The strangest drink order in world sport happens every May in Indiana. The winner of the Indianapolis 500 — drenched in sweat, ears ringing, having just averaged well over 200 km/h for three hours — is handed an ice-cold bottle of milk. The tradition traces to Louis Meyer, who drank buttermilk after winning in 1936 (as he reportedly liked to on hot days, following his mother's advice); a dairy-industry executive saw the photo and made sure the moment became institutional. Today drivers submit their preference — whole, two percent or skim — in an official pre-race «milk poll», and the American Dairy Association ceremonially guards the bottle. When a winner once drank orange juice instead, the backlash was so severe he apologized and drank milk later. Sport does not forgive ritual violations.
The Gatorade shower: hydration as weapon
The second great American victory drink isn't drunk at all — it's dumped. The Gatorade shower was popularized by the New York Giants in the mid-1980s, when players Jim Burt and Harry Carson began upending the sideline cooler over head coach Bill Parcells, a running gag that went national during the Giants' 1986 championship season. It has since become the mandatory ending of every American football triumph, complete with betting markets on the color of the liquid. There is something perfect about a sports drink — engineered in a University of Florida lab in 1965 to rehydrate the Gators — achieving immortality as a thing you pour on someone who is already fully hydrated.
Sport does not forgive ritual violations: milk means victory in Indiana, and nothing else will do.
Pimm's, juleps and drinking the venue
Some traditions belong to the crowd rather than the champion. Wimbledon runs on Pimm's No. 1 — the gin-based fruit cup served with lemonade, cucumber and strawberries — with hundreds of thousands of glasses poured across the fortnight; it is as much a part of the grounds as grass and strawberries-and-cream. The Kentucky Derby has its mint julep, bourbon smashed over crushed ice with mint and sugar, served by the hundred-thousand each first Saturday in May. In both cases the drink is the venue, liquefied: you can taste where you are.
Drinking from the trophy itself
Hockey went furthest: Stanley Cup champions drink directly from the Cup, a tradition as old as the trophy and renewed every summer as each player gets a personal day with it. Champagne is traditional, but the Cup has hosted everything a celebrating hockey player can imagine — and since every champion's name is engraved on the bowl, drinking from it means literally drinking from history. No other sport lets you toast out of the record book.
Two traditions you can pour at home
- 2½ oz (75 ml) bourbon
- ¼ oz (7 ml) sugar syrup
- 8–10 mint leaves
- Mountain of crushed ice; mint bouquet
Press mint with syrup in a chilled cup, pack with crushed ice, add bourbon, churn, crown with more ice and a generous mint bouquet. The Kentucky Derby by the glass since the 1930s.
- 2 oz (60 ml) Pimm's No. 1
- 4 oz (120 ml) lemonade (British-style, i.e. lemon soda)
- Cucumber ribbon & orange slice
- Strawberry & mint
- Plenty of ice
Build in a tall glass over ice and treat the garnish as an ingredient — the salad is the point. Wimbledon fortnight, poured by the hundred-thousand.
Why rituals outlive rosters
Players retire, teams relocate, records fall; the milk stays. Victory drinks work because they compress an entire institution into a single sip everyone can recognize instantly — which is, not coincidentally, exactly what a great cocktail does. The champagne spray is the global version of this chapter; the milk bottle is its beautifully weird American cousin. Between them they prove the thesis of this whole site: in sport, what you drink is never just a drink.
Next — Chapter 10 / 10Drink Like a Pro