2025 Indy 500: Why does the Indy 500 winner drink milk?
2025 Indy 500: Why does the Indy 500 winner drink milk?
Welcome to FTW Explains: a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. You may have heard that the Indy 500 winner celebrates with a bottle of milk and want to know why. We're here to help.
It's a quirky but perfectly understandable question some people have about the Indianapolis 500: Why does the winner drink milk?
Simply, it's tradition. The Indy 500 is all about tradition, and this one is nearly 100 years old.
After taking the Indy 500 checkered flag at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in one of the biggest motorsports races in the world, the winning driver is draped with a giant flowered wreath and handed a bottle of ice-cold milk by the official milk people and the American Dairy Association Indiana. The winner typically takes a couple sips, poses for a few quick photos and then proceeds to dump the rest of the bottle on their head — sometimes pouring milk on others nearby.
The whole process makes for some truly spectacular photos, but how and when did this odd tradition start? It's largely thanks to Louis Meyer back in the 1930s.
Via Indianapolis Motor Speedway:
"Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer regularly drank buttermilk to refresh himself on a hot day and happened to drink some in Victory Lane as a matter of habit after winning the 1936 race. An executive with what was then the Milk Foundation was so elated when he saw the moment captured in a photograph in the sports section of his newspaper the following morning that he vowed to make sure it would be repeated in coming years. There was a period between 1947-55 when milk was apparently no longer offered, but the practice was revived in 1956 and has been a tradition ever since."
Buttermilk is not an option anymore, as they're limited to whole, 2 percent or skim. However, the American Dairy Association Indiana does have a secret lactose-free option, should a driver request that.
For the 2025 Indy 500, the majority of drivers requested whole milk with a handful of drivers wanting 2 percent.
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