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Sean Clancy 
Mike Smith told us. The Hall of Fame jockey explained exactly what he would do on Arrogate in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream Park Saturday afternoon. In systematic, logical, predictable steps – Smith laid out 9 furlongs like Emeril lays out a menu.
The first was Bat Prospector.
Mike Smith had arrived in New York earlier that year. I hadn’t arrived anywhere. It was 1990. In the jocks’ room to ride a no-hoper in the opening jump race, I worked up the nerve to introduce myself to Smith, who was due to ride Mike Freeman’s Bat Prospector later that afternoon. I had galloped the filly a couple of times, figured it was an icebreaker, a conversation starter. We shook hands, talked about the filly and became fast friends. I was in awe of the New Mexico kid who had come to New York with finesse and flare.
Reprinted from The Saratoga Special.
Dr. John Chandler stood alone. Facing away from the racetrack, across from the finish line, Juddmonte Farm’s president gazed from the step of the front-row box, mouth agape, smiling but silent, like he had heard a good joke but wasn’t sure he could tell it.
Eclipse Award winner Rawnaq incurred a soft-tissue injury Friday morning and will miss the entire 2017 season. The Irish-bred 10-year-old was preparing for a trip to Britain in pursuit of a $500,000 bonus for winning the Iroquois Steeplechase and the Stayers Hurdle at Cheltenham.
One of my resolutions is to write more, well, write more well. That sentence definitely doesn’t suffice. Ah well, we’ll keep trying.
So far in 2017, I’ve been diving into other forms, a book, a journal (for me now, for Miles later) and some other creative spots, they probably won’t see the light of day. As I was toiling and tinkering and looking for distraction today, I checked my friend George Baker’s blog. A great friend, a horse trainer and a natural writer, his daily blog always provides a moment of escape. His entry from January 2, sadly, isn’t an escape. I cut and pasted it below, it’s good perspective on a world gone mad.
Read him daily, you never know what you’re going to get.
The house is quiet. The Christmas tree lights are dark. The Australian Shepherd/Catahoula, who hasn’t threatened to bite me in hours, lies silent on his bed. Deerwood Lake drifts quietly behind glass doors. The coffee maker, which worked overtime Christmas Day, has yet to stir. I step gently, slippers dangling from my left fingertips, backpack slung over my right shoulder, down the stairs, to the cocoon of a basement at a lake house outside Birmingham, Alabama.
Two-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey Garrett Gomez died on December 14. He was 44.
I typed that sentence at the bottom of my weekly column in the Irish Field, below Mastery and Abel Tasman Grade 1 scores at Los Alamitos, below Paulasilverlining’s Aqueduct triumph, below Irish-bred Lady Valeur’s off-the-turf stakes win.
Yes, below all those.
A man’s life, poof, a footnote in 900 words.
Abby looked at me from atop a straw bale, as chaos reigned all around.
“You guys have the best parties.”
Sign, sealed and delivered, the second-grader made everything worth it.
Of course, the moment didn’t last long as Ryan shook up and down on the end of the zip line, “Come on, let me go, let me go.”
Paddy Young walked that familiar walk, from Cathie Jackson’s clipboard at the scales in front of the Springdale Racecourse grandstand, through the narrow passage along the side, winding through the pine trees and back to the cold confines of the Camden jocks’ room.
“Our greatest trait is our resiliency.”
That quote has become a mantra of ours, and we’re not talking politics, we’re talking horse racing, a game which continues to test our resiliency and resolve.
