Sunday, April 04, 2010

Eskendereya-Hooked on Phonics

It looks like Eskendereya will be the odds on favorite come Kentucky Derby time after his impressive looking win in the Wood Memorial at the Big A. (By the way, nice turnout of 8,553 fans/horse players, about 3,500 more than I predicted would show up in my last post).

Over the next 4 weeks, two camps will develop-those that think Eskendereya is the real thing, and the other camp that will be eager to bet against the likely favorite.

Of course the easiest bet is that the name of the horse will be more mispronounced than not leading up to the Kentucky Derby.

For the record Eskendereya is pronounced S-Ken-DREY-uh

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's my pick for the Derby this year. Which means he's doomed to finish somewhere below 10th place and then eck out the occasional G2-G3 win over the next couple of years. Sigh.

IanLozada said...

Apparently Zayat told a few Kentucky papers the horse's name was pronounced Es-ken-DARE-ee-ya. Then he told Tom Durkin a second pronunciation.

Either way, the name of the horse in Egyptian means "I owe the Fifth Third Bank a few billion dollars I don't have."

Steve Zorn said...

Maybe Zayat should have spelled the name Iskandariyya, which is the closest you can get in the Roman alphabet to the Egyptian Arabic spelling -- it's the Arabic version of the name we know as Alexandria. Since Zayat is Egyptian, he might even know the right pronunciation.

The_Knight_Sky said...

Steve Zorn wrote:

Zayat is Egyptian, he might even know the right pronunciation.

__________________________

Ah but Mr.Zayat has Joisey roots also.

So try to factor in that accent and....