Off to the races. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leib. And this is Ghost Town.

I love horses. I always have. I always will. I'll admit it. While racing horses is a fraught sport

to say the least, it's also one that really reflects the traditions and misunderstandings

of a certain era. I think you'd agree that one of the most fun things about horse racing

are the ridiculous horse names. I'm here to share a story of arguably the most ridiculous race

horse name. Today we're talking about one of the greatest race horses of the 18th century,

a horse named Potatoes spelled P-O-T-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O. That's Ados, if you're counting.

I can't overemphasize the fact that this horse is still respected to this day. A chest not

cult bred by Willoughby Birdie, fourth Earl of Abington, in 1773. He was sired by the undefeated

eclipse who was considered the greatest race horse maybe of all time. As a note, the expression

eclipse first, the rest nowhere, an expression of dominance, is from the stellar career of eclipse

the horse. Anyway, also famed for his endurance, many of Potatoes' 34 victories were at distances

over four miles and the Stallion race successfully for seven years. But why do we remember this perfect

example of English thoroughbred breeding and accomplishment? Because his name was Potatoes.

There are a lot of stories about how this name came about, but really the gist of all the stories

are the same. Willoughby Birdie, also a great name, the fourth Earl of Abington had this horse

sports mistress, bred with eclipse. Sports mistress had a cult in 1773 and the Earl wanted to

name the horse Potatoes. Cute, whatever. The story goes that the Earl told the stable hand to

write Potatoes on the young horse's feed bin, and the stable hand, misunderstanding the horse's

name or maybe not knowing how to spell Potatoes, broke down the word Potatoes into P-O-T plus

A-O's. So the horse's feed bin said P-O-T-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O, which the Earl loved. Very funny,

very tickled by this. So now Potatoes ran raced formally under the name Potato, again A-O's,

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