Sports fans are funny, fickle people.  Some grow up surrounded by a hometown pride in their city's teams that's branded on every t-shirt, cap, and bumper sticker.  It follows them wherever they go in life.  A diehard Red Sox fan growing up in Boston can move to a dozen different cities in his or her lifetime and will always root for the cursed Fenway fellows. Others find team spirit wherever they go, and will pick up a banner or a silly number-one foam glove to cheer for the teams that play for Miami, Chicago, San Diego, or whichever city they currently call home.

The latter type of fan would have a hard time living in Siena.  A recent trip to Italy with my family brought me to this small, stone city, a three-hour busride north of Rome.  While there visiting my sister, we learned of an annual horserace they hold called the Palio.  The Palio is held twice a year, in July and then August, on the Piazza del Campo, a marvelous, circular courtyard with a soaring bell tower in the city's center.   Alas, we'd missed the Palio by several months, but had the chance to learn a bit about it.

Siena is divided up into seventeen cantrati, or neighborhoods, which compete in the Palio.  They each have a mascot, usually an animal -- Tortoise, Wave, She-Wolf, Goose, Shell, Porcupine, Dragon, Owl, Snail, Panther, Eagle, Caterpillar, Unicorn, Ram, Giraffe, Forest and Tower.  These cantrati were originally set up in the Middle Ages to aid Siena in defending its newly won independence from Florence¹. Now, they function as a basis for local community unity, particularly when it comes to the Palio. This sense of community is so strong that once you're born into a cantrata, you remain part of it, no matter where you go or whom you marry.  Thus, couples can find themselves on opposite sides of the Palio come the summer, and are sometime encouraged to sleep within their original cantrata the week of the race.  And you think your relationship gets rocky every time you watch a Sox/Yankees game with your New York sweetheart...

My sister, who's studying at the University of Siena, lives in a dorm which is firmly entrenched in the Snail cantrata.   However, our hotel was right down the street from the main square of the Owl cantrata.  Uh oh.  A quick bit of research revealed that, while the Owl hasn't won a Palio since 1979, the Snail, a mascot that does not exactly inspire great confidence in its speed, won in 1999. This provides an interesting twist on our brother-sister rivalry.

Preparation for the big race begins months before the actual event.  Late April marks the beginning of "Parade Season," when each cantrata stages colorful processions around the city to celebrate its patron saint. In fact, I suspect this goes on to some degree all year round, as evidenced by the procession that went by our hotel at 11pm during our mid-October visit.

Out of the seventeen cantrati, only ten compete in each of the two races, due, at least in part, to space limitations (even ten horses can barely fit in the track space allotted for the race).  It thus becomes a very important and controversial decision as to which three cantrati get to participate in both races.  Given the passion the Sienese feel for this race, being the one who makes this decision seems to carry the same important yet burdensome prestige that might be felt by a dimpled chad examiner in Florida.

Once the cantrati are chosen, then come the horses.  These are chosen by lot, while all of Siena holds its breath. Cries of joy or shouts of despair follow these announcements, depending on whether the chosen horse is deemed "worthy."  Based on the relative "worthiness" of the chosen steed, each cantrata forms its strategy on whether to attempt to win, or to make the enemy lose.  This practice might liven up some of the duller moments in American professional sports.  Instead of trying to capture the World Series title, a team low on winning talent could make the choice to thwart the Yankees' attempts at victory by targeting Derek Jeter's knees, wrists, and ankles at every opportunity.

At first glance, all of the effort and anguish that goes into the Palio can seem a bit ridiculous. On the day of the race, the horses are brought into the local churches to be blessed, as fans cram themselves in to watch. Three hours of medieval pageantry precedes the race, costing a pretty penny for the cantrati.  Pandemonium breaks loose when the jockeys and horses actually arrive at the Campo and the actual line-up can go through five or six false starts before actually beginning the race.  The event itself lasts only a minute-and-a-half, and can get rather brutal, with jockeys whipping other cantrati's horses and knocking them into the stands. Grown men and women weep if their cantrata loses, particularly when the winner is a horse with no jockey (which apparently happened this past year when the winning jockey was knocked off before the finish, causing no small amount of controversy).

Upon further examination, however, this apparent near-hysteria is no different than the lengths we go through here at home to facilitate athletic competition. True, I've never heard of Bernard Cardinal Law blessing the arms of Pedro Martinez or Drew Bledsoe before their respective season openers, but we come pretty close.  As in our professional leagues, jockeys hired for the Palio are well-trained and paid astronomical sums.  Likewise, American sports franchises have been known to spend a few dollars here and there to promote their teams.  And if we scoff at a grown Sienese man weeping for his horse's loss, better that than some of the less than peaceful ways in which some adult Americans express similar frustration on Superbowl Sunday or after the NBA Finals.

On a local level, the Sienese are right in step with those of us living here in the Bambino-cursed country of Boston.  A chronic optimism sets in soon after the Palio has ended, falling in step with the Red Sox mantra, "There's always next year."

So, as sports fans go, I guess I'm somewhat of a diehard.  Not that I could even tell you who the players are from year to year (I can't), but I'll always root for the Sox (the Red ones, that is), Patriots, Bruins, and Celtics (yes, even them), no matter what city I end up calling home. Likewise, I'll always be an Owl, and my sister, a Snail.  Even if we never return to Siena or (Heaven forbid!) marry someone who's an Eagle or a Caterpillar.