LOUISVILLE, Ky. \u2014 For the third consecutive year, NBC brought its Emmy-nominated soccer studio show, \u201cPremier League Live,\u201d to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby.<\/p>\n
Host Rebecca Lowe, who also works on the Derby broadcast, said the \u201cshow is a little looser on the road,\u201d and apparently that also applies off the air.<\/p>\n
The Times interviewed Lowe and analysts Robbie Earle, Tim Howard and Robbie Mustoe on Friday afternoon at their set adjacent to the paddock, and their chemistry was never more apparent than when Lowe explained why she\u2019s picking Chief Wallabee to win the Derby.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really weird story,\u201d she said, and she wasn\u2019t kidding. She said she\u2019d never shared it with her cohorts, and it was too long (and hysterical) to tell on TV, but as she narrated the tale over the next minute and a half, all four of them were doubled over with laughter.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how we all heard it:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look down the list of horses, I find something that pops out from a name. I don\u2019t look at form. And about 15 years ago I was driving home from Blackburn, which is in the middle of nowhere up north in England. I was driving home and I lived about five hours away in Devon, and it was midnight, and I was coming down the country lane.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I kid you not, what I thought was a kangaroo jumped across the road. When I got home, I told my husband, \u2018I think I\u2019ve seen a kangaroo,\u2019 and he\u2019s like, \u2018It\u2019s England.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyway, next morning I woke up, I was like, \u2018I definitely did.\u2019 I Googled it: Two wallabies had escaped from a local safari place. \u2026 So I\u2019m going for Chief Wallabee because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the other three, Howard had mentioned earlier he also liked Chief Wallabee, but following Lowe\u2019s tale, he said: \u201cI can\u2019t top that now, so I\u2019m just gonna go for the 50-1 horse somewhere down there, because you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mustoe said after studying the form of the horses last year and coming up empty, he was going with \u201cRed No. 1\u201d because he played for a \u201cred\u201d team (Middlesbrough) and the No. 1 horse wears a red saddle cloth. \u201cI know the Derby favorite is Renegade, red No. 1. So I\u2019m sticking with red No. 1,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Earle said he was picking The Puma because \u201cI wore their boots back in the day.\u201d (Unfortunately The Puma was scratched this morning.)<\/p>\n
Lowe\u2019s first Derby was 2019 but without the soccer show; the others had not been here until they came for work.<\/p>\n
Howard: \u201cIt\u2019s great. As Becc (Lowe) says, it\u2019s amazing people-watching, all the horse racing fans or football fans, so we have an amazing time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lowe: \u201cI feel like, because Tim knows what this means in terms of America, and you always talk about Americana, as three British people, we have the Grand National, which is our equivalent, but it\u2019s different. It\u2019s still a bucket-list thing but it\u2019s not as big.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earle: \u201cI would say [Royal] Ascot kind of feels like \u2026 a nice comparison. This is grander, a little bit different than the Ascot thing. Ascot\u2019s a little bit more chilled, and, you know …<\/p>\n
Lowe interjected: \u201cEnglish.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOUISVILLE, Ky. \u2014 For the third consecutive year, NBC brought its Emmy-nominated soccer studio show, \u201cPremier League Live,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":769121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[315417,111347,5939,23515,23124,17711,2444,315418,14762,37997,34963,5395,62,6620,315416,67,132,68,6666],"class_list":{"0":"post-769120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-151st-run","9":"tag-barn","10":"tag-churchill-downs","11":"tag-journalism","12":"tag-kentucky-derby","13":"tag-live-update","14":"tag-los-angeles-times","15":"tag-morning-line-favorite","16":"tag-odd","17":"tag-preparation","18":"tag-result","19":"tag-saturday","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-time","22":"tag-trainer-michael-mccarthy","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-workout"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116507388697474866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}