By Sue Finley
One of television's most prominent personalities, Chris Harrison is known worldwide as the host of “The Bachelor”–a ratings winner since its debut in 2002–and a host of spin-offs. But horse racing fans know Harrison as one of the original hosts of TVG. Where does his love of racing come from? We caught up with a busy Harrison on the set of The Bachelor to find out.
TDN: One of your earliest jobs was at TVG. Do you ever find yourself handicapping The Bachelor field at the beginning of a new season?
CH: Oh, yeah. It's definitely the same thing as a sporting event or a horse race. You've got your frontrunners who come out early, who go out too fast and try to lose it, and then you have those that treat it as the marathon that it is and not a sprint, so it's very much a horse race.
TDN: Are you a good Bachelor handicapper?
CH: No, I'm probably better handicapping at the track than I am at The Bachelor mansion. You would think after 17 years I'd be much better at predicting how this goes, but I'm not.
TDN: Do you miss horse racing? Do you still go?
CH: I still enjoy it. I don't get to go as much, because my Bachelor and Bachelorette specials happen during the big moments. During the Breeders' Cup I'm on the road somewhere around the world for The Bachelor, and the first Saturday in May, we're wrapping up The Bachelorette, so usually I'm somewhere around the world with a computer at four in the morning trying to watch it. I've known Bob Baffert and Mike Smith for years because of my TVG days, and this year, with the Triple Crown, I was really excited for the connections. They were going for the Triple Crown and I was in the Maldives with [contestant] Becca [Kufrin], literally on the other side of the world, at two or three in the morning trying to find a live broadcast of the Belmont to find out if Justify was going to win the Triple Crown.
TDN: Did you succeed?
CH: I think I got it moments later, and not live, because we were frantically trying to figure it out, but it was new to me, so it was just as exciting.
TDN: Has this job made you more optimistic about true love, or less?
CH: It's made me as optimistic as I always was, but it's also made me more of a realist. There's that one component and that one thing that resonates around the world. The show is so popular in America, but it's just as popular in South Africa and Australia, because it's a currency we all understand and that's love and companionship, so it definitely translates across all those barriers and borders.
To read the rest of The Last Word with Chris Harrison in the TDN Weekend, click here.
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