I bang on about horses in this column every week. To be honest, I bang on about horses pretty much all the time. Because I love horses. I love having horses. I love the fun of breeding – assessing a mare and picking a mating (which may or may not be fashionable, but which will produce something that I will like). I love feeding and fussing and watching my mare’s belly swell. I love the last tense days of the pregnancy, the nervous anticipation and finally getting to meet my new little creature, all wet and flat-packed and odd-looking the way only a new-born can be.
I love watching them grow – seeing what comes out from under that foal coat, watching them flourish over the spring and summer and then trying not to lose hope during the desperate winter months of long, ugly coats, big knees and snotty noses.
As annoying as they can be, I love the cheeky teenage stages where they’re all legs and bums and big ears and uncoordination as they try and work out their developing bodies. Teaching them that it is possible to lead politely and not like an errant firework and be civilised for visits from the vet and farrier.
I love assessing them and getting to know them and gradually giving them the tools they’ll need to make their way in the world (as well as working out the ‘red alert’ areas for when backing time arrives).
And then I die a thousand deaths having to hand my lovely, trusting children over to strangers to train and take care of. I know they are bred to race and that they should be given an opportunity to test the blue blooded genes they carry (and I console myself that it’s only temporary anyway as I am already planning competitive careers for when their racing days are done!). But it is enormously satisfying watching the ‘keeds’ making their way through the training ranks and finally setting foot on course for the first time.
Watching a juvenile debut is a particularly double-edged sword. Until you test them, the hopes and dreams that you have a potential champion are yours to enjoy. After all, until someone proves you wrong, who’s to say you don’t ? It’s a delicious anticipation – sort of like having an unvalidated lottery ticket.
But that first race really is something. It either tells you that you have nothing; that you may potentially have something; or, very rarely, that you have something rather special indeed.
The reason for my vague musings is that I know someone who currently has a rather nice young horse. A potentially above-average horse. And we’ve had much fun speculating about his career to date and the possibilities going forward. It’s fun and exciting and frightening all at the same time. Perhaps more so because the horse is not bred the way one would expect a ‘big’ horse to be and also because he’s not owned by the sort of people one normally expects to own a ‘big’ horse.
And as he has progressed and people have congratulated the connections, the overwhelming feedback seems to be that the horse is destined for foreign shores and, if they are really lucky, a foreign buyer.
Which I’m afraid to say (well meaning as the comments may be) I find appalling.
As horse and racing enthusiasts (even one with my modest aspirations!), I think we all hope, pray and wish fervently that one day all the time and worry and effort we lavish on our racing endeavours will be repaid with a good horse.
What is so wonderful about the vagaries of chance and genetic alchemy, is that lightening really can and does strike in unexpected places and it may as easily hit the palace as the pauper’s house next door. So surely, if after a lifetime of planning and breeding and disappointment and modest success, that golden ticket does magically land in our lap, we have reached the heights of a life time of aspirations. How does one put a price on that ? Some people wait a lifetime for such an opportunity. So why would one want to rush off and sell it to the highest bidder ?
‘Oh but you MUST race overseas’. Really ? Why ? Zenyatta was a phenomenon and she never left the US. Black Caviar is supposed to be the hottest piece of sprinting talent on the planet and I haven’t seen any plans for her to leave Australia. And guess what – both those horses helped spark local interest and got people interested in racing and back to the track.
I must be the only one who is secretly pleased that we’ve had the recent AHS disaster as it may well mean that we get to keep some of our good horses for a bit. Because back here in South Africa, the minute we have anything good, we sell it or ship it abroad. There are simply no local heroes to get local people fired up and interested in racing anymore because before something has even really started to build a reputation, someone swoops in and offers bigger money elsewhere and *poof* it’s gone. My husband teases me about my ability to tell one horse from another, but I actually have an interest in the beasts and have years of training. How on earth is our Average Joe / man on the street supposed to find / follow a good horse ? To the uninitiated punter, Pocket Power and say JJ The Jet Plane would look pretty similar. But unless you know the difference between the two, how would you get to know and follow them here at home, nevermind managing the herculean feat of trying to follow their careers abroad ? It’s just not worth the effort. They will disappear to become rich men’s toys and tomorrow there will be another race card and another bunch of little brown horses to put money on.
If all we’re doing is racing horses in the hope of selling them on at a profit, then are we really racing, or just caretaking 4-legged commodities ?
I look at some of the horses being produced and I do wonder whether we are breeding horses or sales catalogue pages.
Looking at racing stats over the last century or so, it does not seem as though we’re breeding them any faster. The overwhelming anecdotal evidence (increasingly backed up by statistics) seems to indicate that horses are not as sound as they used to be, so we’re not breeding them any tougher or stronger either.
So, really, what are we doing ?
Gitano Hernando was recently purchased for a rather fantastic sum by the Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov and repaid his investor by winning the Singapore International on the weekend. Good for him. But I must be honest, his political history aside, there is something rather unappealing about someone who simply goes out and buys success. If you believe in that whole ying-yang thing, then success which has not been tempered by failure and disappointment is not quite authentic somehow.
I’m also annoyed that he beat River Jetez as her owners and connections are long-standing, passionate racing people and it would just have felt a lot more right for the victory to go to people like them.
But again, that seems to be the way racing, and indeed life, is going these days. Money makes the world go round (or, as my husband points out, square or rectangular or just about any other shape you want if you’ve got enough dosh to throw at it) and my goodness, isn’t it incredible what we’re prepared to do in pursuit of that all-mighty dollar ?
I read with incredulity some of the advertising hype around this year’s Preakness (the second leg of the US Triple Crown). The very first Preakness was run in 1873 and the Pimlico track has been host to the great and good of American racing. Ogden Nash once wrote that “The Derby is a race of aristocratic sleekness, for horses of birth to prove their worth to run in the Preakness.” Secretariat ran one of his most controversial races there and it is where Barbaro broke down in 2006.
I’m all for thinking out of the box and trying new things to attract the crowds, but this year’s campaign took the cake. According to the Pimlico party organisers “This year’s Infieldfest Party at the Preakness has officially reached legendary status. An event so spectacular, we accidentally ripped a hole in the fabric of awesomeness and out stepped a freaking Centaur. Part champion Thoroughbred, part infield fan and all party manimal, he proclaimed ‘I am Kegasus, Lord and protector of InfieldFest.’ And since no one’s gonna argue with a centaur we replied, ‘All Hail Kegasus!’ He reminds us to never stop striving to Be Legendary. He is “the son of Preaknesius – God of Thoroughbred Racing – and Shelly McDougal, a waitress from Ellicott City…aka Lady of the Bottomless Refill.”
Preaknesius ? Oh dear Lord.
Disappointingly (for me anyway), the organisers turned out to be right. Attendance for the weekend’s meet was over 107,000 people, the largest crowd in recent history (although I believe the overall handle was still down on last year).
While there was vocal objection to the Kegasus concept in the print and electronic media, Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chukas expounds – “The racing aficionados and the older people, they don’t like Kegasus but it was never created for them,” he says.
Really ? REALLY ?! The ‘racing aficionados and older people’ are only the ones who’ve been religiously attending and supporting the industry for years, breeding and supplying horses for the sport, paying training and vet fees and resignedly having to take their horses home if they don’t make the grade and aren’t entertaining or thrilling enough for the Kegasus crowd. Sure, why cater for THAT ? Screw ‘em. Let’s rather sell our souls for the beer swilling Neanderthals who will buy a ticket and fill space on the race-course one day a year. Why not.
Does history or value (or soul) really matter all that much if we can sell our souls for a few bucks ? Why would we try to foster and build and preserve when we can aspire to the giddy heights of having people like John Camarata on course? Holding a giant funnel filled with beer over his head at this year’s Preakness, he explained to a journalist that even he thought the infield at the Preakness was getting out-of-control a few years back. “They got rid of the riff-raff,” he says. “It’s a more controlled environment, and you can still rip a beer bong!” says Camarata.
If that’s really what it will take to rescue racing, then perhaps it is better to go quietly into that good night.
