Rachel Alexandra Prepares to Bust Balls

↵The whole story surrounding Rachel Alexandra, the lady horse -- err, filly -- favored to win today’s Preakness Stakes, is captivating in the way only stories about lady horses racing gentleman horse can be. There’s subterfuge, with the owners of Derby winner Mine That Bird trying to block Rachel by getting friends to enter their gentleman horses. There’s double-crossing, with Derby winning jockey Calvin Borel ditching Mine to ride Rachel in Baltimore. And there’s trash talk. Oh, there’s trash talk.
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↵Borel offers Rachel’s competition no chance.↵↵⇥“I think all the other [12 horses] are going to have to run the race of their lives or me fall off or something stupid happen,” said Borel, who will break from the outside, No. 13 gate. “I think I just have to point her in the right direction and she’ll get me there.”↵↵Au contraire, says the dude who employed Borel in Louisville.↵↵⇥“I don’t see what the big deal is,” said [Chip] Woolley, whose Mine That Bird won the Derby as a 50-1 shot. “I’m not down on the filly. She’s a great horse. But she’s still got to run. I look at her as just another horse.”↵↵It’s amazing to me that horse racing is the only sport in which a woman can compete with men with nary a mention of the woman’s attractiveness. Oh wait ...↵↵⇥“She’s a man among boys,” [commentator Donna] Brothers said.↵↵That’s just mean, Donna.↵