a Cael Sanderson-like figure named Brian Shute. On the day he is scheduled to wrestle the high school wrestling dragon, Loudon shows up at the apartment of Elmo — a cook played by the great character actor J.C. Quinn — who works with Loudon at a hotel restaurant.

Here is the dialogue:

Elmo: Hey, come on in, kid, I’m getting dressed.
Louden: I was at the hotel, they told me you took the night off. Thought you were sick or something.
Elmo: Of course I took the night off, dummy. Isn’t this the night you wrestle Shute?
Louden: You took the night off for that?
Elmo: Yeah, shaved, got a haircut and everything.
Louden: You never took the night off to see me wrestle before. They’ll dock you for that.
Elmo: Hey, kid, money ain’t everything.
Louden: It’s not that big a deal, Elmo, I mean it’s six lousy minutes on the mat. If that.
(Pause)
Elmo: Ever hear of Pelé?
Louden: Yeah, he’s a soccer player.
Elmo: A very famous soccer player. I was in the room here one day. I’m watching the Mexican channel on TV. I don’t know nothing about Pelé. I’m watching what this guy can do with a ball and his feet. The next thing I know he jumps up in the air and flips into a somersault and kicks the ball in, upside down and backwards. The g—— goalie never knew what the f— hit him. And Pelé gets excited and he rips off his jersey and starts running around the stadium, waving it around over his head. Everybody’s screaming in Spanish. I’m here, sitting alone in my room. I start crying. Yeah, that’s right, I start crying. Because there’s another human being, a species which I happen to belong to, can kick a ball and lift himself and the rest of us sad-a– human beings up to a better place to be, if only for a minute. Let me tell you, kid, it was pretty g—— glorious. It ain’t the six minutes. It’s what happens in that six minutes.

Matthew Modine is now 63 years old. Time always moves on. But I found myself thinking about that scene after I watched a 4-year-old colt named Flightline (chronicled here expertly for The Athletic by Dana O’Neil) win the Breeders Cup Classic on Saturday by 8 1/4 lengths. At the top of the stretch, as he dueled with Life Is Good, a 4-year-old colt who won nine of 12 races during a championship career, Flightline went to a different place. He accelerated past Life Is Good as if driving a Formula One car against a station wagon. In open space, galloping toward history, it was like witnessing Maradona or Etta James in their prime. I was dealing with a bad stomach flu, and it took this sad human being to a better place.

Based on the Nielsen numbers that were released on Tuesday, there were not many of you who joined me last Saturday. That’s not a surprise. What Flightline did that day on a Lexington patch of dirt drew miles less interest than Georgia’s win over Tennessee (13 million viewers). It wasn’t even close to Penn State’s blowout of Indiana (2.2 million). Just 988,000 viewers watched NBC’s coverage of the Breeders Cup.

But those two minutes might be the best two minutes of sports I’ve watched in 2022. If you want a television review, sure, NBC’s production was high quality, as it normally is with horse racing. The images were excellent, and the race call lived up to the horse. But that all felt secondary. There is so much bluster and posturing in the world today — and the bluster gets rewarded over and over again — so when something on earth delivers transcendent greatness, a moment where all of us can bathe in something otherworldly, man, it’s a moment worth remembering. (Flightline’s win in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar by 19 1/4 lengths is also video you won’t soon forget.)

Horse racing has a ton of issues, and I understand those who want nothing to do with it. I’ve always been transfixed by the track itself. I spent a number of weekends as a teenager at both Belmont Park and Aqueduct, mesmerized by the numbers inside the Daily Racing Form (and losing more than winning) and how powerful the horses were as they sped down the dirt and turf. As an adult, I was blessed to work at organizations featuring the most gifted horse racing writers of their time. Here is how Tim Layden, a friend and former Sports Illustrated colleague and the best horse racing writer of his generation, described how Flightline made some of us feel last week.

“At its most affecting, horse racing brings tears,” Layden wrote. “It brings them up from a place deep in the souls of both those humans who play the game and those who worship it, who both beseech effort and grace from the animals who run, and simultaneously seek to protect them, because they cannot protect themselves. Tears of awe, for what they can do. Tears of thanks, for what they give. Tears of sadness, for what can befall them. Tears because we don’t fully understand any of it, even when we look in their eyes and they look in ours. Sometimes all of it in a single day.”

The person who had the privilege of calling Flightline’s Breeders Cup win was Larry Collmus, the current voice of NBC’s Triple Crown coverage. He has called multiple Triple Crown winners but Saturday felt different, at least to me. Like calling Gale Sayers or Barry Sanders in his prime knowing exactly when the last game was coming.

“I won’t say the race itself ranks at the top because it can’t compare to American Pharoah winning the Triple Crown for the first time in 37 years as far as historical perspective,” Collmus told me in an email this week, “but I don’t think there’s any doubt Flightline is the best horse I’ve ever called.”

As Flightline — who missed the Triple Crown races last year after an injury as a 2-year-old delayed his progression — hit the winning line, Collmus invoked the name of Secretariat, whose win in the 1973 Belmont Stakes can still produce a torrent of tears nearly 50 years later. I was curious if Secretariat’s name came to Collmus in the moment, or if he had thought about referencing him in the event Flightline lived up to his own mythology.

“I thought about the Secretariat comparison in advance but wanted to make sure he earned it, and I believe he did,” Collmus said. “That was a tremendous group of horses, and he absolutely toyed with (them). I hope he comes back next year. I wish more people would have the opportunity to see how great he is.”

The economic reality of breeding made the decision an obvious one. Flightline’s ownership group announced on Sunday that he will be retired. He will begin his breeding career next year at Lane’s End Farms in Kentucky. He raced six times. He won six times. His combined margin of victory was 71 lengths.

GO DEEPER

Faster than Secretariat? Meet the Roy Hobbs of horses, Flightline

(Photo: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57knBtbWplbHxzfJFrZmppX2WGcLLLop6hrJyeu6Z5waucnpyVp8Bur9SpZJykkajAqq%2BMsKCnZw%3D%3D