Longines Celebrates “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” with a New Mini DolceVita Series

Since 2011, Longines has been the official timekeeper and watch of the annual Kentucky Derby and the Kentucky Oaks horseraces in Louisville, Kentucky.

This year – on the 150th running of the back-to-back races – the brand has released a limited-edition timepiece to add to the brand’s growing Mini DolceVita collection.

Each spring for the last nearly 150 years – long before Bob Costas, Mike Tirico, Johnny Weir, or even televised sports, in general – the residents of the state of Kentucky and its surrounding areas have donned their “Sunday Best” (even on Friday and Saturday) and showed up at Churchill Downs in Louisville to watch and bet on the finest horses in the racing world.

The Kentucky Oaks, for those unaware, is the race that occurs the day before the Derby. The Oaks race is slightly shorter than the Derby and comprises female horses (known as “fillies”) that are 3 years of age.
 

Over the years, the Oaks has also become associated with the color pink for two reasons: the fact that it’s a filly-only race and the introduction of the parade of breast and ovarian cancer survivors that march ahead of the race’s start. Thus, it is not unusual to see race fans of all genders arrive at the Oaks wearing pink in various forms (and I have to say, as a former attendee who once got to stand on the winner’s circle and look back at 130,000 people wearing pink, it is most certainly a remarkable sight).

The Kentucky Derby, however, likely needs no description; however, I’m going to give you one, anyway: The most attended and popular of the three “Triple Crown” races (the Preakness Stakes in Maryland and Belmont Stakes in New York being the other two), the Kentucky Derby is a televised spectacle that has been deemed the “Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports.”
 

Often held on or near Mother’s Day weekend, racegoers show up in seersucker suits and elaborately decorated hats or fascinators and drink mint juleps until they realize they’ve lost all their money betting (and then they drink some more!). It’s a grand ol’ southern experience, and it’s all timed out by the one and only Longines.

In honor of the brand’s longtime partnership with the two Kentucky races and to celebrate their 150th running, Longines released a 150-piece limited edition of its Mini DolceVita watch.

This timepiece, which has a stainless-steel set with thirty-eight round brilliant cut diamonds, comes on a deep pink double Nappy leather strap that has been created with holes numbering 1 through 6 as a nod to the stirrups and saddles that are such a huge part of the equestrian universe.
 

The color of the strap pays direct homage to the fight against health issues that impact women; thus, a portion of the sales of the 150-piece limited edition will be donated to the Horses and Hope charity, which promotes increased breast cancer screening, education, and treatment referrals among Kentucky’s horse industry workers.

If the brightly colored feminine hue isn’t exactly your cup of tea, Longines also partnered with longtime Ambassador of Elegance Kate Winslet to introduce the Mini DolceVita double tour strap collection in a variety of alternate colors. The newest models are available on Nappa leather straps in black, beige-gold, pink, red, orange, and green.
 

Each of the new models has a stainless-steel rectangular case (measuring 21.50 mm x 29.00 mm), and each is water-resistant to three bar (30 meters). The watches are equipped with the Longines high-precision L178 quartz movement, and the dial design on each consists of a rectangular Roman dial with flinqué decoration, guilloche, and painted Roman numerals with blued steel hands.
 

In contrast, the dial on the aforementioned limited-edition watch boasts a Cosmo dial made with sand-blasted silvered and matte white discs, Roman numeral hour markers, and black-painted indices with hands in rose gold.