Anakin Skywalker won the largest and hardest racing event in the galaxy. At the age of ten.

That's a pretty huge accomplishment, right? I'd say so. Going up against 25 racing veterans, who would have had years more experience in the sport than him, driving a never tested homemade racecar, and winning in a certainly epic upset against one of the most legendary and cutthroat racers alive. His name would have been everywhere. Greg Proops would be talking about that race for years, no doubt about it. A legendary upset by a total unknown who hadn't even finished a race before that day? That's gotta make the cover of Sports Illustrated.

So tell me. Why. How. Tell me why Luke Skywalker had never heard his name? I mean, there's not a whole lot to do on Tatooine. Given that Luke showed the same enjoyment of riding around in floating vehicles and doing crazy stunts in them, he'd certainly be a keen follower of such a sporting event as podracing. I mean, the biggest race in the universe happens in his backyard. You know Luke be up late at night looking over the old VHS tapes of past races. There's no way such an interesting race would have passed by him. No way at all. After seeing this name similarity, he would have no doubt gotten on the wikipedias and been like YO, THIS DUDES FROM HERE TOO!

So what happened?

"Hey Uncle Owen, I saw this dude with my last name won the Boota Eve. Is he re-"

"NO. DON'T TALK CRAZY. GO DO YOUR CHORES"

"But he's from Mos Espa!"

"TOTAL COINCIDENCE. GO MILK THE SAND"

I don't believe this for a second. Do you, o wise and venerable PT have an answer for me?

 

The EU novel 'Tatooine Ghost' makes this scenario even more obvious, as it establishes that Anakin Skywalker, champion podracer, was still something of a cult figure 30+ years later.

His cult status was very much centred around Mos Espa, but come on...

 

The only possible explanations that I have been able to come up with are these:

1. Luke knew the name Anakin Skywalker. I was never under the impression that he didn't know his father's name. But he, like Anakin's friends in Mos Espa, did not know or believe that Anakin had become Darth Vader. (Obviously Luke didn't know, and if none of Anakin's childhood friends knew either, there's not a discontinuity.) Tatooine Ghost does mention that Luke found his father's name on a list of old Boonta Eve race winners, although it was post-ROTJ before he looked him up. The Boonta Eve Classic was long gone by the time of the OT, so maybe Luke didn't watch old VHS tapes after all? Maybe he was only interested in bulls-eyeing womp rats in his T-16? Which leads me to theory 2...

2. Anakin's fame was limited to Mos Espa. In AOTC, Watto indicated to Anakin that Mos Eisley was a good distance and the Lars farm was on the other side of Mos Eisley.

It is also possible that Luke asked Owen about his father and was told to shut up.

 

I always thought, based on ANH, that Luke knew his dad was from Tatooine and his name was Anakin.

Am I missing something?

 

Yeah I have an answer, Lucas didn't consider that when he wrote the script.
He just wanted a cool race with pods.

 

But when is it ever stated that the Boonta Eve is the "largest and hardest event in the galaxy"? Do we even know if Anakin's name would have been recorded? I mean, he was still a slave at the time so they may have ascribed the win to Watto. I don't know. I know Lucas doesn't really follow EU, so I tend to be pretty lenient with him when the movies contradict an EU source.

 

He doesn't really say anything about the distance. I've always thought that the two cities Maul sees through his binoculars are Mos Espa and Mos Eisley. If that's the case, they're not too far apart. This is also suggested by the fact that Beggar's Canyon is part of the Boonta per the TPM novel and perhaps other sources. So Luke's actually flown the T-16 in the same area his father raced in. But even if this were not the case and the cities were far apart, in a technological universe you'd still think there would be ample exchange of information. Maybe Owen was real strict and simply didn't allow Luke to use the HoloNet.

 

Watto says something like, long way away, some place on the other side of Mos Eisley I think.

 

Beggar's Canyon's also on the map of the Mos Espa Circuit in Inside the Worlds of The Phantom Menace, IIRC.

 

Anyone know when the Boonta ended?

In Tatooine Ghost, Kitster Banai's ex-wife actually lives on the former racetrack, has a place in the stadium, but the race itself has not happened for many years, decades I believe.

But again, I never got the impression that the name Anakin Skywalker was a surprise to Luke. I just assumed that he could have known that his father race pods, then thought that his father left Tatooine and became a navigator on a spice freighter and was killed.

 

I know kids in thier late teens who can't tell me who the mayor of the town they LIVE IN is. And this is with the internet, etc. So, his ignorance of some race winner, name notwithstanding from 18 years previous in another town doesn't exactly surprise me.

Aside from that, it doesn't seem luke was much of a social butterfly. he had his small group of friends (cami, fixer, biggs) they hung out and flew about the canyons and that seems about it. While distance isn't specifically given it can be inferred rather easily i think that it was far enough. Based on Luke and Bens discussion on the ridge overlooking Mos Eisley it didn't seem Luke had ever been there. Why would he therefore go to Mos Espa? All his time seemed to spent in/around Anchor head.

 

Well according to George Lucas at Celebration V, there are lots of people with the last name "Skywalker". "You should see the phone book," he says.

 

So where are they? The only Skywalkers we know about are Anakin, Luke, Leia, Shmi, Padme ( By Marriage), and the rest of the family..

 

Yeah. There are lots of notorious sportsmen on this planet with my last name. I don't automatically assume they might be related to me. Just because the Skywalker name is alien to our world doesn't mean its alien to Tatooine.

Its also more than likely Owen and Beru gave Anakin a different forename when describing him to Luke. They already had Luke believe Anakin had been a mere navigator, so I doubt they'd have told him the true name.

Ummmm off-screen?

 

Source?

 

^ True, the podraces on Malastare could have been a bigger deal. Maybe even other podraces on other parts of Tatooine; the Boonta Eve could just be the biggest deal in the Mos Espa, Mos Eisley, Anchorhead, Beggar's Canyon, etc. area.

Regardless, though, as others have said... the races could have ended soon after Anakin wins, so a while before Luke is aware of that sort of thing. And the last name has been stated to be a common one.

Edit: I guess this answers the first part after all: The Boonta Eve Classic was the largest annual podrace in the galaxy.

 

That's cool. Just to add to that, somewhat: when I was at uni, living in a student house, the guy in the room above me was called Luke Walker. OK, so it's not quite there, but it amused me, the guy with Star Wars posters splashed on his wall.

I think, as has been said, Luke (Skywalker)wasn't a "social butterfly", to use firesaber's coinage, and it's by no means assured he knew about podracing, let alone the Boonta Eve Classic or his father being the winner of a particular race in a particular year.

We are often as ignorant of the commonplace and the mundane as we are of the transcendent and the sublime. Personally speaking, I don't know as much about my parents' early years as I feel I really should, and that's without anyone doing anything consciously to shield me from knowing more. We should maybe take this wrinkle in the SW fabric as a reminder that history is all around us -- we *are* history, in effect -- but that we're often dull to its presence. In many ways, it is analogous with the Force.

 

Except of course that in this case, Luke is pretty explicitly interested in - racing, engines, and becoming a pilot! As an enthusiast, it stands to reason that he'd check out the classic races, keep tabs on the who's who in his favourite sport (and really, what other sport would this young man be following), have all the tradeable cards and talk for hours about the best engines, power converters and whatnot with his friends.

Even so, I don't really see a big problem here (yup, you read correctly). We know that Owen told Luke that his father worked on a spice freighter during the Clone Wars, and there's really no reason why a retired pod-racer might end up in that trade somewhere along the way, particularly given the outbreak of war. As long as Luke does not know that his father became a Jedi and fought in the Clone Wars, there's really no continuity problem at hand, and I can't see how his knowledge about Boonta Eve would point in that direction when Owen was around to feed him false information about what happened afterwards...

 

*jumps up and down*

Ooo! I know I know!

We know that Darth Vader wanted to forget his old life and persona (Anakin Skywalker). Now, seeing as he was pretty much the deputy leader of the Empire and the Empire was in charge on Tatooine, he could have ordered those race records destroyed and that name banned or whatever, so that his name was never spoken of again. I'm guessing the Empire censored the Holonet and other types of media too.

 

Excuse my anal moment, but Shmi was never married to a Skywalker, it was her own family name.

 

He said "Padme (By Marriage)", not "Shmi (By Marriage)".

 

Eh? We know that Luke has a T-16 skyhopper in ANH and has probably logged considerable flight time in it per his remark about "bullseyeing" womp rats. We also know that he wanted to pick up some "power converters" from Tosche Station. We know little else. It does not follow that he'd have an interest in podracing. Quite the opposite. By all accounts, it was an expensive and elite sport; unlike owning and cruising around in a T-16 skyhopper. Further, Anakin boasts in TPM of being the only human who can race pods. Although Luke and Leia are his progeny and might have similar competence, there's no direct evidence they're as good as their father.

 

There are 582,797,754 Jax Pavans on Coruscant.

 

Now you are making the assumption that the only way to express interest in a sport is to actively practice it yourself, which, of course, is a very reductionist. I wasn't suggesting that Luke actually pod-raced himself. Rather, that he followed the sport like an enthusiastic fan, a part of the animated audience we see seated on Boonta Eve. It's pretty clear that's it's a big spectator sport, and given Luke's interests, it would strike me as strange if he didn't follow it and was familiar with the major names. You know, much like hockey fans know who Wayne Gretzky is, regardless of whether they actually play the game themselves, or not...

 

I got the impression Luke's interest in speed was a bit more... grounded, practical? Not fanatical. His friends all race hotrods, he'll do it too. And since podracing is a bit more like betting on a game of Russian roulette, I imagine its popularity is limited to gamblers, not regular sports enthusiasts.

Besides, Anakin disappeared from Tattooine pretty quick. He won ONE race. Not enough time to gain a reputation. Maybe since Anakin's race was so unbelievable, most people decided not to believe it. It could have been "that year someone cheated."