This Sunday is the 106^th running of the Indianapolis 500. At the conclusion of the race, one of the traditions is the race winner drinks milk. What is the story behind this tradition?

Louis Meyer, after winning his second Indianapolis 500 in 1933, drank a glass of buttermilk in Victory Lane. After a long day, he wanted buttermilk to quinch his thirst. His mother had always told him that buttermilk was refreshing and who would know better than mother.

In 1936, Meyer became the first driver to win three Indianapolis 500 races. Just as in 1933, he drank buttermilk, but this time he drank from a bottle which was captured in a photograph. An executive from the Dairy Foundation saw the picture in the newspaper and made it his mission to see that future winners would drink milk.

The tradition lasted until 1946 when Wilbur Shaw, the president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, gave the winning driver water instead of milk. After Shaw’s untimely death in 1954, the tradition returned after the dairy industry offered $400 to the winner and $50 to his chief mechanic if the winner was shown drinking milk in Victory Lane. In 1954 and 1955, the driver was also provided with a cup of water.  This year, the winner will receive $10,000 and the chief mechanic $500 in prize money from the American Diary Association Indiana.

Pat Flaherty, who won the 1956 Indianapolis 500, drank milk regularly because of a calcium deficiency. After the race, he drank an entire bottle of milk and asked for a second bottle in addition to some water from the Shaw cup.  From that point on, it became one of the traditions of the Indianapolis 500.

That was until 1993, when Emerson Fittipaldi chose to drink orange juice instead of milk. That caused an uproar especially since Fittipaldi turned down the offering twice and told someone off camera “No, I’m not having the milk, sir.” Turns out that Fittipaldi had an ownership interest in an orange grove in his native Brazil and wanted to support the industry. By this time, the drinking of milk had become a tradition and the fans jeered Fittipaldi. The people from the dairy industry were incensed. The $5,500 in prize money from the American Dairy Association was donated to charity and Fittipaldi apologized. One Indianapolis 500 fan told David Maisher-Lopez, a reporter from Motorsport.com, that he had placed a curse upon Fittipaldi and that was why Fittipaldi crashed on his attempt to win his third Indianapolis 500 the following year. Fifteen years later, Indianapolis 500 fans still had not forgotten. When he drove the Indianapolis 500 pace car in 2008, he was booed by the fans.

Drivers in the Indianapolis 500 select the milk they want—whole milk, 2% or skim. The vast majority select whole milk. The milk is delivered by two Indiana dairy farmers, the Milk Person and a “rookie” who is in training and will be the following year’s Milk Person. The rookie gives a bottle of milk to the winner’s chief mechanic and the team owner. The official Milk Person gives the ice-cold bottle of milk to the winner. The milk is in a ceremonial bottle which the winner will keep as a memento of their victory. This year’s Milk Person is Tim Haynes of Superior Dairy of Garrett, Indiana. The tradition is so important that bottles of milk (whole, 2% and skim) are kept in a suite in a cooler and protected by a security guard until retrieved for presentation to the winner and his team.  The winner of the race gets to keep the bottle as another trophy of their achievement.

The Associated Press conducted a survey in 2017 of the 27 living race winners, 13 of whom said that the drinking of milk was their favorite tradition related to the Indianapolis 500.

While the tradition started from Meyer’s drink of buttermilk, that is not an option available to the drivers. The buttermilk Meyer drank was what was left over after making butter…sweet and refreshing. The buttermilk today has had a culture added to whole which sours the milk and it is used primarily in baking.