Ryan’s Own Race
Ryan Hunter-Reay won the Iowa Corn 300 last Saturday Night for the third time in four years. The 34-year-old Texan was second in the race he didn’t win in 2013. This hasn’t been Hunter-Reay’s year — Iowa was his first podium finish of the season. A fifth place at The Indy Grand Prix of Alabama was his best previous finish and he has only two other top ten finishes this racing season. It was remarked during the practice sessions for Iowa that Ryan seemed to have his old swagger and winning confidence back and he was one of the favorites to win the race. The Andretti Autosport Team has won the last six Iowa 300 races and seven of the nine total races held at the Iowa Motor Speedway. “We love Iowa,” says Michael Andretti. “ We love the facility, we love the fans, we love it all.”
The Iowa track is the shortest one in the series at .894 of a mile. A car can make a complete lap in 17 seconds. There are 300 laps in the race but they go by quickly. Helio Castroneves took the pole for Team Penske. This is the one track where a Penske car has never won. With the Team Penske Gang of Four in the first six starting spots, the Captain had high hopes of breaking the losing streak at Iowa. As the race started, Juan Pablo Montoya found himself in the wall. The championship points leader had driven every lap of competition up to that point. “The car was really loose. Something just broke,” Montoya stated.
As the race unfolded, Helio took an early lead and held it for 50 laps, but then Josef Newgarden took the lead and held on to it for a long while. Most people noticed that Hunter-Reay was really on it and holding on to a top four position. As the night got cooler, Ryan’s car got stronger and at the end the results were the same as the 2014 race. Hunter-Reay took the lead and Newgarden just could not catch him. lt was the most dominating win by a Honda-powered car of the season. Ryan Hunter-Reay became the ninth driver to win an IndyCar race this season. It was also one of the most exciting races of 2015.
Graham Rahal took a fourth place finish and moved into second place in the championship point standings, just 45 points behind Montoya. Rookie Sage Karam finished third for his first career podium finish. The 20-year-old Karam is from Nazareth, Penn. and drives for Chip Ganassi. He looks to be the series 2015 Rookie of the Year. His third place is the highest finish any rookie has achieved this season. Sage did get into a confrontation after the race was over with Ed Carpenter. Carpenter said that Karam squeezed him out against the wall on several occasions during the course of the race. It was a charge that was echoed by Graham Rahal who attempted to pass Karam for third and was unsuccessful. Carpenter called Karam disrespectful of the other drivers and called for a penalty against Karam. He didn’t get it. Sage said nothing back at the time but later said “It was tough racing out there. I got squeezed myself.”
So anyway it was a fun race under the lights of an Iowa summer evening and now on to mid-Ohio and another road course.
Caitlyn Jenner ESPY Award
By this time, everyone in the world of sports knows that Caitlyn Jenner “won” the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. But now the evidence is piling up that the award show and the award itself were just a shameless exploitation job to get ratings for the show and promote Jenner’s new reality television program. In other words, Disney/ABC was protecting their substantial investment in Jenner and her reality show. As always with the Kadashian/Jenners, it was all about the Benjamins. In past years the ESPY show had been broadcast on ESPN but the last several years the ratings for the program had slipped dramatically. Disney decided to broadcast the program on the ABC Network hoping for a more viewers. At the same time Jenner was trying to find away to publicize her Vanity Fair cover story and her upcoming interview with Diane Sawyer in which she would “officially’ become Caitlyn. She told Disney executives that she should get ESPY Courage award and if they did not agree to this beforehand, she wouldn’t plug the reality program during the interview. The Disney execs thought it was a wonderful idea. It would be wonderful publicity for the ESPYs and the reality show and there would be an artificially created controversy. Remember that very soon after the interview was broadcast, Jenner was announced as the Courage award winner.
I’m not trying to sound cynical. For Caitlyn Jenner to go through what she has, and continue her journey, certainly takes courage and optimism. Maybe that does make her a hero or heroine now. Jenner certainly does have a long connection to the world of sports. And if it can help a young person who is struggling with their sexual identity and is not rich and famous to understand they are not alone and there exists a community that can give them support and acceptance, well that is a very good thing. It’s just the motivations for the award were not about being a role model to the transgendered: They were about ego, the need for attention, and making rich people richer.
In the end we take awards like this way too seriously. The ESPYs were created to fill a time gap at a time of year when there isn’t a whole lot of major sports news going. Such awards are somewhat superficial and in the end the reputation the award brings to the receiver is fleeting.
snicewanger@yahoo.com