This blog is of course focused on carriages, driving, and horses. But with the World Equestrian Games coming in less than a year to our CAA’s home (the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington), you may have noticed that I try to include a few things here and there about the KY Horse Park or about Lexington in general. As we get closer to the WEG next fall, I’ll be continuing to post more about our fair city. If you’re one of the 200 or so people signed up for our CAA trip to the WEG, I figure you might want to know a bit about where you’re headed.

As you may have gathered, or as you’ve no doubt seen if you’ve been here, Lexington is pretty horse crazy. Heck, we even call ourselves the Horse Capital of the World. Two of our major sporting events each year: racing at Keeneland and the Rolex KY Three-Day Event.

But we’re also a university town. And because we have no big-time professional sports (we do have a single-“A” minor-league baseball team and a brand-new semi-pro basketball team, the Stallions, which plays its home games at … the KY Horse Park), college sports rule the day when it comes to non-horse events. So Lexington’s (nearly the entire state’s, in fact) other main passion: basketball. Specifically, the University of Kentucky Wildcats … the winningest program in all of college basketball.

If you watch ESPN or read Sports Illustrated, you may have heard that the Wildcats have a new coach this year.

After several “bad” years — ranging from blah (a few heartbreaking losses and a lot of lackluster performance) to dismal (a lot of heartbreaking losses, “fans” booing our own players, and allegations of an abusive coach) — we now have Coach Calipari, whose post-game comments after home games (on the radio or in person for the few hundred people who stay) are like attending a basketball 101 clinic. He wants his players to both play well and to have fun, and he is focused on teaching them to play well. The improvement in the way the team played from last Thursday’s game to this past Saturday’s game was amazing.

This year’s team hasn’t lost a game yet. If the Cats keep winning, they’re on track to reach their 2,000th win (the first college basketball team to do so) sometime in December. We’ll keep you posted.

during a late-in-the-game long timeout (usually at about 7 or so minutes left to go), the cheerleaders and the Wildcat mascot bring out the rotating pyramid and the flag backdrop, while everyone in the stands (usually around 24,000) stands to sing, cheer, or applaud in unison while the band plays the UK fight song