You don\u2019t host America\u2019s most popular game show for 25 years by being impulsive, by overreaching, or by rushing\u2014it takes slow and steady patience to run a marathon like that.\u00a0 And that\u2019s exactly the mentality that Jeopardy host Alex Trebek has brought to Long Beach for the Grand Prix Celebrity race, which he plans to win while keeping it at about 80mph, and without doing any passing.\u00a0 I\u2019ll take, \u201cProbably Not Going To Happen\u201d for $1,000 please, Alex.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just going to wait for everyone to crash, and then go by them,\u201d he told me yesterday at the Grand Prix Celebrity\/Media day.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s very dangerous to pass people, you don\u2019t want to do that.\u201d \u00a0While I can\u2019t disagree that it can be dangerous to pass, I\u2019m pretty sure that when you\u2019re racing, you do in fact want to pass people.\u00a0 \u201cThen again,\u201d he pointed out, \u201cI don\u2019t pass too many people on the freeway either.\u201d<\/p>\n
The esteemed (and oft-imitated) Trebek seemed to be enjoying himself in Long Beach, checking the stock market while signing autographs for young fans\u2014he also admitted after a little buttering up that his tortoise and the hare philosophy was as much about fear as it was strategy.\u00a0 \u201c85 miles and hour is more than enough for me,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cI just want to be comfortable and listen to the radio.\u201d\u00a0 Unfortunately for Alex, those Toyota racers don\u2019t come with 94.7 The Wave preprogrammed on the switch.<\/p>\n
After taking a few practice laps, he didn\u2019t seem to be settling in.\u00a0 \u201cThese cars are so complicated\u2014this is why someone invented automatic transmission.\u00a0 And all the smells\u2026I think I might be going to buy one of those deodorizers after this.\u201d<\/p>\n
You might be confused (as I was) as to why Trebek was forcing himself to endure the rigors (and apparently the smells) of a street race\u2014he seemed a little perplexed as well, basically saying that since he was asked, he figured he would.\u00a0 \u201cI thought it would be an exciting experience, and so far it\u2019s turned out to be exactly that.\u201d\u00a0 Just, you know, not too exciting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some insight into the…interesting strategy of Alex Trebek, as he practices for next week’s celebrity race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2096],"class_list":["post-4219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4219"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4219"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}