Saturday June 10 was my good friend Matt’s birthday. We exchanged some text messages. I wished him a happy birthday, he lamented about how old he was “68…years old, what the hell?” I concurred, turning 67 years old in a couple of weeks. “We just have to go with,” I replied.
Heck when we first became friends, we had grandparents younger than we are now. Where did the time go? Seems like only yesterday we were watching the ’69 Mets win the World Series. Now I am sitting here fifty some years later, trying to write about memories as hazy as the skies this past week, the pain in my fingers and knuckles particularly bad this morning as I push on the keys and learn to “just go with it.”
Saturday June 10, I received some news about another old friend. This being the season of thoroughbred horse racing’s Triple Crown, I reached out to Marilyne Kilchriss to find out about how Sid (Sir Sidney) was doing. I got an email back on Saturday:
“Hey there!! He’s doing amazing! I adore that horse and hope to have him for the rest of his life. The racetrack did a cool video on his career and trainer this spring and I’ll send you the link to it! In the meantime, enjoy some pics of the dramatic, handsome boy. My goal is to show at the WEC sometime this fall! We will see how we progress in our dressage training. Marilyne.”
The sport of horseracing has suffered in recent years. In 2020 the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act was passed to help protect thoroughbred racehorses. After twelve horses died over a relatively short period of time at Churchill Downs, the home of the Kentucky Derby, Churchill made the decision last week to shut down racing and move the rest of the meet to Ellis Park to give them the opportunity to review operations.
A great decision by Churchill Downs to protect horses and the sport of thoroughbred horse racing.
Saturday June 10 was also The Belmont, the last leg of the Triple Crown. Though we didn’t have any contenders this year for a single horse to win all three races, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont; it was still a big day. It was the fiftieth anniversary of Secretariat becoming the 1973 Triple Crown champion, winning the Belmont by 31 lengths, a feat I have referred to in my writing a few time before.
Saturday’s Belmont was also historical because this year’s winner Arcangelo was able to hold on to beat the favorite Forte, making Arcangelo’s trainer Jena Antonucci the first female trainer to win a Triple Crown race.
Very exciting.
Goosebumps.
And speaking of goosebumps, I would encourage you to watch the video about Sid. There are some good horse racing stories too.
And it just goes to show you that old guys like Matt, and me, and Sid can still enjoy life after working hard for many years. In spite of some aches and pains, we have great memories, and we are lucky enough to each have those who want to have us for the rest of our lives.
Sometimes in life, there are those things that make all the difference.
Just go with it.
Postscript:
The photo above is brat pack circa 1974. My friend Butch on the left, Matt to his right, me next, and my friend Joe on the right.
Marilyne and SidSir Sidney (aka Jonas as Marilyne calls him) enjoying retirement
Dr. Thomas Swerczek, head pathologist at the University of Kentucky, did not weigh Secretariat’s heart, but stated, “We just stood there in stunned silence. We couldn’t believe it. The heart was perfect. There were no problems with it. It was just this huge engine.”
According to Wikipedia the average horse heart weighs 7.9 pounds. Though they do say it could weigh twice that weight.
An extremely large heart in a horse is a trait that occasionally occurs in thoroughbreds. It is hypothesized to be linked to a genetic condition referred to as the “x factor” and is traced to the historic racehorse Eclipse. After his death in 1789 Eclipse’s heart was found to larger than most and weighed 14 pounds
Secretariat’s heart was estimated to weigh 22 pounds. Secretariat was a freak.
It is said that pedigree research traces Secretariat’s lineage on his mother’s side to a daughter of Eclipse.
Yesterday, for the first time in the 145 year history of the Kentucky Derby, the winner was disqualified for a racing foul.
The winner was a horse named Maximum Security.
Maximum Security ran his first race in December as a two year old and won a $16,000 Maiden Claiming race at Gulfstream in Florida. From that humble beginning he went on to win three more races including the Florida Derby wire to wire. In other words he led from start to finish.
Wednesday evening I sat down with my printed copy of the Racing Form to begin my studying as I would typically do before derby day. After watching his performance in the Florida Derby, next to Maximum Security’s name I wrote the word Freak with a question mark.
This horse in my opinion was potentially a freak. Another Secretariat maybe. Another possible Triple Crown winner. He was undefeated in his young life, his running style to go to the front and win wire to wire.
If he could win the Kentucky Derby in this fashion, maybe he would prove to be something special, something historic.
In my forty years of following thoroughbred horse racing, a jockey’s objection rarely led to a change in the finish in the race. A racing stewards’ inquiry generally did however. But in this case there was no stewards’ inquiry. But twenty two minutes after “the greatest two minutes in sports” the racing stewards agreed with the jockey’s objection and Maximum Security, number seven in the race, was disqualified from his first place finish and placed 17th.
For me that was a long 22 minutes. You see, the 3, 7, 19, and 20 (Country House who finished second was number 20) were the horses I chose to be in my exacta. At least at the time that’s what I thought.
Because this morning when I was writing this, I decided to look back at my account and revisit what could have been. To my surprise, I learned that the actual numbers that I boxed were 3,8,19, and 20. Apparently I had made a mistake and punched in 8 instead of 7. Another Sir Sydney moment for me, only this time it didn’t have the happy ending.
When I showed this to Kim this morning she said, “See, God spared you the disappointment.”
My wife is right about many things, I think she has the x factor.
Because the only thing I think that would be more disappointing than having your winning exacta disqualified, would be having your winning exacta not disqualified and then learning that you mistakenly bet the wrong numbers.
The sad thing about all this is we may never know how good this horse really is. How would he have compared to Secretariat? Would we have had a new national obsession? Another Triple Crown winner?
It is true Maximum Security will now be something historic, but unfortunately not for the reasons that might have been.
February 2, 2012 was the birthday of American Pharoah, thoroughbred horse racing’s last Triple Crown winner. American Pharaoh, in 2015, was the first Triple Crown winner (i.e., winner of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes) since Affirmed in 1978. There have only been twelve Triple Crown winners since Sir Barton did it in 1919 and so, for a brief moment in time, the eyes of our country were once again watching a horse in a sport longing for the days when it truly did capture the attention of a nation.
In Laura Hillenbrand’s book Seabiscuit, An American Legend, Seabiscuit was described as “a runty little thing” whose favorite pastime was sleeping and was “inclined toward portliness.”
Yet Seabiscuit had already started fifty races, many more than horses now a days will run in a lifetime, before it is said, that he finally figured it out.
It was the mid to late 1930’s, a time when a country needed a good diversion. Still in the grips of the Great Depression, Americans found something else to capture their attention. It was funny looking Cinderella of a horse named Seabiscuit who became…a national obsession.
In the early 1960’s, with the ever looming threat of a nuclear bomb attack during the Cold War that was way beyond our ability to comprehend at such a young age, an entire elementary school of kids and their teachers made the trek from the thought to be not safe environment of our school building to the massive Monmouth Park Race course facility. The large track building would provide us a better bomb shelter in the nuclear bomb attack we were practicing to survive. At the end of the drill the fire department would use their fire trucks to help transport some of the kids back to the school. I got my picture in the newspaper that day, as I was returned to Wolf Hill School on the back of a fire truck.
My grandparent’s house sat adjacent to the outer parking areas of the track in a part of Oceanport, New Jersey called Hillcrest. As kids we would go out into the parking lots and pick up the discarded racing programs that littered the ground and became absorbed in all the unusual horse names and the odd cryptic pencil markings of the patrons.
In spite of having grown up listening to the race announcer and the bugler from my back yard, the nuclear bomb drill that day was the only time I had ever entered the Monmouth Park Grandstand and Clubhouse facility until I got a job with the racetrack Fire Department at the age of 20. For the next couple years and three racing seasons, I would ride an ambulance picking up jockeys and patrons track side or from the Firehouse in the stable area, referred to as the “backside.”
The thoroughbred horse racing industry is a world all its own and my brief experience of working at Monmouth Park was all it took, I was hooked.
From the rich and famous to the transient circus like nature of the backside community, the firehouse was the hub of activity for the stable area. It had frequent visitors, including track owners and owners of the football Jets in Leon Hess and Sonny Werblin; famous trainers like Jimmy Jones of Calumet Farms and 1948 Triple Crown winner Citation fame; low level gangsters; and many, many other colorful characters. One evening, I walked into the bowling alley located just outside the stable (backside) gate and found a kid I knew from high school on the floor with two bullet holes in his face, a victim of an argument over a game of pool with a member of the stable community, a reminder that in spite of the outward appearance of money and fortune, the racing industry had its dark side too.
I have stood in the paddock of Churchill Downs on Derby Day, cigar in hand; and on the infield rail next to the winners circle and watched Bob Baffert lend a helping lift to Victor Espinoza with “riders up” on American Pharoah just before the skies opened up with a torrential rain and American Pharoah romped to victory in his second leg of the Triple Crown.
I have learned a little about how to pour over figures and attempt to find the winner out of the Racing Form, racing’s past performances newspaper; and I have learned a lot about restraint and moderation after losing my entire paycheck one day while working at Monmouth. I made twenty five dollars a day at the time and had to borrow money from my brother to pay my auto insurance bill. That was good lesson and one never forgotten.
I have used Secretariat’s stretch run winning the Belmont by 31 lengths and never looking back to describe my marriage.
Secretariat winning the Belmont
My experience and the story of Sir Sidney, who was my vote for 2014 Horse of the Year, California Chrome, and the 2014 Preakness, still makes me laugh.
So you see for me, the whole industry is fascinating, very entertaining and has served as a good diversion for me in my life.
That is why this time of the year when all two year old horses become three year old horses regardless of their actual birth dates, and the prep races for the Triple Crown begin once again, I get excited. Could this be the year that we may be watching the 13th Triple Crown winner develop before our eyes and grab the attention of not only the die-hards but the nation’s masses as well?
I understand the allure. It’s like sitting in that movie theater, having the house lights go down and for the next couple of hours you are transported to another world. I can recall some really bad days in my life when I found myself standing at the rail at Laurel or Monmouth just to escape. I understand why in 1937 and 1938 a small, unlikely looking race horse could represent something positive in a time filled with hardship and draw a hundred thousand people to a race course with hundreds of thousands more glued to their radios.
On November 1, 1938 forty thousand people showed up to watch a match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. The official capacity of Pimilico Racecourse at the time was 16,000. War Admiral had won the Triple Crown the year before and was thought to be the best horse in the world. Fans hung from the rafters as they watched Seabiscuit and War Admiral neck and neck at the turn coming into the stretch. The race would end with Seabiscuit crossing the finish line four lengths ahead.
Because in 1938 as Hillenbrand explains in the Preface of her book, though the country was still suffering from the effects of the Depression and the struggle for world power was beginning; the year’s number one newsmaker was not FDR, or Hitler, or Mussolini, or Lou Gehrig, or Clark Gable. It was remarkably this horse, Seabiscuit, who had captured a nation.
Great stuff huh?
This year, as I break out the hawaiian shirt with the race horses on it and begin watching the prep races that will qualify the entrants with enough points to make it to the Kentucky Derby, I am hoping for another Seabiscuit, or another Secretariat, or another American Pharoah, or another War Admiral.
For I think that if there ever was time when we needed a new National Obsession I think now might be that time. I would love to see a magnificent animal with a colorful cast of characters behind him or her, capture the attention and imagination of a nation, populating my Facebook feed with dramatic stories of great efforts, and hope, and winning.
And having it all be positive and uplifting.
Yup, that is my hope.
“C’mon Seabiscuit!”
Seabiscuit coming down the Pimlico stretch beating War Admiral
