Pato O’Ward Milks Cow In Hopes Of Changing Indy 500 Fortunes

There are a lot of people who will be rooting for Arrow McLaren's Pato O'Ward to win the Indianapolis 500 this year, and not just because he's one of the most popular drivers in the NTT IndyCar Series.

It's that he has come so close to winning the Greatest Spectacle in Racing a couple of times, including last year when he was passed on the final lap by eventual winner Josef Newgarden.

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But O'Ward did something different ahead of the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500: he's milking a cow.

It's a longstanding tradition that in the week leading up to the race, rookies — like this year's polesitter, Robert Shwartzman of Prema Racing — milk a cow.

Afterward, Shwartzman said that he was told that milking the cow is a must if you want to win the Indy 500.

"The woman, she came to me and said, ‘The people who didn’t milk the cow, they never won the Indy 500,’ and they were like (did not finish). It’s bad luck," Shwartzman said, per WTHR. "Whoever milks the cow. Alexander Rossi did it. He won the 500. You have to milk the cow."

Now, here's where Pato comes into this. His rookie year was in 2020, which meant that COVID prevented him from getting the rookie treatment and milking a cow.

So, O'Ward took it upon himself to fix this in hopes that milking a cow might break the curse that has prevented him from tasting milk in Victory Lane.

On Friday, before the final practice session ahead of the race, O'Ward milked a cow named Rihanna.

Is that going to be O'Ward's ticket to a frosty glass bottle of milk on Sunday afternoon? I don't know, but he'll be starting on the outside of Row 1 in P3 when Shwartzman leads the field to green, which means he should have a pretty good chance of making it happen.