Opinion

Ramon Dominguez had a lot of time on his hands. In the dead of winter, living in a rental house in New York, his family in Delaware, riding a couple of days a week at Aqueduct, the Venezuelan-born jockey needed to occupy his time, satisfy his brain. Dominguez picked up Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. Deemed as a book to awaken your life’s purposes, Dominguez, who was well into his life’s purpose of being one of the world’s best jockeys, was captivated.

It took John Shirreffs 10 minutes. 

Ten minutes to get over the worst defeat of his life, the only defeat of Zenyatta’s life. 

Seeking her 20th win in her 20th start, in the dying light of a cold November evening at Churchill Downs, Zenyatta closed feet when she needed yards, falling a head short of Blame in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic. A tantalizing, yet agonizing head stopped a perfect ending to a perfect career. 

The glass jar sits on my desk. It has been there for years, unopened, in between a cup of pens and a picture from my riding days. The glass is cloudy, a gray film shrouds the inside. Opening it, the rubber seal separates from the glass lid and dirt sprinkles across my desk, on to my keyboard. It’s not really dirt, more like sand, mostly granules the texture of Ovaltine, it could be on the bottom of a dinosaur display at a museum. Dry and abrasive to the touch, it’s somehow cold. Its only purpose, well, other than to create a dust circle on my desk, is for the memory.

Jo Motion, nine months pregnant with her fourth child, woke up her husband in the middle of the night.

“I’ve got to go to the hospital,” Jo said.

“You couldn’t,” Michael Motion replied. 

Oh, she could. 

Tom Law pulled out three bottles of Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale, smuggled over the border by our friends at Woodbine. Tom popped off the caps, each one spinning and resting on an empty desk. It was nearing 1 a.m., Saturday night had slipped into Sunday morning, another Special was at the printer. 

Like all good racetrack stories, this one begins in a bar. Stephen Valente stood at the bar at Stella’s, the venerable Italian joint, eight minutes from the back gate at Belmont Park. It was an hour or two after the last race was run at Belmont Park June 29, 2005. The Cerrone family – Gina, Giuseppe, Enza, Vincenzo, Antonio and sisters, nieces, nephews – served sausage rolls, eggplant rollatini and tagliatelle filetto di pomodoro. 

I can see it now.

Mike Smith’s feet dangling, long and low, like a kid riding his pony to the river. Body swaying, gently, he could be fishing from a surfboard. Looking at the horizon, squinting, distant, like he’s trying to will away his and his horse’s nerves. Hands on the reins but not clutching them, coddling them like they might bite.