Louisville is a fascinating place for sports fans to spend time, especially those partial to a drop of bourbon whiskey - a local speciality. Yet the city's most famous sporting son did not drink alcohol.
The Muhammad Ali Center, in the city’s downtown, conveys the life story and legacy of arguably the greatest sportsman of all time. Ali didn’t merely overcome opponents in the boxing ring on the way to becoming the three-time heavyweight champion of the world, he became a civil rights icon.
Racial segregation was still a factor in local life when, known as Cassius Clay, he won gold at the Rome Olympics in 1960. After refusing to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, in 1967, he was stripped of his world title and boxing licence.
Those stories are engagingly told at the sixstorey centre, where visitors can also test their boxing skills on interactive displays and watch flight footage. It is one of those attractions where it’s easy to lose track of time and spend the best part of a day.
A five-minute walk away, the world’s biggest baseball bat towers over the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory on West Main Street, which is also known as Whiskey Row because of premises associated with the bourbon trade. The huge bat looks like it’s been casually left leaning against the wall by some departed giant. It’s a scaledup replica of the 34-inch bat favoured by ‘Babe’ Ruth, one of the sport’s all-time greats. Tours provide demonstrations of how bats are made, allow visitors to discover which players have swung them and try them in an indoor batting cage.
On the opposite side of the street stands the Frazier History Museum. Named after the philanthropist Owsley Brown Frazier, not the boxer who defeated Muhammad Ali in ‘The Fight of the Century’, it holds the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center and provides a comprehensive overview of the spirit’s history and culture. Maps are available, pointing out the locations of distilleries along the trail, the closest being Michter’s Fort Nelson Distillery on the same block, in an Italianate building with arched windows.
Tours are also offered in the Kentucky Peerless Distilling Co. premises, under five minutes’ walk from the museum. Meanwhile, the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience tells the story of the Welshman and entrepreneur, who settled in what is today Louisville more than 200 years ago and established a commercial distillery. The attraction holds a recreation of a speakeasy where the impact of Prohibition on the spirits industry is discussed, and whiskey and chocolate tastings are an option.
Louisville’s best-known sporting venue is a 10-minute taxi ride from downtown. On the first Saturday of May, Churchill Downs racetrack is the venue for America’s most prestigious horse race, the Kentucky Derby. The winner of the race known as ‘The Run for the Roses’, due to the blanket of red roses draped over the winning horse, receives $3.1 million (£2.33m) in prize money.
The heritage of the race is explained at the onsite Kentucky Derby Museum. Fittingly, visitors pass through stalls and can sit astride ‘horses’ to participate in a video game running of the race. In addition to artefacts, the bourbon-laced recipe for Mint Julep, a popular Derby Day cocktail, is displayed.
Dinner in the opulent lobby of The Brown Hotel brings an opportunity to experience one of Louisville’s delicacies where it originated. The open-faced Hot Brown sandwich became popular in the 1920s, satisfying the hunger of Prohibition-era partygoers. Laced with Mornay sauce, turkey and bacon, it’s ideal with an Ali Smash or a glass of The Louisville Lip – cocktails referencing the city’s famed champion boxer.