Sean Clancy

Today’s column is about Eric Guillot.

Laugh. Scoff. Scream. Run. Hide.

Finished? OK, let’s move forward.

In the eclectic world of horse trainers, Guillot is on his own continent. Born in New Iberia, Louisiana, 30 miles southeast of Lafayette, Guillot looks like a bouncer at a college bar and acts like the bounced from the college bar.

It was a sad day here Sunday morning. Bill Hirsch, standing at his corner at the Morning Line Kitchen, told me first.

Phil Serpe flagged me down as his golf cart went east and mine west, behind Rick Violette’s barn. Eddie Dees found my number and called, just wanted to make sure we knew.

Then Leah rode up on her pony, Chief, and stopped at the Kitchen. A day after she won her third Grade 1 stakes of her life, she was down. She looked me in the eye, she didn’t say a word. I looked her in the eye, I didn’t say a word. There was nothing that pain hadn’t already said.

I was asked to write a 45-second script about Saratoga. An essay, about anything, the old days, the new days, what it’s meant, what it means.

Tie it all together. Personal, my essay. Have you ever listened to “This I Believe” on NPR? That’s what I’m thinking. The horses, the history, the people, the town and why it works, why Saratoga captivates us. I need to check with Mom, but I’ve seen photos of me as Secretariat galloped to the start for the Whitney, so I’m guessing I’ve been coming here 41 years…45 seconds for 41 years.

Leah Gyarmati sat on Thunder Chief, her racehorse turned lead pony, outside her barn deep in the corner of Clare Court and Greentree Thursday morning. Exercise rider Jorge Sanchez jumped in his car for a bathroom break. Former jockey Noel Wynter stood and waited for another set. Assistant Herbie Castillo organized the state vet to look at a main-track only entry later in the day. Gyarmati talked a little and thought a lot.

For years, I said it.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

For years, he laughed.

“Not yet.”

In the fading light, in the last race, on the final day of the 2013 steeplechase season, Paddy Young secured his fourth championship, becoming the first steeplechase jockey to win four titles since John Cushman in the 80s. Another long year had come to an end for Young, for all jump jockeys. Tack dangling between his left elbow and hip, blood-stained from an earlier fall and running his tongue across his teeth to make sure they were all there, the then 37-year-old veteran admitted he was near the end.

Jay Hovdey walked into the Mt. Washington Tavern two days before the Preakness, ordered a Guinness and tossed me his book, Long Rein, Tales from the World of Horse Racing.

I’ve been reading it ever since. Never more than three pages at a time, drone strikes into the last 15 years of Thoroughbred racing. 

I’m asked all the time, why don’t you train horses? My dad trained horses, my friends train horses, most of the jockeys I rode against are training horses. It makes sense. Ride races, then train horses. Allen Jerkens, Barclay Tagg, Leo O’Brien, to name a few, rode jumpers and made it big training flat horses.