Dog vs. Sprinkler … who’s going to win?!?
Bailey announces the battle, but it’s Chaya who fights the good fight.
Sep 252009
There wasn’t much shock in today’s NASCAR announcement that Mark Martin’s contract with Hendrick Motorsports was extended two years. The man just won his 39th career race and leads the SprintCup point standings heading into the Chase (their version of a playoff).
I’m a huge fan of the #5 car, something which started in 2005 – during his retirement tour. Yup: Mark Martin retired at the end of the ’05 season but came back because a team needed a driver and he didn’t feel like fishing on Sunday afternoons (I suppose).
My favorite line of Martin’s announcement today: Who would want to quit?
In some form or fashion, it’s the same line that’s been uttered – now twice – by Brett Favre – my former favorite quarterback in the NFL. Why couldn’t he just let his legacy live? Is owning just about every stat in the record book not good enough?
Though rare, this trend of UnRetirement or RetirementLite or NuUhI’mNotGoinNowhere happens in racing too. Not too often with the horses or trainers, but sometimes with jockeys.
My favorite case: Shane Sellers. I’ve never seen bigger press conference at Churchill Downs – national media, a blue ribbon panel of CDI executives, and Shane announcing his retirement from the game he loves so dearly. But instead of going the Gary Stevens / Jerry Bailey route of TV commentatorship or the Gary Boulanger / Mark Guidry route of trainerism, Shane took his biggest qualm with the industry and helped HBO make an incredible documentary on how jockeys stay so darn thin. And then he came back to riding (successfully, but still).
I happen to love that Shane’s first mount back was on a Guidry horse – Ide Ball on July 2nd at Evangeline Downs. And he was lucky to get a winner that night. But why couldn’t he just stop there? He could have been undefeated in his comeback and simply retired to a speaking circuit or join the Legends Tour with Pat Day or record another country album.
The last big name jockey to come out of riding retirement was Angel Cordero, Jr. Cordero retired over ten years ago and is now an exercise rider and the agent for top jockey Johnny Velazquez, who rides first-call for Todd Pletcher. Several years ago, Pletcher had a filly in his barn named Indian Vale who was supposed to be the second coming of Ruffian and he got Cordero to come out of retirement for her stakes debut. Though Indian Vale finished 5th that day and would go on to be a multiple graded stakes winner later in her 14-race career, to me she will forever be That Horse Cordero Came Out Of Retirement For For No Reason.
While many athletes retire before they absolutely have to (saving injuries, no doubt), there are some who need to be reminded that it’s not all about them. There are coach/trainerships and commentary spots and crew chief positions and teams to own.
There is life after the huddle, the finish line, or the winner’s circle. In other words: we retire horses, don’t we?
Sep 132009
Let’s play word association…
I say: Rachel Alexandra. You say: freak, amazing, elegant, Ruffian-esque, history in the making.
I say: Zenyatta. You say: perfect, grinder, weight don’t matter, Personal Ensign-esque, super freak.
Notice the answer to either filly is not the other’s name? Amazing how that happens. And why is that? Because each gets to stand on their own merits – and the greatness of one has nothing to do with the other.
And I want everyone to stop with the “they must face each other” banter. Give it up because (A) it’s 99.9% not going to happen, and (B) both have proven the best of their respective age groups this year.
Given each camp’s rhetoric, I see only one logical spot for them to meet (and no, it’s not at Santa Anita on November 7th). It’s the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream in February. Why is this ideal? Because it fills the (why is this necessary?) component of the two girls going against the boys, plus it would be a great spot for Rachel to start her 2010 campaign while allowing Zenyatta to ship east for one last race before heading off to the breeding shed in Kentucky.
Gulfstream has already announced they would wave the nomination/entry/starter fees for the Donn to both Rachel and Zenyatta – regardless if both run.
But something keeps striking me as a mix of ridiculous and just plain odd: Belmont has promised to raise the purse of the Beldame to $1 million if both fillies run, Breeders’ Cup has promised an additional $1 million to the Classic winner’s share if both fillies run (why not the Ladies Classic, I don’t know), and James McIngvale (aka Mattress Mac of Gallery Furniture and During/Bull Market fame) has pledged $2 million for the fillies to meet in a match race at Sam Houston.
Why, then, am I irked? Zenyatta is owned by Mr. & Mrs. Jerry Moss (a very successful executive from the recording/entertainment industry), while Rachel has been owned for four months by a partnership led by Stonestreet Stables’ Jess Jackson (who made an absolute fortune with Kendall-Jackson) … these are not people in need of purse money. And if tracks can come up with the money for a promotional event, why then are purses so low that race dates are being cut? (another issue for another blog, I know)
To boot, these are two of the best managed horses in history: Zenyatta is somewhat fragile and that’s meant just 12 starts for the 5yo mare; Rachel, meanwhile, has had maybe the toughest single year campaign we’ll ever see a modern day Thoroughbred have (consider that her 65-and-a-head win margin this year includes beating 3yo Fillies five times, 3yo Colts twice, AND older males).
There is a definite bias between East and West coasters when it comes to which filly is better. But the facts speak for themselves and each horse’s record makes it pretty obvious that Rachel will take 3yo Filly and Horse of the Year honors, while Zenyatta will be Older Filly/Mare for the second year in a row. If Zenyatta wins one more race and then takes the Breeders’ Cup Classic, then yes, maybe she makes a case for Horse of the Year (based on weight she’s carried and then beating the boys).
If you still need to make a fuss over them not meeting on the track this year, take solace that these two super-freaky fillies can still facing each other on the Horse of the Year ballots. But why can’t we all just let the ladies run into the history books – they don’t have any more to prove.
Several weeks ago I sat at O’Charley’s in Louisville sharing appetizers and jokes with two sports anchors, who happen to be friends. We were talking football, and both men had stories about their news directors pushing for live updates of scores. With just one solution: Twitter, there’s now a Friday night race between them to post the scores first.
Good thing they’re covering high school football, where there’s no strangling social media policy (yet).
Last I checked, the good varsity players make their way onto college rosters. And no NCAA league is tougher than the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Tough teams, tougher policies: fans are now clear to update Facebook and Twitter and even snap a camera phone picture or two, but nothing “for commercial use” means media cannot do the blogging that’s become so popular in recent months. That’s a tough break for alumni who rely on those blogs for timely updates when the game isn’t televised in their area.
But what’s the media to do – boycott all SEC game coverage in protest? That works if your goal is to alienate your entire readership. But a protest precedent is about to be set in the NFL, whose new policy mandates no social media messages posted by athletes or their representatives within a 90 minute window before and after games.
Golf is the only sport where the social media rules work to everyone’s advantage: no cell phones or cameras allowed on the course for anyone except credentialed media means quiet for the players and a controlled media message. Yet live blogging from the media allows those following at work or on the road to stay fully informed, and players Tweeting from the clubhouse in between rounds (such as @IanJamesPoulter) engages fans in a whole new way.
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad (formerly Johnson) Ochocinco has always pushed the boundaries of the league. Yet last Friday, even though he earlier said he would find a way to Tweet through games regardless of whatever policy was doled out, Ochocinco took the extraordinary step of deleting his entire account, saying “due to the many rules the NFL has made I’ve found it difficult to enjoy Twitter.”
Who hasn’t been following @OGOchocinco? He was as informative about football as he was entertaining about life in general. Combined with the HBO series “Hard Knocks” that has featured the Bengals this season, Chad’s accessibility turned casual fans into hardcore fanatics.
We live in a world where even the President has a PDA. If the White House can negotiate a deal with the security powers that be, why can’t the SEC or NFL find a balance with the players? There is no harm except free marketing in Shaq and Ochocinco interacting with their fans. What’s next, banning autograph signings outside the locker rooms? Because that’s about the same level of “team security” secrets these guys are going to give out online.
No one can blame these leagues – from the NCAA to the SEC to the NFL – for protecting lucrative television deals. But professional sports teams rely on drafting from college rosters which are filled with former high school players. And the latter group likes to keep their social media pages updated: so leagues need to keep in mind that these suffocating social media policies are souring fans, media, and now even players.
I work in a sport where the focus in on an animal, so I accepted years ago that I had to be OK with the ugly side – that’s breakdowns and catastrophic injuries for those who don’t know.
That doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Today, as the horses rounded the historic Saratoga turn one final time in 2009, a horse was being pulled up. While this doesn’t always mean impending doom – we had a horse eased across the wire earlier on the day – I knew we were headed for trouble when the jock got to the eighth pole and jumped off.
I couldn’t tell ya who won the race or if it was even a close one. I was only interested in the breakdown: Tim Ritvo’s horse Todo K (Kafwain x Scherzando) with the meet’s leading jockey Ramon Dominguez. The outrider got there pretty quick and Ramon was able to keep the horse calm for a bit (not an easy task with a race finishing, a crowd of 29k+, and the potent pain/adrenaline combo), but a right front leg injury was apparent, as he obviously couldn’t put weight on it.
By the time the other horses were coming back to be unsaddled, Todo K’s trainer and grooms were running across the dirt track to get to him. Just as they did, so too did the horse ambulance. And out came the sheet. Except they did a masterful job in shielding folks at eye-level, but for those of us some five stories high, we saw the whole thing.
This – like George Washington in the ’07 Breeders’ Cup Classic or Eight Belles in the ’08 Kentucky Derby – is when I’m beyond grateful for the invention of a needle. See, I was there, crying, at both of those events too. But those times saw staff get the horse to the ground before the fatal shot – this time he was standing.
It wasn’t pretty, nor was it anything I ever want to see again.
Just as it happened, someone shouted the official meet breakdown stats: only 3 in the afternoons (all on the turf) and 1 in the mornings (on the dirt). These are beautiful, fragile creatures and to see harm come to any of them is beyond my comprehension, even if it’s for their own good as the case was today.
Before PETA has a field day, let me say that while breakdowns are tragic and painful, they’re also necessary for us to be OK with in order for us to do what we do every day: you can’t have the highs of Rachel without the lows of Todo.
So I ask you to join me in a prayer for a fallen friend: Todo K.
Sep 062009
Watching Rachel Alexandra win the Woodward was an experience I’ll never forget. There simply aren’t enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe the sheer awesomeness of the event.
Though for as struck as I was by what I saw on-track, what happened afterwards will live with me forever: things like Steve Asmussen (knowing Rachel’d won the milisecond they crossed the wire) wrapping his wife in a bearhug as if to say “we f’in did it!” or watching hardened media professionals who have seen just about everything be rendered speechless.
But my favorite moment is something that happened between me and a man I’ve idolized for years, Edgar Prado.
I was tasked to get losing jockey quotes after the race. Losing jockeys have a pretty standard route: 1) get off horse, 2) talk to trainer, 3) weigh out, and 4) walk to jock’s room. The questions are pretty basic stuff, especially with the folks who don’t win: talk about your ride, did you expect to be on the lead, were you surprised to be so far back, etc. And Saturday had an additional “what do you think of Rachel” quotient.
Alan Garcia got to step #4 before giving me “I had a good trip. My horse (Asiatic Boy) did the best he could but the best horse won the race” before being pulled into the crowd for his goggles (so no Rachel question).
I got back to the winner’s circle just as Edgar Prado (Past the Point) was coming off the scale and that’s where he stopped (at step #3). I walked over to him and asked about his trip: “My horse ran his race, he tried real hard. He broke good, we were on the pace all the way around. And I just didn’t have enough horse coming off the turn.”
Then I got my Rachel question in, to which he answered “I’ve never seen a horse like her. She’s spectacular.” At this time, Rachel had jogged back and was just about to enter the winner’s circle. Edgar just stood there watching and clapping in awe of a horse who’d just soundly beat him.
It’s one thing when Robby Albarado gave Calvin Borel a chest bump post-race and said about Rachel, “she’s doing things that’ve never been done before” and “I don’t like to lose, even to a champion filly.” That’s sportsmanship the way it should be between two friends who have mutual admiration for the animals they ride everyday.
But watching Edgar watch Rachel was something else. There was a stillness to the moment, despite all the hubub going on around us, that will live with me forever.
This is the man who rode Barbaro to Derby victory then saved the horse’s life just two weeks later in the Preakness.
This is the man who’s captured three Breeders’ Cup races (Folklore in ’05 Juvenile Fillies, Silver Train in ’05 Sprint, Round Pond in ’06 Distaff).
This is a man who has over 6,000 wins to his credit.
When Prado was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008, it was standing room only. And here he was (after losing) standing to watch the full effect of the history he had taken part in.
That’s pretty special.
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Click here to buy the paperback version of Prado’s “My Guy Barbaro” – a really, really, really great read (and under $15!)
photo courtesy Eclipse Sports Wire
