Why does the Indy 500 winner drink milk?

A perfectly reasonable question.

Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. You may have heard that the Indy 500 winner celebrates with a bottle of milk and want to know why. We’re here to help.

It’s a quirky but perfectly understandable question some people have about the Indianapolis 500: Why does the winner drink milk?

Simply, it’s tradition. And the Indy 500 is all about tradition.

After taking the checkered flag at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in one of the biggest motor sports races in the world, the winning driver is draped with a giant flowered wreath and handed a bottle of ice-cold milk. The winner typically takes a couple sips, poses for a few quick photos and then proceeds to dump the rest of the bottle on their head — sometimes pouring milk on others nearby.

Been dreaming of this moment my entire life – drinking milk at the #Indy500!!!! Incredible thank you @Team_Penske and @IMS!! Dreams do come true! pic.twitter.com/4BrpVl2Ogd

— Simon Pagenaud (@simonpagenaud) May 26, 2019

The whole process makes for some truly spectacular photos, but how and when did this odd tradition start? It’s largely thanks to Louis Meyer back in the 1930s.

Via Indianapolis Motor Speedway:

Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer regularly drank buttermilk to refresh himself on a hot day and happened to drink some in Victory Lane as a matter of habit after winning the 1936 race. An executive with what was then the Milk Foundation was so elated when he saw the moment captured in a photograph in the sports section of his newspaper the following morning that he vowed to make sure it would be repeated in coming years. There was a period between 1947-55 when milk was apparently no longer offered, but the practice was revived in 1956 and has been a tradition ever since.

So if a big bottle of milk on a typically warm or hot Indiana day after several hours of intense racing sounds unappealing, blame Meyer.

But although he drank buttermilk, that’s not one of the options for drivers anymore.

The American Dairy Association Indiana is in charge of delivering the bottle of milk to the winner, and before every Indy 500, it polls the drivers to see what their preferred celebratory milk choice would be. But the options are simple: Whole, 2 percent or skim.

No Skim Milk at the 2021 #Indy500.

21 drivers select Whole.
12 drivers select Two Percent.

2 write in Buttermilk.
1 for Chocolate.

NOTE: Whole, Two Percent or Skim are the official options.#WinnersDrinkMilk // @IMS pic.twitter.com/52Tnembl29

— Indiana Dairy Assoc. (@INDairy) May 23, 2021

However, there’s always a write-in or two on the survey with drivers sometimes hoping for chocolate, strawberry or even buttermilk.

When the race is over, the “milk people” — yes, that’s really what they’re called — consult the poll of drivers to see what bottle the winner wants. They then grab one of three bottles from a nearby cooler, and the milk tradition continues.

And what happens if the Indy 500-winning driver is lactose intolerant? For The Win asked legendary racer Mario Andretti about that in 2017, and he explained:

“It’s a tradition. Not everybody enjoys milk but just because it’s happening at that point and because it’s got that meaning, all of a sudden milk tastes very good, even if you’re lactose [intolerant].”

For the 2021 Indy 500, the majority of drivers selected whole milk, which is typical, and no one chose skim. However, Ed Carpenter and Simona de Silvestro wrote in buttermilk, while Juan Pablo Montoya wrote in chocolate.