Eight thousand four hundred ninety five. That’s how many words I have in a file called “01-06 notes.docx” on my computer. They didn’t all arrive Jan. 6. That’s when they started. And they haven’t just been on one computer either – they’ve been bouncing around between a desktop, a laptop, Google drive.
They came from Edwin Merryman, Tom Mullikin, Dale Schilling, Becky Davis, Jamie McDiarmid, Chip Reed, Carol Kaye, John Hughes, Larry Johnson, Randy Funkhouser, Charlie McGinnes, Louis Merryman, Brooke Bowman, Holly Beck, Dermot Carty and Tom Bowman. Less than half of what they said wound up in print, or will wind up in print. Most of the interviews were done for the February edition of Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred.
If you don’t read the monthly print magazine, you should. I’m the editor so I’m biased, but it’s always full of good stuff – from a whole lot of sources. The January edition includes a wonderful profile of Holly Robinson by Vinnie Perrone and a powerful Q&A on medication reform with Duncan Patterson. February includes stuff gleaned from those notes – a long feature on the new Heritage Stallions operation in Maryland, a lengthy report checking in with some of the Mid-Atlantic’s most notable broodmares – and plenty more like Bettina Jenney reminiscing about life at Derry Meeting Farm and an update from the Keeneland January sale.
But this isn’t about the magazine. This is about talking to people, about the stuff writers like to do. We like to talk, ask questions, communicate, write, edit, change, improve. We can live without the process of getting something from interview to blank page to article to published product. That’s details, and details frequently stink. They’re a lot of work and loads of hassle. If I didn’t have those, I’d get a lot more done. I’d contribute to this column more often. I’d have more freelance jobs. I’d have a book or two or three or four. That novel people say is in every writer would no longer be in me (people also say most novels should stay there).
But back to the good stuff.
The words in that notes file ring with racing. They deal with stallions, mares, racehorses, foals, work, effort, optimism, pessimism, danger, known, unknown, family, business, risk, reward. Some are off the record, though I wish they weren’t. Some are powerful. Some are sappy. All, to me, are ultimately about hope for racing is a game of hope at pretty much every level and every stop – stud farms to shedrows, foaling stalls to foolish undertakings.
Nobody, anywhere, can guarantee anything in Thoroughbred racing. Maybe that’s what makes it so interesting.
As part of a conversation in that notes file, veterinarian/breeder/new stallion venture partner Dr. Tom Bowman put it in 31 words.
“The formula has so many working parts that nobody knows when you’re going to strike gold,” he said when asked about success or failure in the breeding business. “You still can’t measure heart and whatever genetic key unlocks that is still an unknown.”
Maybe he should be a writer.
