No one was betting on “Oh This Is Us”. 🐴
He went off at very long odds on June 5, 2021, at Epsom Downs racecourse, England, to run in the Diomed Stakes, a Group 3 race. He was 8 years old, consistent, but had never won anything at that level. When he reached the final straight, he did something no trainer teaches: he stuck out his tongue just as he crossed the line. 👅
The difference with ‘Century Dream’ was so slight that they had to examine the finish photo millimeter by millimeter, and that extended tongue ended up being the fraction that gave him the victory. Jockey Tom Marquand and trainer Richard Hannon couldn’t believe it. Hannon even said that the horse “never stops surprising me”.
When the images went viral again, everyone made the same connection: it’s the final scene of Lightning McQueen in Cars, but in real life. 🏁 Fiction copied the script from an English horse, and the world took four years to realize it.
