Does Nikola Jokić Love Horses More Than Basketball?

Summary

---

Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: "Does Nikola Jokić Love Horses More Than Basketball?"
Date: May 7, 2024
Host: Pablo Torre
Correspondent: Mickey Dujay
Notable Guest: Tim Tetrick (“The Bionic Man” of harness racing)

---

Overview: Main Theme

This episode explores the unique passion Denver Nuggets superstar and two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić has for horses—particularly harness racing—and investigates whether this “hidden in plain sight” love rivals or perhaps, in Jokić’s view, surpasses his affinity for basketball. Through immersive, on-the-ground reporting by artist and documentarian Mickey Dujay, Pablo Torre examines not only the world of harness racing that captivates Jokić but also what this devotion reveals about fulfillment, identity, and celebrity.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Jokić’s Peculiar Public Persona

• Pablo opens by highlighting Jokić’s idiosyncrasies: a superstar who appears press-averse, indifferent to fame, and only animated when horses are involved.
• [02:32] Mickey Dujay: “It's a golden age for eccentrics in the NBA. And he's probably the number one. He bobs and weaves. He does not let us into his world. Or if he does, he gives us little tantalizing scraps here and there. There's a veil of secrecy, let's say.”

2. The Viral Clip: Basketball or Horses?

• The episode references Jokić’s now-famous post-NBA Finals interview, where, after winning a championship, he expresses eagerness—not to celebrate, but to return home to Serbia for horse racing.
• [03:09] Nikola Jokić: “No, I need to go home... I have my horse racing.”

3. Jokić’s Stated Passion—In His Own Words

• On a teammate’s podcast, Jokić details his retirement dream: obscurity, family, and racing horses across Europe.
• [04:28] Nikola Jokić: "After the career is over... I want to be around the family and spend the rest of the day with the horses... My secret goal is to be a driver... travel the world or Europe and race horses."

4. Harness Racing 101

• Mickey explains the distinction: Jokić is obsessed with harness (chariot) racing, not traditional jockey-led horse racing.
• The two conduct a “tail of the tape” comparison between basketball and harness racing, humorously weighing aspects like history, tactics, and celebrity fans (e.g., King Tut vs. Michael Jordan; Caligula & Ric Flair).
• [06:53] Mickey Dujay (Contrarian take): “It is my belief that harness racing is actually hiding in plain sight as being a much more exciting sport than American basketball.”

5. The “Sensory” World of Harness Racing

• Online presence is minimal. The sport's thrill, Dujay contends, lies in the hands-on, tactile experience.
• [22:37] Pablo Torre: "Right. There's a level in which this is a Pokémon... to Nikola Jokić."
• Pablo and Mickey discuss how Jokić’s involvement—everything from hands-on stabling to undercover visits with American harness racing royalty—is about fulfillment, not victory or spectacle.

6. Mickey’s Field Reporting—Becoming a Stable Boy

• Reenacting Jokić’s path, Mickey spends a day at Gateway Farms in New Jersey, engaging in the same menial chores: cleaning stalls, brushing horses, and prepping for race day.
• [27:31] Kyle (Horse Attendant): “There's peace in it, you know? There really is.”
• [28:54] Mickey Dujay: "Brushing dingleberries out of a tail... made me feel a closeness that I'd never felt for a horse before."

7. Meeting the “Bionic Man”: Tim Tetrick

• Jokić’s American harness racing "idol," Tim Tetrick, describes their unlikely friendship.
• [19:06] Tim Tetrick: “For me, when I got with him, I wanted to talk about basketball, and he's like, no basketball, just horses.”

8. The Big Race at Pocono Downs

• Mickey follows the horse Line Em Up (trained and driven by Tetrick) from the barn to the rainy, sparsely attended race at Pocono Downs.
• Emotional investment builds as the reporter, crew, and even Pablo gamble on Line Em Up, who finishes a valiant second.
• [37:44] Mickey Dujay: “...I was thinking about the bizarre quality that this sport has where for all the expense and labor and prep that goes into it, how it could even exist with, like, virtually no fans in the stands.”

9. What Jokić’s Obsession Reveals

• The show pivots: perhaps the question isn’t whether harness racing is “better” than basketball, but how this private, physically grounded pursuit sustains Jokić’s greatness amid NBA spectacle.
• [46:27] Mickey Dujay: “It's probably for someone like Nikola who has talked about how harness racing is something that he does to recharge his batteries, that these things actually exist in harmony with each other in him.”

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• [03:09] Nikola Jokić on skipping the championship parade:
  “No, I need to go home... I have my horse racing.”

• [04:28] Jokić’s retirement dream:
  “After the career is over... I want to be around the family and spend the rest of the day with the horses... travel the world or Europe and race.”

• [06:53] Mickey Dujay’s tongue-in-cheek claim:
  “It is my belief that harness racing is actually... a much more exciting sport than American basketball.”

• [19:06] Tim Tetrick:
  “When I got with [Jokić], I wanted to talk about basketball, and he's like, no basketball, just horses.”

• [19:41] Nikola Jokić (read by Dujay):
  "Since I started falling in love with the horses, it put me in some other dimension and makes me feel some connection... it's a pure love."

• [27:31] Kyle (Horse Attendant) on stable work:
  “There's peace in it, you know? There really is.”

• [28:54] Mickey Dujay:
  "Brushing dingleberries out of a tail... made me feel a closeness that I'd never felt for a horse before."

• [41:51] Tim Tetrick (race result announcement):
  "It's a photo for the place between big, big plans and Line em up. Elysium Sealster was third. Forgot the wall at the Aussie dozen again in 154 flat."

• [46:27] Mickey Dujay (on Jokić’s dual passions):
  “...these things actually exist in harmony with each other in him. There's really something there to learn for all of us.”

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00-02:32 — Opening: Jokić’s persona, horse obsession vs. basketball
• 03:06-04:28 — Jokić’s own words: horses over parades, secret goal to race
• 06:53-10:29 — Debate: Harness racing vs. basketball (history, fans, tactics)
• 11:55-12:52 — Harness racing 101: breeds, racing styles
• 14:19-16:32 — Failed attempt to interview Jokić; his childhood roots in racing
• 18:12-19:24 — Tim Tetrick and Jokić meet; their mutual admiration
• 24:34-28:32 — Mickey at Gateway Farms: cleaning, grooming, “stable boy” reporting
• 32:45-36:12 — At Pocono Downs: atmosphere, prepping for the race, good luck horseshoe
• 39:48-42:10 — The Race: live reactions; Line Em Up gets second place
• 44:53-47:14 — Takeaways: why harness racing matters to Jokić and to the story
• 47:14-End — Final reflections: will Jokić leave the spotlight for this quieter dream?

---

Language, Tone & Style

The episode balances wit, curiosity, and humility. Pablo’s persistent incredulity is offset by Mickey’s earnest (and sometimes goofy) attempts to bring the audience into Jokić’s world, even as the reporting leads to muddy boots, dingleberry mishaps, and an anticlimactic second place. The storytelling is playful ("Pokémon for Jokić"), self-deprecating, but ultimately reveals unexpected emotional investment and insight about fulfillment versus fame.

---

Conclusion: Insights for Listeners

• Jokić’s public love of horses isn’t affectation but rooted in childhood and has grown even more intense as his basketball stardom has increased.
• Harness racing, in contrast to the media-saturated NBA, is tactile, real, and indifferent to celebrity—precisely what appeals to Jokić.
• The episode, in diving deep, finds that the real story isn’t about one sport’s supremacy over another, but what personal, sometimes unglamorous passions can offer—whether you’re the world’s best basketball player or just a guy cleaning stalls in the rain.

---

Listen if you want to:

• Understand Nikola Jokić’s personality beyond the NBA
• Learn peculiar and fascinating facts about harness racing
• Hear a charming, funny, and surprisingly heartfelt journey through sports, fame, and finding joy in unlikely places

---

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Mickey Dujay]

Brushing dingleberries out of a tail.

[Pablo Torre]

That's the clinical term.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah. It, you know, made me feel a closeness that I'd never felt for a horse before.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe Kings.

[Mickey Dujay]

So I, you know, when I was cleaning this tall, I was stepping in like a lot of fecal matter. Yeah, I just like got right into my car and drove like the two hours.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh God.

[Mickey Dujay]

And about like five minutes in, I was like, jesus, what crawled in the car and died? And it, it only dawned on me an hour in that. Oh, there was like all over my boots.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so we're gonna explain that. We're gonna explain how it is that Mickey Dujay, my friend, who also happens to be my favorite illustrator, slash documentarian, slash animator hybrid in sports, ended up soiling his Volvo. Mickey, by the way, is an Emmy nominated creator of the Netflix series Losers and lots of other cool stuff. But today he is just, just come back from an assignment for me. A reporting assignment for ptfo. And it might be the most absurd assignment we've given to a correspondent to date, which is saying a lot. But before we get into all of that, I do need you to become familiar with the viral video clip that kind of inspired all of this. A clip that we here cannot stop thinking about. Because this video is of Nugget superstar Nikola Jokic, one of the most walled off, press averse and seemingly self loathing celebrities on the planet. Insofar as the guy is the best player in the NBA, a two time mvp, the defending champion currently facing the Timberwolves in the playoffs. And yet he doesn't seem to like basketball. What he would rather do, pretty visibly based on this clip, is just be alone, hunched atop a tiny cart pulled by this shiny brown horse on a dusty track in Sambor, Serbia, sleeveless and utterly, confusingly serene.

[Mickey Dujay]

It's a golden age for eccentrics in the NBA. And he's probably the number one. He bobs and weeps. He does not let us into his world. Or if he does, he gives us little tantalizing scraps here and there. There's a veil of secrecy, let's say.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, and he clearly enjoys it. He clear. I mean, I, I should say, I don't even know if he necessarily enjoys it so much as we hate it, the idea that he's going to win an NBA title and then say like this. So I'm curious if you're looking forward to a parade coming up in Denver.

[Nikola Jokic]

When is parade?

[Pablo Torre]

Thursday.

[Mickey Dujay]

Thursday?

[Nikola Jokic]

No, I need to go home. How soon till you're back in soccer on Sundays? I have my horse racing in my horse racing.

[Mickey Dujay]

Horse racing.

[Pablo Torre]

I was going to get to that.

[Mickey Dujay]

The horse racing. There are two opposing forces in him. He's one of the toughest, most physically imposing guys in the entire league. Let me just say, too, that he's not your kind of conventional tough guy, muscle bound at the gym.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. His arms are constantly bleeding because people are trying to, like, scratch and claw at him.

[Mickey Dujay]

When I look at Jokic, I see him more as being, like, kind of, like, underworld kind of tough, where I don't know how many dicey situations you've been in, but when, like, the giant guy with the scars all over his body shows up like things are about to go down and the axe said, yeah, it's like you're in trouble. So, like, you don't want to get on this guy's bad side.

[Pablo Torre]

Legitimately one of the most intimidating players in professional sports.

[Mickey Dujay]

But then there's this other side of him that loves to be around horses. He's got this total soft side.

[Pablo Torre]

And it may sound like we're overstating y feelings about all of this, but this is what he told his teammate Michael Porter Jr. On Michael Porter Jr's podcast.

[Nikola Jokic]

After the career is over. How I want to see myself is to be around the family and spend the rest of the day with the horses. You know, I have a couple horses outside of Serbia, in Italy, in Sweden, in France. Go, maybe, maybe race. Actually, that's kind of my secret goal to be a driver. Like, to have fun, you know, travel the world or Europe and race horses. That sounds fun.

[Mickey Dujay]

Come on. Tells you straight up.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. But in the meantime, the thing he's using his phone for, he watches horse vids in practice. Jamal Murray was asking him, like, what are you doing?

[Tim Tetrick]

Who's that?

[Nikola Jokic]

I'm scouting horses.

[Pablo Torre]

You're scouting?

[Nikola Jokic]

How many do you have right now?

[Mickey Dujay]

Like, 7, 8?

[Nikola Jokic]

Oh, 10, 12.

[Pablo Torre]

Like, it's the one thing he wants to talk about and the one thing he cannot stop talking about.

[Mickey Dujay]

And.

[Pablo Torre]

And it's the only thing he'll also, like, make advertisements about.

[Mickey Dujay]

Basically.

[Pablo Torre]

Just like, as long as it has a horse in there somewhere, he's like, okay. He'll consider doing it for the American audience. You sure this is cool?

[Nikola Jokic]

Relax. This place is pet friendly.

[Mickey Dujay]

There are probably people who don't know about his passion for horses that only see him in ads and they're like, why the hell is he with a pony?

[Nikola Jokic]

This is a pony.

[Pablo Torre]

There is actually one ad from Serbia where it's like him riding on this like cart and someone throws him a basketball and he throws it over his head as if to say in obvious terms this, I'm here for the horse. I think a normal person might reasonably ask like, why does this seven foot tall underworld character want to be the largest jockey in the world? Like, why is that his obsession?

[Mickey Dujay]

It, it's not a jockey. He wants to be a driver. And there's a distinction there. The sport, okay, the sport of harness racing is very different than thoroughbred racing. Don't have jockeys, you have drivers. You're not racing on thoroughbred horses. It's a totally different breed.

[Pablo Torre]

You're already betraying your bias here. You're betraying, you're betraying the reason why you're sitting here actually in truth, because you came at me upon my first conversation with you about this with one of the most contrarian takes that I have ever certainly decided to platform on this show.

[Mickey Dujay]

It is my belief that harness racing is actually hiding in plain sight as being a much more exciting sport than American basketball.

[Pablo Torre]

That that's stupid. I want to make this clear for everybody. You spend months on assignment to try and prove that Jokic is onto something and that you have this unique insight, at least among my friends. As for understanding where and why he wants to go home as soon as he can. As soon as this post season is.

[Mickey Dujay]

Over, let's do like a little bit of an ab test. I thought we would do a very classic thing and go tail of the tape on this.

[Pablo Torre]

Great.

[Mickey Dujay]

We're going to take basketball on one hand and we're going to compare and contrast it with harness racing, better known as chariot racing. Let's start with the age of the sport, right? NBA famously did the NBA 75 a couple years ago. It's 77 years old. Harness racing descended from chariot racing. Chariot racing has a 15,000 year history.

[Pablo Torre]

I already resent the fact that you've chosen this theme song to be underneath us as you're doing this exercise.

[Mickey Dujay]

I mean it does help my point. So we're giving the edge to chariot racing. 77 years. These guys are Johnny Come Lately.

[Pablo Torre]

So 15,000 is a lot.

[Mickey Dujay]

Okay, so let's move on to iconic venues. Right? In the NBA we've got the Mecca.

[Pablo Torre]

Madison Square Garden, the most famous arena in the world.

[Mickey Dujay]

So they say chariot racing raises you and lays down the circus Maximus. Bam. Let's talk about notable tactics okay, in the NBA, a lot of talk about the triangle offense, the pick and roll in chariot racing we have a couple tactics called tripping it out and one called right in the two hole, which I'm not exactly sure what that is. It sounds painful, but what do you think?

[Pablo Torre]

Tripping it out feels like something that you can now only do in certain states legally. And right in the two hole feels like something that I, a less mature version of me would have made a joke about already.

[Mickey Dujay]

Moving on to famous practitioners. Okay. In the NBA, let's just say Michael Jordan, very famous, globally known chariot racing. King Tut. King Tut, Michael Jordan.

[Pablo Torre]

I didn't realize that you were going to be drafting throughout literally all of time.

[Mickey Dujay]

So let's call that one a draw. Let's call that one a draw.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. What did King Tut ever win?

[Mickey Dujay]

Moving on to famous fans. Okay, the NBA, famous for Jack Nicholson sitting front row Lakers games. Chariot racing. What about Caligula? What about Nero? Also more recently, slightly more recently, Ric Flair, huge harness racing fan.

[Pablo Torre]

Wow. I was unaware that Ric Flair was, was in the company of the guy who fiddled while Rome burned. And the guy who that horse.

[Mickey Dujay]

He is indeed. And for that reason we're gonna give the edge to chariot racing.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, it's a hardy woo. Yeah, woo in that direction definitely.

[Mickey Dujay]

So I don't know what the overall score is yet, but I think chariot racing is ahead. Moving on, best nicknames. Barkley has one of the greatest for the NBA, the Round Mound of Rebound.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. Don't know if he ever loved it, but it is truly memorable.

[Mickey Dujay]

And on the chariot racing side, we've got Money man, the Minister of Speed.

[Pablo Torre]

We've got how, what? Who deserves that?

[Mickey Dujay]

Okay, we've got the Bionic Man.

[Pablo Torre]

What could possibly warrant being named the Bionic man if you're a harness racer?

[Mickey Dujay]

I'm going to give the edge to, to chariot racing there too. Which is all to say at the comparison and my claim, it's bigger and better, not as ridiculous as maybe you originally thought.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. The only issue with the case you're making so far is that it is currently situated upon the grave of a guy who died in 17 A.D. and so I think we might need to just have you actually bring us some reporting that's a little more present, a little more contemporary.

[Mickey Dujay]

I can do that. I can do that foreign.

[Pablo Torre]

So I should say that I've casually looked up harness racing in preparation for our conversation here for you to bring me your findings. And I wasn't very good at finding out Even the basics about this sport.

[Mickey Dujay]

Online, you should know that harness racing is not really an Internet thing. There's like, not really an equivalent of even harness racing. Twitter, like NBA Twitter.

[Pablo Torre]

So what the is harness racing as it was described?

[Mickey Dujay]

To me, harness racing is different from thoroughbred racing in that the horses are actually like, of a different breed. They're standard bred horses rather than thoroughbred horses. The main difference being that they run at a different gait. They don't gallop so much as they trot. And what that does is it allows them to drag, you know, the cart or like the chariot behind them quickly and effectively.

[Pablo Torre]

So the visuals on the chariot, I want to establish here because the driver, the chariot driver, in your terminology here, is fully horizontal. Almost like he's on a medieval rack being dragged behind a horse whose tail is like flapping over his legs.

[Mickey Dujay]

Hold on. No, you're. You're looking at this wrong.

[Pablo Torre]

Are you sure? Because he's looking at a horse's actual butt.

[Mickey Dujay]

As the. The famous poet Snoop Dogg once said, Laid back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

[Pablo Torre]

What is on my mind as I watch this is am I gonna get horseshit basically thrown into my face?

[Mickey Dujay]

Or maybe you're a badass. Totally leaned back. Coasting to millions of dollars in victory winnings. You're the coolest guy out there.

[Pablo Torre]

Where is out there? Where is this taking place?

[Mickey Dujay]

Harness racing happens around the world. It is most popular in Europe and in New Zealand. In the United States, it exists from coast to coast. It used to be more popular.

[Pablo Torre]

When was peak harness racing?

[Mickey Dujay]

I would say between the 20s and the 40s.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, great. So really? Yeah, a really relevant, really relevant enterprise. I asked you to bring me Jokic to make sense of, like, what he finds interesting in all of these conflicting aspects. And what was his response?

[Mickey Dujay]

He said no, Pablo. He said no many times.

[Pablo Torre]

How many times are we talking here?

[Mickey Dujay]

So I will say that his team and actually the Denver Nuggets were really encouraging of this because, you know, they think that there's more to learn there as well. Unfortunately, Nicola disagreed and four times he. He turned us down.

[Pablo Torre]

Sad.

[Mickey Dujay]

So, yes, I failed you. I failed myself.

[Pablo Torre]

We were ready to blow our budget. The Pablo Dari finds out budget was going to be spent on sending you to Serbia if in fact Jokic gave you the green light.

[Mickey Dujay]

And I really wanted to go though, because that's where his story began. You know, as a young boy, his dad took him to the races when he was about 12 or 13 years old. Introduced him to the sport. He fell in love with it so much that he got one of his first jobs as a stable boy tending to the horses. He went to his dad and said, hey, this is what I want to do with my life. I really want to go even deeper into this. And his dad looked at him and he was like, nicola, you're seven feet tall. Could we. Before you go all in on this, could we at least try to have you play basketball? We think you could be good at this.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Good advice.

[Mickey Dujay]

One of the most charming things about Nicola is that in the last few years, on off days, during the NBA schedule, when, you know, the team is crisscrossing America, he will take a day or a morning and rendezvous with people in the harness racing community and at different stables at different harness racing racetracks. So we've gotten confirmation that at least two times this season, he's gotten off a plane in the middle of the night and gone under cover of darkness to meet up with the bionic man himself, Tim Tedrick.

[Tim Tetrick]

Well, I. I knew he liked horses, and I followed that a little bit, and it was really cool. He just kind of reached out and wanted to talk horses, and he. You know, he didn't know anybody in America that knew anything about horses. You know, he knew that they had horse racing, but he didn't know anybody. You know, we got to reach out and, you know, that's kind of how it started.

[Mickey Dujay]

You should first know that Tim Tetrick is harness racing royalty. He's won over 13,000 races. That's a lot of race, which is, like, a legendary number. He has career purse earnings of over $250 million.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, my God.

[Mickey Dujay]

And he's not.

[Pablo Torre]

He's not the money man. That's a different guy.

[Mickey Dujay]

Not the money man. He's nicknamed the bionic man because this guy is such a badass that he's had to surgically replace, through the wear and tear, many different parts of his body just so that he could get back in that cart, strap the legs back in, and win thousands more races.

[Pablo Torre]

I guess I should be not surprised that the guy who has won 13,000 races while in a torture device has had body parts replaced.

[Mickey Dujay]

He wouldn't tell me all of the.

[Pablo Torre]

Parts that were replaced, but, yeah, what parts are bionic? Tim, just to paint the picture here, because Jokic is famously about 7ft tall, 285ish. The bionic man is measuring at what?

[Mickey Dujay]

He's 59150, so slightly different. They're like a harness racing version of twins, like that Old movie.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this Danny DeVito ends up being the guy that Jokic actually is not just enamored with. This is the guy that he'd rather be.

[Mickey Dujay]

He explicitly said to Tim, hey, man, you've got my dream job. And when I talked to Tim, he described the first time that they got together, which was at a farm.

[Tim Tetrick]

We met at one of the local farms there in mid Jersey. I said, I'll be here. And I told him the address, and he met us there. He got out of the. The, you know, his. Not limo, but his car service, just him. He jumped out of the back seat of the car, and he had his, you know, sneakers on and stuff, because he didn't really bring, you know, the right clothes.

[Mickey Dujay]

Tim described that he just came out with a sweatshirt and a stocking cap. He wasn't wearing boots. He was just wearing sneakers. And Tim said that he had this, like, crazy, infectious enthusiasm.

[Tim Tetrick]

He talked to me like we were. Been friends for years, and, you know, he kind of thought I was the king or the champion. You know, he said, all right, I want to go in the bar and hang out with the horses.

[Mickey Dujay]

He just wants to get into the. Into the stables. He's, like, really, really, really into this. And T Trick grew up as a basketball fan. He grew up in Illinois during, like, Jordan Pippen era. And so he's, like, kind of in awe.

[Tim Tetrick]

It's kind of funny. Like, I. I like to talk about basketball, you know, and. Because all I do in my life is race horses and. And talk about horses to my owners and trainers and the fans that want to do it. It's all about horses. And for me, when I got with him, I wanted to talk about basketball, and he's like, no basketball, just horses.

[Mickey Dujay]

Let me read you a quote from Jokic himself about his. His love of this world. Since I started falling in love with the horses, it put me in some other dimension and makes me feel some connection, and there's not many people around.

[Nikola Jokic]

And you can just relax in the nature and the horses. When you spend a little bit more time in them, you can find a. You can find a way to talk to them.

[Mickey Dujay]

So that's what I want to do when I finish my career, and that's what I want to be around my whole life. It's a pure love. End quote.

[Pablo Torre]

In that poetic language, right, that Yogic used there. This other dimension, this pure love. I do want a better sense of what that actually looks like. What did Tim tell you about Jokic's interactions with his surroundings.

[Mickey Dujay]

Tim didn't use, like, the exact same poetic language.

[Tim Tetrick]

Like, we were in the paddock and we have a grandstand where you can. Most of people go to watch the races. And he wanted to go to the paddock. I said, do you want to go upstairs and set a really nice, you know, box and have dinner and stuff? He goes, no, I'm here where I want to be. I'm right down in the slum. I was kind of surprised. I'm like, do you want to go eat dinner and hang out with the, you know, the big wigs upstairs? And he goes, no, I'm down here with you guys. I want to be with the horses. I want all the horse poop and be around it, you know, I just want to be in with the horses.

[Mickey Dujay]

This is a sensory experience for Nicola. He. He loves to be there. He loves to smell it. He loves to dip his hands, you know, Amelie style in the horse, feed this guy. He's. He's like mind, body and soul into this.

[Tim Tetrick]

The one night at Medlands, he went there. We were there. He was there by six o' clock before the. An hour before the races started. And we sat around there till 1:30 just hanging out and talking. All the catch drivers stayed, and there was probably 15 of us that stayed in there, and he. He wouldn't leave. He said, I don't want to leave yet. Because I said, you know, you got a game tomorrow in New York. He was that, I don't care. I'll be fine. This, this is my dream right here. This is my dream. And I was having fun and, you know, all the guys were great. We had a few beers and told stories and, you know, he was just. He wanted to be one of the guys and didn't want to. He didn't want to be 7 foot tall. He just wanted to hang out with the horse people.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, this isn't like the Kentucky Derby where you're wearing a fancy suit and you're cheering for your horse and you're surrounded by celebrities. This feels like, actually, definitionally the opposite.

[Mickey Dujay]

We tend to project our fantasies onto people like Jokic, thinking that, oh, if we had that level of prestige or money or fame, that we would be, I don't know, out on a yacht somewhere or something. But there is a difference between fame and fulfillment. And I think for laymen like us, there are probably things that we could point to that are really labor intensive that give us a feeling of fulfillment, too. I mean, if you're thinking about a live animal, too, there's also, like a pet component of this too. Right. It's like you have this amazing animal that's really an athlete that you're coaching up. That's like winning races. And you, it's. There are many, many levels to why this is super satisfying.

[Pablo Torre]

Right. There's a level in which this is a Pokemon.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

To Nikola Jokic.

[Mickey Dujay]

See, if that's what's going to engage you with this sport, I'll take it.

[Pablo Torre]

Nikola Jokic just wants to catch them all. This is beginning to click for me.

[Mickey Dujay]

So I mentioned that his family has a stable. The Jokic family.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. The brother is, of course, infamous for beating up people. Most recently, one of them punched a fan in the first round of the postseason. A TikTok video captioned Jokic brothers going wild appears to show his brothers pushing their way through the crowd. They exchange some words with a man in a blue shirt before one of the brothers punches the man in the face.

[Mickey Dujay]

That same family, their father has become the head of the Serbian Trotting Association. So he's really, really involved in all sorts of stuff. Trotting related things in Serbia.

[Pablo Torre]

All of this sounds very ominous.

[Mickey Dujay]

He was going to give us an interview, but said he couldn't participate because he had a cracked kneecap, which is not something that I've ever heard as an excuse, but it seems like for this family, there are a lot of cracked things. Cracked skulls, cracked kneecaps.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I, I, I would, I would ask you how the knee got cracked, but I don't think I want to be legally liable for knowing any of it.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah, I don't, I don't think we want to know. No.

[Pablo Torre]

So to recap here, we didn't get to interview Jokic. We didn't get to send you to Serbia, but you have befriended Jokic's best buddy. And so what did you do next?

[Mickey Dujay]

I had to, I had to shovel some. Pablo, finally.

[Pablo Torre]

So we value journalistic fidelity here on this program. Mickey, how did you seek to retrace the steps that Nikola Jokic took with Tim Tetrick, his best buddy in the world of harness racing?

[Mickey Dujay]

So we, we planned an epic day. We were going to start the day at a horse farm, which was actually the exact same horse farm that Tiedrick and Jokic first met at this morning. We're at Gateway Farms. This is one of the biggest stables and housing facilities for harness racing racehorses in New Jersey. We're here being given a backstage pass into this sport that has enchanted Nikola Jokic. We're here to discover its Secrets. I really couldn't be more excited. Even though it's cold, wet, and the air is thick with the smell of horse poop, Turns out it was the worst possible day to do this. It's like pouring rain.

[Pablo Torre]

How much do you really love this thing is what God is already telling you.

[Mickey Dujay]

The plan was for me to live out my stable boy fantasy, do barn chores, do free labor.

[Pablo Torre]

Just the weirdest fan fiction imaginable.

[Mickey Dujay]

And, you know, I was really there to discover the hidden charms of harness racing.

[Pablo Torre]

Who was your guide as aspirational? Stable boy.

[Mickey Dujay]

So there was a guy there named Kyle who was a horse attendant and he walked me through the paces.

[Nikola Jokic]

Here we are.

[Mickey Dujay]

Hey, Kyle.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Hi, Miki. How are you?

[Mickey Dujay]

Very excited to be here. Who do we have to work with today?

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

This is Lynam up. She is a 6 year old mar out of betting line, which is where her name comes from. She started racing as a two year old and so she's raced every year since then. So the last four years. Five years. This is year five.

[Mickey Dujay]

Does she win?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

She's got a couple wins on her card.

[Mickey Dujay]

She seems very chill.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

She is very chill. Hopefully talking about winning. Hopefully she can win today. That would be nice.

[Mickey Dujay]

I want to get the full experience here. I want to get like immersed in this. So if you don't mind, I would like the full stable boy experience here.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Yeah. So first we'll get her out. We'll get her out. We'll put her in some cross ties and then you can clean her stall. We'll get you a wheelbarrow and off you go. You can back it into the stall.

[Mickey Dujay]

Don't mind me. You know, cool your heels. You're in good hands. That's a pile right there. It's kind of like a giant litter box, you know, just thinking about Nicola, who's obviously one of the richest and most famous athletes in the world. I think people get surprised that he would want to come to a stable to do this kind of work.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

There's peace in it, you know? There really is.

[Mickey Dujay]

I'm not sure I'm feeling it quite yet. Well, what do you think? How did chore boy do?

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

I think he did a pretty good job.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah? Yeah.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Solid 8 out of 10 for sure.

[Mickey Dujay]

I'll take it.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

We're headed this way.

[Mickey Dujay]

What happens? Kind of like the morning of the race to prepare.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

One of the big things is making sure they look good when they get to the track and that involves brushing. We start with her mane.

[Mickey Dujay]

I think she likes it.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Yeah, she does.

[Mickey Dujay]

For sure.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Then once we're done with her mane, we'll move to her tail.

[Mickey Dujay]

She's not going to kick me.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

No, she's not going to kick you. No. You don't have to poop in my face. You don't have to worry about that. And then the last thing we'll do is just brush the rest of her. So you just kind of start up here and then brush her all the way down and then go to the same side and do it again.

[Mickey Dujay]

So it's not a small amount of work to be done.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

It takes a lot on race day.

[Mickey Dujay]

You know, if she wins tonight, I'm going to probably take a little bit of color credit, of course, for looking so good.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Yeah, as you should.

[Mickey Dujay]

Crossing the finish line.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Yeah, as you should.

[Mickey Dujay]

He was actually very excited that someone else was going to, I can imagine, you know, brush the horse.

[Pablo Torre]

Not sure. There was a lot of competition for the. For the credential that you got to do this.

[Mickey Dujay]

Brushing dingleberries out of a tail.

[Pablo Torre]

That's the clinical term.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah. It, you know, made me feel a closeness that I'd never felt for a horse before. They put me to work and they made a man out of me. I actually pulled out a piece of paper and did something I'm much more comfortable with and did a nice little portrait of our dear line him up, which she stood for and seemed to.

[Pablo Torre]

Appreciate based on this footage.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah. Got the finished drawing here.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

What do you think, girl? You like that? That's you.

[Mickey Dujay]

It actually looks like she's looking at it.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

I know it does, doesn't it? You like that?

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah. I'll just leave this here for her.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

Leave that there for her. You can set it right there.

[Mickey Dujay]

As far as I can tell, it's still hanging there in her stall. So we bonded. We bonded. Aside from drawing her, you know, I gave her some final words of encouragement.

[Pablo Torre]

What's the motivational speech post dingleberry brushing that you're. You're giving line em up.

[Mickey Dujay]

Well, I wanted her to really, you know, give her all, even though it was a really gross day out. You know, I told her that the cameras were rolling, that we were all, you know, placing heavy wagers on her.

[Pablo Torre]

The super boost. The line em up. Super boost. We were taking full advantage of this.

[Mickey Dujay]

In the last turn. I want you to really turn it on. No mercy today. We're gonna win. And then marched her up onto the. Onto the trailer where she was loaded in for the couple hour drive to Poconos Downs. I think. I think we're set up for victory today. Let's go.

[Pablo Torre]

And so now you're leaving South Jersey for the. The mountain range, the glorious mountains that are the Poconos and Pocono Downs.

[Mickey Dujay]

That's right.

[Pablo Torre]

And that voyage, I imagine, is just epic.

[Mickey Dujay]

As I mentioned to you before, the entire cabin of my beloved Volvo was thick with the smell of horse poop from my boots that I didn't wash off.

[Pablo Torre]

So that was the mystery.

[Mickey Dujay]

Some things you learn the hard way, I guess. But we get to Pocono Downs. As we walked up to the grandstand, I was like, oh, my God, this is happening. Still in the cold, still in the rain. We come to you now from Pocono Downs, AKA the Circus Maximus of Pennsylvania. The grandstand is behind me. You can't really hear the crowd from here, but we're all really excited to be here, to cheer on, line them up to glorious victory, where she will prove once and for all that harness racing is a better and more exciting sport than basketball.

[Pablo Torre]

Seeing the homemade artisanal flag that you brought that says light em up on it, getting soaked is. It saddens me, man.

[Mickey Dujay]

There was a saturated felt for sure.

[Pablo Torre]

How would you describe the crowd that we're seeing on this video at this point?

[Mickey Dujay]

I would say that calling it a crowd would be a gross exaggeration. It really was a ghost town. There were. There was nobody around.

[Pablo Torre]

I think there's one person, that one.

[Mickey Dujay]

Dude with the umbrella who was just kind of doing a thousand mile stare into the mountains. There were a couple people inside who seemed to be also just gazing with, you know, blank stares at screens of races that were, like, happening in New Zealand. And they were, you know, smoking their. Their cigarettes down to the butts. And I was just like, man, it is. It is a weird scene. There was a strange energy. I was mostly thinking, like, where. Where was everybody?

[Pablo Torre]

So, speaking of everybody, where are the people that you're supposed to be interviewing?

[Mickey Dujay]

The plan was for us to kind of flank around to the side where there was this, like, gray concrete building that looked like it had razor wire on it, like a jail. And they were like, that's the paddock. That's where all the action is. So, you know, just. It was kind of like, hey, walk out onto that pier, like, where's the bionic man? Oh, he's.

[Pablo Torre]

He's in. He's.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

He's in the.

[Pablo Torre]

He's in that prison style building.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah, they're just like, just. Just keep walking. And they have me go down there, and it's in that Building that, they said, hey, in there, you're going to meet Line him up's trainer. And that's where you're going to. You're going to rendezvous with the Bionic man. There are like a million more people in here. This is where all the action is. Hey, buddy. What's that? Excuse me. Here we are. Look at her ready for racing. With us here is Jen Buongiorno. She's the trainer of Line Em up, this beautiful steed that we saw this morning. And with us also, the legendary, globally famous Tim Tetrick, one of the great drivers of all time who will be driving Line him up to hopefully victory today.

[Tim Tetrick]

You know, on paper, she looks like she fits right in here. She's just one good drive away from happiness.

[Mickey Dujay]

What's like the plan for victory today, if there is one, given that it's like really sloppy out there and I don't know, seems like it could be a free for all.

[Tim Tetrick]

You know, once the gate opens, a lot of things change. I like to go in with three or four audibles.

[Mickey Dujay]

Okay.

[Tim Tetrick]

No set plans, things that I want to happen. But, you know, we want to win and it's, you know, I'll park my mom for the right horse.

[Mickey Dujay]

So I know a lot of horses, they like make a real big kick at the end and have breakaway speed and things like that. Is there anything that we should look for in line them up that might be like an advantage for her in the ring?

[Jen Buongiorno]

Well, right now she hasn't been finishing as well as I would like her to, so it's kind of been her weak spot. She's been getting a little hot. So, you know, we're, we made a few minor changes and we're hoping Tim will be able to either have her on the front where she's not getting grabby behind another horse, or, you know, keep her more calm and come from off the pace that way. But she actually finished up better last week, so I think, you know, maybe she's getting back to figuring it out a little bit.

[Mickey Dujay]

I've never been more invested in a race than I am today. I'm like, really nervous. Is there anything like good luck wise that we should do or think about as we're sitting and waiting for the race to go on?

[Jen Buongiorno]

I actually brought you a special horseshoe because in racing we say that horseshoes are good luck charms.

[Mickey Dujay]

So my gift to you, I'm going to clutch this very, very closely.

[Tim Tetrick]

One for me.

[Jen Buongiorno]

Well, I can go pick out one.

[Mickey Dujay]

Hoping for the best today. Best of luck. And we'll we'll be cheering from the stand.

[Jen Buongiorno]

Thank you.

[Mickey Dujay]

Thank you. So we brought a little something for you as, like a good luck charm from the Pablo Torre finds out team. Awesome. It's a little sticker. Pablo is an insufferably proud alum of Harvard. So we're just going to stick that on the back here on the bike for good luck. A little Ivy League good luck charm.

[Tim Tetrick]

We never had to.

[Mickey Dujay]

Too much luck.

[Kyle (Horse Attendant)]

I figured that out.

[Mickey Dujay]

That's looking pretty good. I like it. And, you know, just. Just in case. Got another one as well. If you can't have too much luck, can't have too much Harvard either. There you go. Love it. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Go get him. Thank you. Yeah. We couldn't lose, Pablo.

[Pablo Torre]

Vicky is waving around his felt pennant in his left hand. In his right hand is the same horseshoe that he was given. And I. I have never felt. I know the Harvard stickers were meant as a joke, but I actually just now feel this in my bones.

[Mickey Dujay]

Sport is winning you over public.

[Pablo Torre]

I've never been so invested in any animal before. And I. I just feel like the two of us. Yeah, there's. We're. There's a Jokic brother dynamic here. I want to. I will fight a fan for this, for this horse, for Line Them Up. I will do anything.

[Mickey Dujay]

This is the right kind of energy that led us right into the race.

[Pablo Torre]

This Harvard graduate and this Ukrainian illustrator with an impossible to pronounce surname are about to kick the out of you if you dare lay a finger on this horse. So just to remind everybody, I believe you spent six months chasing down this story for us.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

All of which culminates in what we're about to watch here.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah. As I was sitting there waiting for the 11th race to go off, which is the one that Line Them up was in, I was thinking about the bizarre quality that this sport has where for all the expense and labor and prep that goes into it, how it could even exist with, like, virtually no fans in the stands.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Mickey Dujay]

I came to understand that most of the people watching the race and betting on the race that day were doing so via simulcast from places like New Zealand and Sweden. So it was counterintuitive that for a sport that everybody was telling me that its main currency is to be experienced in real life, working with the horses, smelling the textures of all of this.

[Pablo Torre]

And that this dimension is a sensory dimension.

[Mickey Dujay]

Exactly. That's really the thing that gets its hooks into you, that for all of those things, this sport was essentially just like a TV show that most people were watching from thousands of miles away.

[Pablo Torre]

But luckily, that's our comfort zone, baby. You say there's a weird TV show watched by vague amounts of people in which lots of things are happening that are worth seeing. That is where Pablo Torre finds out, comes in. I don't know how this race turned out. We are saving this reveal for right now. What did you have riding on this personally? Because of course, my ego is fully now invested.

[Mickey Dujay]

Well, emotionally, I had a lot riding on it. But safe to say that not only me, the entire crew that was there that day got really swept up in things. So I would say each and every one of us wagered financially on Line Them up, which we all saw as a sure thing to win. We all put our money down and we rocked out.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, the music. That music now finally deserved.

[Mickey Dujay]

So, Pablo, do you feel your heart fluttering?

[Pablo Torre]

I, I, I'm already surprised that, okay, there is a truck that, like, let them sort of off at the same time, so to speak.

[Mickey Dujay]

All right, forget about that. Our boy and girl are the with the yellow wheels.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, my God.

[Mickey Dujay]

Therehere we are. Second place.

[Pablo Torre]

Yep.

[Mickey Dujay]

Charging ahead.

[Pablo Torre]

Looking great.

[Mickey Dujay]

I mean, striding through the mud and the rain. It's feeling good.

[Pablo Torre]

Forgot the Wallet A is currently leading the race. And right behind him is our girl.

[Mickey Dujay]

That's right. And behind her is big, big plants. So. So, you know Jen, the trainer, she told me, she was like, all right, this horse needs to stay up near the front of the pack. I'm feeling great.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. So Forgot the Wallet A. The green horse here is a big favorite. One to five odds on winning this thing. And line them up with the Harvard insignia right there. Reflecting the mottled light of the betmohegan.com broadcast upon Pocono Downs. Is a 7 to 2. Is a 7 to 2 chance.

[Mickey Dujay]

But look at us. We're stalking Pablo.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Mickey Dujay]

Look at this. It feels like, look it where the.

[Pablo Torre]

Horse is basically just the mud flattering everywhere. This weird, this weird horizontal angle. Never looking more, more regal. Finally, there you go.

[Mickey Dujay]

Aerodynamic.

[Pablo Torre]

And you're there watching this.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And how are you feeling as you're watching? I mean, they're separating.

[Mickey Dujay]

Well, at this point, I'm thinking Tim's gotta make a move.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. The Bionic man needs to live up to his name.

[Mickey Dujay]

Bionic Man's gotta, gotta do something here. We heard line em up. Doesn't really have closing speed, but. Right. Come on.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, come on, Tim.

[Mickey Dujay]

Oh, God.

[Pablo Torre]

No. No.

[Tim Tetrick]

It's a photo for the place between big, big plans and Line em up. Elysium Sealster was third. Forgot the wall at the Aussie dozen again in 154 flat.

[Mickey Dujay]

It's actually hard to relive that.

[Pablo Torre]

Second. Second place. Second place is what we got.

[Mickey Dujay]

You know, you, you get swept up in it where of course you want to watch this horse that you cared for be victorious and celebrate with her. And you also want to kind of have the labor that went into all of the prep be in some ways paid back to you with like a moment of positivity.

[Pablo Torre]

All those dingleberries.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah. I wanted some kind of, and not just financial payoff, but some sort of, you know, feeling that we, we did.

[Pablo Torre]

Something right, but instead feeling like Nikola Jokic ended with a scene that was a lot like the problem we were presented with, which was a wall.

[Mickey Dujay]

We're obviously here in America obsessed with results and winning. I do think that the things that draw him to this sport are these, like, intangible process things. The sensory things, the journey of the preparation and the tear down more than, than the winnings. For all that we have heard about Nikola and all that I've heard secondhand from people that know him, never has there been a part of his passion that has anything to do with him wanting to make a lot of money in this sport or have his horses be these like, like, you know, crazy champions. That is kind of secondary. So as I sat there with my pocket lightened a little bit after wagering on line him up to win, I just thought, like, as much as I'm upset about losing, that that really wasn't the point of this. If I really wanted to see and kind of embody what it was, what it is that Nicola loves about this sport.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I will confess that, like, the ending of this episode would have been a lot better if Line em up. If line them up delivered for us.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

But now I, I am, I'm sort of just like wrangling with a strange feeling, which is you converted me into somebody who really gave a significant about what was going to happen in this weird sport that I actively thought was terrible. But now I, I, I gotta confess, I still don't feel like Ben Hur. The scene that you've painted for us leaves you feeling what about what this sport actually is.

[Mickey Dujay]

I started this journey really asking the question, is harness racing a better and more exciting sport than basketball?

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Mickey Dujay]

For all its charm, for all the things about it that are completely unique, I have to say that I don't think that you can really say that with a straight face.

[Pablo Torre]

Thank you for your journalistic integrity.

[Mickey Dujay]

Listen, I wanted to pressure test that and in the end, as I sit here and I think about, oh, this quest to learn to love something that probably the greatest basketball player on the planet loves more than anything, it dawns on me that maybe we were asking the wrong question. That it's not how and why this sport is superior to this other sport that he plays. We should really be thinking about how this sport that he loves so much actually helps make him the all time great that he is. And how for people who play in a league like the NBA, very wildly visible.

[Pablo Torre]

Billion dollar broadcast deals, gossip, soap operas, every Instagram stories. Right. Like it truly is the case that the NBA is on one side of the spectrum.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

And on the other side is the thing we've been talking about now all episode.

[Mickey Dujay]

It's probably for someone like Nicola who has. Has talked about how harness racing is something that he does to recharge his batteries, that these things actually exist in harmony with each other in him. There's really something there to learn for all of us. As we see footage of Nikola out in Sombor without a helmet on, you know, with the. The tank top, you know, riding on the back of his cart, just looking out into the distance as the birds chirp and the butterflies are fluttering past.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. Having that kind of familiar now, sort of like middle distance kind of gaze into nothing.

[Mickey Dujay]

Yeah, I mean, that looks pretty great. I would actually bet the farm that Nicola goes whole hog into the racing world after he hangs up his sneakers. And that we'll probably not see very much of this guy. But even though we aren't going to see him, we should know, Pablo, that somewhere Nicole is out there riding on the back of a cart, just doing laps on a dusty oval somewhere in the Balkans. And this man is out there as the happiest man on Earth.

[Pablo Torre]

Mickey Dujay, thank you for your reporting.

[Mickey Dujay]

It was a genuine sensation, Pablo, in so many ways, I'll never be the same.

[Pablo Torre]

Actually, neither will your car. You should also be aware, by the way, that Mickey has a new short film titled Confessions of a Jumbotron Addict, which is excellent. Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival next month on June 12 and June 14. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.