The Inside Rail

Watching horses and contemplating trainers, Kidd Breeden leaned back in his golf cart and sighed, “And everybody wants to be a horse trainer.”

We were in the midst of talking about picking spots for horses, wondering if it’s better to run a week early in an easier race or a week later in a tougher race. We never really came up with an answer as the agent drove off to pick up Kendrick Carmouche after he breezed Reporting Star for Elizabeth Voss and I went to chase down Jimmy Jerkens for a Fasig-Tipton Stable Tour. 

Nobody could write it better than Joe Hirsch covering the beat at Monmouth Park for the Daily Racing Form in 1972.

Johnny Mallano had this buddy who made good money walking hots at Aqueduct for Gene Jacobs. The money was the lure for a 16-year-old boy from The Bronx, and so one fall morning two years ago, Mallano accompanied his friend to the Big A and found a career. 

Antonio Sano stood in the winner’s circle at Saratoga. Surrounded by his family – his wife, two sons, his daughter and a cousin. Sano’s Gunnevera was on his way to the test barn after upsetting the Grade 2 Saratoga Special for Sano’s first win at Saratoga on his first visit to Saratoga. The 53-year-old Venezuela-born trainer was basking in the accomplishment, the moment. 

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.