Why do Indy 500 winners drink milk?

The tradition of drinking milk after winning the Indianapolis 500 traces back to 1933, when winner Louis Meyer asked for a glass of buttermilk after the race. He'd developed a habit of drinking it on hot days. It really stuck after his 1936 win, when a Movietone News cameraman happened to capture him drinking it again in victory lane; a dairy industry executive saw the footage and enthusiastically requested milk be made available to the winner of each Indianapolis 500 thereafter.

The tradition then paused for a decade. When racing resumed after World War II, then-Speedway president and three-time winner Wilbur Shaw opted to hand winners a silver cup of cold water instead, a brief era known as “Water from Wilbur,” which was basically a silver jug filled with ice-cold water, meant to mimic an ice bucket, lasting about a decade.

The dairy industry officially reclaimed its territory in 1956 – two years after Shaw's death – by offering a $400 cash bonus to the winner and $50 to their chief mechanic for drinking milk in victory lane, and it's remained a fixture ever since.

Today it's a full-blown ritual run by the American Dairy Association of Indiana: winners are asked beforehand whether they'd prefer whole, 2%, or skim milk (buttermilk, Meyer's original choice, is no longer offered), and the chosen bottle is waiting in victory lane for the winner to chug immediately after climbing from the car.

The tradition's most famous breach came in 1993, when Emerson Fittipaldi won the race and bucked tradition by drinking orange juice in order to promote the citrus industry of his native Brazil, resulting in him being booed by fans both immediately after and for some time afterward, with backlash so intense he issued a formal apology days later.