D2 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 8 , 2022
TENNIS
Alcaraz tops Djokovic
to reach Madrid final
Rafael Nadal one day. Novak
Djokovic the next.
The list of victims of Spanish
teenager Carlos Alcaraz keeps
growing.
After defeating idol Nadal in
the quarterfinals F riday, the 19-
year-old Alcaraz rallied past top-
ranked Djokovic, 6 -7 (7-5), 7-5, 7-6
(7-5), after more than 31 / 2 hours
Saturday to reach the Madrid
Open final.
In the women’s final, Ons
Jabeur of Tunisia won her second
career title with a 7-5, 0 -6, 6-3
victory over Jessica Pegula of the
United States.
Alcaraz became the first player
to beat Nadal and Djokovic at the
same clay-court event. He
converted his third match point
in front of a raucous home crowd.
“It’s a spectacular feeling right
now,” Alcaraz said. “I’m very
excited to be able to play these
kind of matches, to be able to beat
Rafa yesterday, to be able to beat
the No. 1 today.”
In Sunday’s final, Alcaraz f aces
defending champion Alexander
Zverev, a 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 winner over
Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Alcaraz, the youngest player in
the top 10 since Nadal in 2005,
has won this year in Miami, Rio
de Janeiro and Barcelona....
French veteran Gilles Simon,
37, announced that he will r etire
at the end of the season after 20
years on the professional tour.
Simon h as 14 career titles and a
best ranking of sixth in 2009.
GOLF
In Duluth, Ga., David Toms
flipped the script a t the
Mitsubishi Electric Classic with a
four-shot swing on the 15th hole
and closed with pars for a 1-
under-par 71 that gave him a two-
shot lead over Ken Duke going
into the final round of t he PGA
To ur Champions event.
To ms was at 8 -under 136. Ernie
Els had t hree birdies over his last
five holes on the front nine for a
68 and was in a g roup four shots
back at 4 -under 140 that included
Jay Haas (69), Fred Couples (70)
and Mark Walker (72)....
In Sutton Coldfield, E ngland,
Thorbjorn Olesen of Denmark
finished eagle-birdie to turn in a
3-under 69 and take a three-
stroke lead into the final round of
the British Masters.
Olesen was at 11 under overall,
with Hurly Long (73) and
Marcus Armitage (70) at 8 under.
American Chase Hanna was
part of a five-man group a further
shot behind after shooting 66, the
lowest round of the day.AUTO RACING
J ustin Allgaier put JR
Motorsports in Victory Lane for
the third consecutive week in the
Xfinity Series by winning at
Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.
Allgaier ended a 34-race
winless streak when he passed AJ
Allmendinger t o start a two-lap
sprint after a caution and cruised
the final 2.7 miles to give team
owner Dale Earnhardt Jr.
another victory in NASCAR’s
second-tier s eries.
Noah Gragson finished
second, followed by Riley Herbst.
Allmendinger finished eighth....
Joey Logano won the pole f or
Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series
race at Darlington by t urning in a
fast lap of 28.805 seconds to edge
Kyle Larson for the t op spot in
qualifying. Larson will s tart
second, one row ahead of
Hendrick Motorsports teammate
Christopher Bell and Martin
Truex Jr....
In Miami Gardens, Fla., F errari
stormed to the front of the grid
for the inaugural Miami Grand
Prix as Formula One
championship leader Charles
Leclerc and teammate Carlos
Sainz Jr. locked up the front row
in qualifying for Sunday’s race.MISC.
Bea Behrins scored the last of
her five goals at the 2:30 mark of
overtime to give No. 12 Denver a
16-15 victory over Georgetown in
the Big East women’s lacrosse
championship game in Denver.
The Hoyas (9-9) led 13-8 on a
goal by Mary Pagano in the third
quarter. The Pioneers (17-2)
rallied to lead 15-14 before Jordyn
Sabourin tied it for G eorgetown
with 1:09 to play in the fourth
quarter.
Julia Gilbert also netted five
goals for Denver. Erin Bakes,
Emma Gebhardt and Kylie
Hazen s cored three goals apiece
for the Hoyas....
In L os Angeles, Spyros Chakas
had 14 kills and 161 / 2 points as
Hawaii s wept Long Beach State,
25-22, 25-21, 25-20, t o win its
second s traight NCAA men’s
volleyball title....
A stellar time trial through
Budapest by Simon Yates saw the
British rider win the second s tage
of the Giro d’Italia cycling race,
while Mathieu van der Poel kept
the leader’s pink jersey.
— From news services
and staff reportsDIGESTTELEVISION AND RADIO
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It’s difficult not to
pity Private C.J.
Memphis in
Charles Fuller’s
1982 Pulitzer
Prize-winning
play, “A Soldier’s
Play,” which
examines
prejudice and racial s tereotypes
— on both sides of the color line —
through a segregated Army unit
at a base in the pre-civil rights
movement Deep South. C.J., who
is Black like all but a couple of the
characters, suffers all the side
effects of being purposefully
miseducated in a Jim Crow
America. But he’s likable as a
standout on the baseball team.
For playing his guitar. For singing
to everyone’s delight.
Except in the eyes of the unit’s
Black sergeant, Vernon C. Waters,
who subscribes to a strident, no
shuckin’-and-jivin’ approach to
Black liberation, C.J. is an
unwitting tool for a recalcitrant
White America, a means for it to
invalidate calls for Black
advancement.
It’s reminiscent of a real-life
Black man revered for his
athleticism and heretofore seen
as just happy-go-lucky: the great
running back from the University
of Georgia, Herschel Walker.
I feel as similarly sorry for
Walker as for the fictional C.J.
Memphis, for Walker — a good ol’
product of some small Southern
town like C.J. — is no less an
unknowing device for a part of
White America attempting to
nullify Black arguments for
continued progress.
What Walker represents is the
worst of our idolatry of sports
stars.
This is a revelation about
Walker that comes about as he
makes the rounds as a U.S.
senatorial candidate propped up
by former president Donald
Trump and reactionary
republicans in Georgia in an
attempt to unseat Sen. Raphael G.
Warnock, the s tate’s first Black
senator and the first BlackDemocratic senator from the
South. Ironically, Warnock was
swept into office in January 2021
with a boost from athletic bona
fides. Not his own but those of
WNBA players. They openly
campaigned for Warnock against
the senator he defeated, Kelly
Loeffler, who at the time was a co-
owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta
Dream, where she caught the ire
of league players for denouncing
Black Lives Matter and backing
antiabortion causes.
Walker’s sole qualification for
Georgia’s electorate, however, is
his athletic achievement. He isn’t
like Warnock, an ordained
minister who pastors at Atlanta’s
Ebenezer Baptist Church made
famous by a former pastor, the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., or
thrice graduated — first from
Morehouse and then Union
Theological Seminary, where
Warnock was awarded a master’s
and a PhD.
Indeed, Walker’s campaign
managers late last year quietly
scrubbed his biography of the
claim he graduated from Georgia.
He earned a Heisman trophy
there but not a degree.
Walker is embarrassingly
unqualified to be an elected
official at any level, let alone in
the U.S. Senate.
He is hardly the first a thlete to
pursue elected office. Just in the
past couple election c ycles,
Burgess Owens, who played
safety for the Jets and then for the
Raiders’ 1980 Super Bowl
champion team, won a House
seat from Utah as a Republican.
Anthony Gonzalez, who caught
passes from Peyton Manning in
Indianapolis, won a House seat
from Ohio as a Republican.
Sharice Davids, who twice fought
professionally in a mixed martial
arts octagon, in 2020 won her
second term as a Democrat
representing Kansas’s 3rd
Congressional District.
But Walker doesn’t measure up
to the seriousness they displayed
for the offices they sought. Last
month, Walker appeared on a FoxNews show and demonstrated all
but complete incoherence while
trying to repeat the talking points
of the party that has adopted him
like a pet. He failed to show up for
a debate last month against the
other Republican hopefuls for
Warnock’s seat, then repeated
that dodge this past week. In
contrast, Colin Allred, a Democrat
and onetime NFL practice squad
player before hitting law school
(from which he graduated), not
only demanded a televised debate
in 2018 with longtime Te xas
Republican congressman Pete
Sessions, he got it — and
impressed voters so much he
defeated Sessions in the
aftermath.
Walker hasn’t e ven voted more
than once in the past two decades.
He was a resident of Te xas until
tapped by the GOP to run against
Warnock. The Associated Press
reported Walker’s e x-wife secured
a protective order against him in
200 5 and cited “physically
abusive and extremely
threatening behavior” in her
filing for divorce. In his 200 8
memoir, “Breaking Free,” Walker
admitted to violent episodes,
including hunting for a man in
Dallas who he said was reneging
on a business deal, and playing
Russian roulette.
But none of that history, new or
old, has stopped Walker from
leading most primary polls or
from being given a toss-up chance
to defeat Warnock. How? There is
no other explanation: Walker is a
former s tar from the field of
athletics. What he doesn’t know
and how he has behaved matter
not.
Sadly, it is not surprising.
Former Auburn football coach
To mmy Tuberville, with no
political experience but a winning
record against in-state rival
Alabama and Trump’s backing,
two years ago defeated Democrat
Doug Jones to represent Alabama
in the Senate. He did so without
debating and by largely avoiding
public questioning. Shortly after
he was elected, Tubervillemisidentified the three branches
of government, said World War II
was fought to liberate Europe
from socialism and communism
and fanned the flames of the lie
engulfing democracy that Trump
won the 2020 election.
I don’t know if Walker knows
government is divided between
the legislative, e xecutive and
judicial branches or if he
understands the reason the
Second World War was fought.
But he, too, questioned the
legitimacy of the last presidential
election despite no evidence to do
so. It wasn’t until just the other
day that he changed his tune,
albeit slightly.
“I don’t know if there were
problems with the 2020 election,”
Walker said on a radio talk show.
“What I do know is that, right
now, I’m going to win this seat,
and, you know, everyone has
complained, e ven Stacey Abrams
complained that her race wasn’t
fair. And I’ve heard a lot of people
saying a lot of things. One thing
that I’ve got to worry about right
now, that I’m going to have a fair
election, that people can believe
in our election when I run.”
The viability of Walker’s
candidacy is insulting. To Black
voters, if it’s assumed they would
vote for Walker merely because he
was an exceptional Black athlete.
And to sports fans, if it’s assumed
they would vote for Walker
merely because he was an
exceptional athlete, one of the
greatest. Because he is a three-
time all-American. Because he
scored 61 touchdowns and gained
7,115 yards in three seasons in the
short-lived USFL, where he
played for the Trump-owned New
Jersey Generals. Because he had
82 touchdowns, 8,225 rushing
yards and 4,859 receiving yards in
a dozen NFL seasons.
Walker should be in the Pro
Football Hall of Fame. But that
shouldn’t make him, or anyone, a
legitimate candidate for elected
office. His unearned political
candidacy threatens calamitous
consequences.Walker’s campaign is the worst kind of sports idolatryKevin B.
BlackistonePark and, if that worked out,
they’d show ’em their supposedly
improving horse weeks later i n the
Belmont Stakes.
About 10 minutes later, a little
piece of Derby history involved a
“pony girl, Fifi.” That’s how Reed
described the yeoman w orker w ho
phoned him to say that, indeed,
trainer D. Wayne Lukas and own-
ers had decided to scratch Ethe-
real Road, right around the 9 a.m.
deadline. The next call came from
Barbara Borden, the chief stew-
ard. Would R eed l ike to enter Race
12 on Saturday?
“I couldn’t even breathe to an-
swer to say yes.”
This band of Derby first-timers
felt elation just to participate, and
they went in against Epicenter,
Zandon, Florida Derby winner
White Abarrio (who would wind
up 16th), Wood winner Mo Done-
gal (fifth), Arkansas Derby winner
Cyberknife (18th) and Santa Anita
Derby winner Ta iba (12th), plus Tiz
the Bomb (ninth) and Ta wny Port
(seventh), both of whom had beat-
en Rich Strike in his most recent
race, the Jeff Ruby Steaks (named
for a popular restaurateur) at Turf-
way Park near Cincinnati.
That claiming race Rich Strike
had won in September also had
happened at Churchill Downs,and had come by 17 lengths, but
since then he had lost by 33
lengths to Epicenter in Louisiana
and t hree times at Turfway, finish-
ing a middling third, fourth and
third.
“This is a game,” Reed said,
“where this horse should have
been 80-1 o n paper, b ut we’ve been
around him every day. S mall t rain-
er, small rider, small stable. You
know, he should have been 80-1.
But I’ve been around a long time.”
He h ad won his first stakes with
Native Drummer in the Forego
Stakes at Latonia, Ky. He had seen
as his best win the Lexus Run
Raven Stakes at Keeneland in
2009 with Quick C hick. He a nd h is
wife, Tammy, had endured horror
in 2016, when t hey came h ome to a
barn fire that killed 23 of their
horses.
Now he was in a Derby with an
owner who has never o wned more
than six horses and a jockey who
had never run a stakes race. “I
didn’t think I would win necessar-
ily,” R eed s aid, “but I knew i f he g ot
in they would know who he was
before it was over.”
Now his horse got going with
the big beasts from the outside
post on a fast track beneath the
day-long clouds, and his canny
jockey saved ground by going tothe rail. Now Rich Strike sat in
18th through a blistering opening
half-mile (45.2 seconds) set by
United A rab Emirates-based Sum-
mer Is To morrow and the Japa-
nese Crown Pride, and then Leon
patiently waited for s ome traffic to
clear, reached third by the top of
the stretch, and: “He answered so
quick. I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got horse.
I’ve got some horse to make some-
thing.’ ”
So then they came upon a duel,
and now a horse claimed for
$30,000 last summer at Ellis Park
in western Kentucky was turning
up just behind the big-time duel-
ers. He ran that rail just like the
impossible Mine That Bird in
2009 , and soon the final furlong
would come, and an unknown
winner would set 150,000 abuzz
even more than usual.
Soon Reed’s father, Herbert,
who trained for years in quiet and
honorable toil with trainers such
as Mackenzie Miller, the 199 3 Der-
by winner with Sea Hero, would
sit next to his son on an interview
dais. He would say, “When he was
8, he could put a spider bandage
on a horse. Most people don’t
know what that is.” And he would
begin to cry, in pride and in the
prevailing emotion of the day, a
steep disbelief.although I’m not giving the t rophy
back.”
The trainer: “A lot of people
don’t know who I am, but I was
that far from beating Z enyatta in
2010.” His bio lists that as one of
his highlights, even as it’s techni-
cally not a win. He has won more
than 1,400 races out there in the
little-noticed frontier.
Wait, here’s the jockey: “A lot of
people came up to me, ‘Hey, you
are nervous?’ ‘I’m not n ervous. I’m
excited.’... Nobody knows my
horse.” He’s Sonny Leon. He’s one
of those figures in horse racing
who excel day upon day without
anyone knowing. That can hap-
pen when one r ides e xpertly at t he
Mahoning Valley Race Course in
Youngstown, Ohio.
Come Friday morning, they
didn’t even know they’d be in the
race. Their horse stood 21st in the
Derby points required to gain en-
try. They needed one scratch. At
8:45 a.m., Reed fielded a call in-
forming him no scratch had come.
“The [Derby] security guard,” R eed
said, “was told to leave the barn.”
Reed felt bad but felt worse for
his team members. He went to
inform them they would aim for
the Grade 3 Peter Pan at BelmontKENTUCKY DERBY FROM D1
Rich Strike shocks the world at Derby
JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES
Rich Strike had not won a race as a 3-year-old before winning the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, but he had won at Churchill Downs before.