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They called her Sophie. She was round and soft and big and slow. Sophie, like maybe your aunt or your Labrador Retriever. Nice, friendly, calm. Bake cookies or fetch a tennis ball for you if she could. Then she grew up.
It’s the little things . . .
The car key snapped to Rosie Napravnik’s right belt loop.
The note came from NYRA’s press office and mentioned Shackleford’s attempt at a bit of history today. Nobody really keeps up with this stuff, but the Vanderbilt runner can become the fifth (or sixth) horse to win at Grade 1 stakes at 6 furlongs and another at longer than 9 furlongs.
Same leg, straight from geometry class. Same foot, angled just right in the stirrup. Same back, upright and pure. Same hands, firm but free. He sits on a horse like he’s in a Paul Brown sketch.
Bill Mott stands in the yard outside his barn late Friday morning. The Hall of Fame trainer juggles the job description – booking a table for 7 o’clock at Nove, boosting a child onto his pony, fixing a buckle on a yoke that’s hanging too low, answering questions from assistants, agents, reporters and readying two of the top choices in today’s Whitney.
Last summer, Tom Bush handed his stopwatch to a 10-year-old kid in the clocker’s stand next to him and started talking. It went something like this
I miss seeing the Chief on his pony. But I love seeing him in his cart. Early Friday morning, the Chief, H. Allen Jerkens, rolls to a stop, near the three-quarter pole of the main track.
Dave Duggan stood at the big-screen TV in the clubhouse, minutes ticking down before the A.P. Smithwick Steeplechase, Thursday’s co-feature.
Twigazuri Strait runs in today’s seventh race. Trained by Michelle Nihei, the 3-year-old maiden is in for $65,000, but he’s got a million-dollar story. To me anyway. He’s a Clancy.
