Louis Meyer Milkman Of The Speedway

INDIANAPOLIS May 17, 2003; Thje AP filed this feature. Louis Meyer is remembered for becoming the first three-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 -- and the Speedway's original milkman.

Thanks to Meyer, the Victory Lane chugalug is one of Indy's most storied traditions.

It's a ritual that has become so entrenched that even Emerson Fittipaldi, a former world champion, felt compelled to apologize after he reached first for some orange juice.

No one is sure exactly when the tradition originated.

Meyer was known to drink milk -- especially his mother's homemade buttermilk -- no matter how he finished in the race. But his routine received little attention, he once said, until a photographer spotted him drinking from a milk bottle in his Gasoline Alley garage after his 1933 victory.

There's no evidence Meyer, or anyone else, ever drank milk in Victory Lane until 1936, when he was seen taking a swig in a brief newsreel, Speedway historian Donald Davidson said.

That doesn't mean it didn't happen in 1933, Davidson said. Historians just haven't found the newspaper photo to back up Meyer's memories.

"It was a hot day," Meyer recalled in a 1992 interview. "I came into the garage area . . . and all I could think of was some nice, cold buttermilk."

He said reached into the icebox and took a drink just as a photographer happened by. He said some Indiana dairy producers later saw the picture, thought it was great publicity for their product and talked the Speedway into letting them have a bottle waiting for the winner.

Davidson said he has never seen such a photograph and one does not exist in the Speedway's massive archives. But that's still the version supported by the American Dairy Association of Indiana, spokeswoman Deb Osza said.

"We talked to Louis Meyer, and the story as we understand it, the way we tell it, is after the race, he went back to his garage and a photographer captured that image. That's how the tradition was born," said Osza, the association's communications director.

Except for a few gaps, mainly in the late 1940s to mid-1950s, the winner has had milk in Victory Lane each year since 1936. This year marks the 10th anniversary of Fittipaldi's Victory Lane faux pas, when he reached first for a bottle of orange juice instead of milk.

Two days later, he released an apology through the dairy association.

"I am a Brazilian orange juice producer, and for many years I have been toasting my racing victories with orange juice," Fittipaldi said. "I drank the milk after I had a little orange juice. I deeply regret the misunderstanding and inconvenience I caused for the American Dairy Association and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway."

He donated the prize money put up by the dairy association -- $5,000 for the race winner and $500 for the winning car's chief mechanic -- to the Championship Auto Racing Auxiliary, an organization made up of wives, mothers and friends of race participants.

There have been no lapses in tradition since then.

Meyer, who first came to Indianapolis in 1926 as a mechanic, died in 1995 at age 91. His first victory was in 1928, and his third in 1936 made him the first three-time winner of the race. That year, he also was the first to receive the Borg-Warner Trophy, which is still presented each year to the winner.

The last of his 12 races at Indy was in 1939, when he came close to becoming the first four-time winner. He was leading late in the race when he was forced to make a pit stop, then he crashed while in second place, three laps from the finish.

After his driving career ended, Meyer and a partner bought the Offenhauser engine business in 1945, and Offenhauser-powered cars won every Indianapolis 500 from 1947 to 1964.

In 1964, Meyer sold his interest in the company to his partner so he could become the distributor for the Ford Motor Co.'s racing engine. Six years later, he turned the operation over to A.J. Foyt, who moved the program to Houston.