Good for Louisville and all of horse racing.
BREAKING NEWS 🚨
Over the past four days, I’ve purchased 1 million shares and close to a 1.5% stake in @ChurchillDowns, and I may acquire more. I’m extremely excited about the possibilities.
Churchill has tremendous assets, led by what I believe is the global crown jewel of horse racing, the @KentuckyDerby. Last year’s Derby peaked at 24.4 million viewers. To me, that’s a major proof point of how BIG this sport can become.
As the owner of Repole Stable, one of the largest, most successful and recognizable stables in the country, I see firsthand the potential of what I believe is one of the most undervalued sports nationally and globally.
Horse racing needs more education, real marketing, innovation, and evolution. It also needs stronger leadership and greater accountability from the Old Guard racing entities that, in my opinion, have held the industry back for far too long.
Nobody loves building epic businesses and brands in a disruptive way more than I do.
I believe a meaningful ownership stake in Churchill gives me the greatest opportunity to help create value for Churchill shareholders AND make a positive financial impact across all of racing.
Growing this sport means growing opportunities for everyone, owners, breeders, track operators, horseplayers, fans, and everyone whose livelihood depends on racing.
I really look forward to working with CEO Bill Carstanjen, his board, and management team to help turn that potential into both short term and long term results.
Think Big. Dream Bigger.
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Fascinating history lesson
In 1945 the USS Indianapolis secretly delivered the parts for the atomic bomb that would hit Hiroshima.
Days later, mission done, a Japanese submarine put two torpedoes into her. She sank in 12 minutes.
Nearly 900 men made it off the ship alive and into the open ocean. Then it got worse.
No one knew they were missing. Three separate Navy stations picked up the distress signals and every one of them ignored it. One officer thought it was a Japanese trap. Another had ordered not to be disturbed.
So the men floated. For almost five days. No food, no fresh water, burning by day and freezing at night. Some drank seawater and went insane. And the whole time, the sharks were circling and feeding. It is considered the worst shark attack in human history.
When rescue finally came by accident, only 316 of the nearly 1,200 crew were still alive.
The Navy needed someone to blame for the disaster. They chose Captain Charles McVay, one of the men who survived it. He became the only U.S. captain in the entire war to be court-martialed for losing his ship to the enemy.
At his trial the Navy did something almost unheard of. They brought in the Japanese commander who sank the ship to testify against him. Instead, the enemy captain told the court that zigzagging would have made no difference and that McVay did nothing wrong.
They convicted him anyway.
For years afterward McVay got hate mail from the families of the dead. Some sent letters every Christmas telling him he murdered their sons. In 1968 he walked onto his front lawn and shot himself, holding a toy sailor he had kept since he was a boy.
Case closed. For fifty years.
Then in 1996 an 11-year-old named Hunter Scott watched Jaws with his dad and got hooked on the 30 second speech about the Indianapolis. He made it his sixth grade history project.
He tracked down and interviewed nearly 150 survivors. He dug through more than 800 documents. And buried in there he found what the Navy had left out, including that they knew enemy subs were operating right on the ship's route and never warned McVay.
A kid's school project turned into a national story. It reached Congress. In 2000 lawmakers passed a resolution clearing McVay's name and President Clinton signed it. The Navy officially cleared his record in 2001.
The captain the Navy spent decades blaming was finally exonerated by a sixth grader.
Hunter Scott grew up and became a naval flight officer.
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472
This is insanity.
More than a dozen colleges have now crossed the $100,000/year threshold when tuition, fees, room, board, and living expenses are included:
Harvey Mudd ($104,512)
Duke ($103,975)
USC ($103,162)
Barnard ($103,000)
Washington University in St. Louis ($102,260)
Smith ($102,226)
Fordham ($102,188)
Claremont McKenna ($101,990)
Vassar ($101,051)
Wesleyan ($101,030)
Georgetown ($100,864)
Colgate ($100,224)
Haverford ($100,026)
A four-year degree at any of these schools now exceeds $400,000.
Per Ny Mag
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An amazing story. Let us never forget their memory.
Ray’s Rock - Omaha Beach
On the morning of June 6, 1944, 23 year old Staff Sergeant Arnold “Ray” Lambert came ashore with the first wave of the 1st Infantry Division on the eastern side of Omaha Beach. At this small patch of concrete he saved nearly 20 lives:
The division came under intense fire from several German bunkers surrounding the entrance to the Colville Draw (one of two exits off Omaha Beach). Ray, a medic, immediately went to work.
He was shot in the arm. Moments later he was hit by shrapnel in the leg, but Ray kept pulling men to safety. He pulled nearly 20 wounded soldiers to cover behind this 8ft wide obstacle, treating each soldier before going out in search of others.
After several hours under fire, while pulling a wounded soldier from the ocean, he was struck by a landing craft. It dropped its ramp on top of him, breaking his back. He fell face down in the water, drowning. The craft backed up and nearby soldiers pulled an unconscious Ray to safety, eventually evacuating him off the beach.
Remarkably, Ray had already earned two Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts in Sicily and North Africa, prior to landing in France. But here in Normandy his war would end.
He awoke in a hospital back in England a day later. In the next bed over was his brother, who had also been wounded at Omaha.
When asked about his work on D-Day, Ray simply said, “I did what I was called to do.”
Ray Lambert passed in 2021 at 100 years old. He exemplified the best of American grit and why remembering this day is so important.
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