My kingdom for a horse

A horse and a woman

It's incredible to me that I was able to write an entry about Satwa Sunrise without spilling ink going on about the way I feel about this horse. Feelings I trust because I discovered them slowly, watching Sunrise closely and waiting to see what I thought about her.

My first encounter with her wasn't like it was with any of the other 6 horses in Gina's yards. I had contacted Gina Rarick in part for my stepdaughter, and in part to inquire about her announcement of a partnership developing for this horse. I knew that going to Maisons-Laffitte I wasn't just introducing my stepdaughter to a possible position as "stable slave", and I wasn't going just to maybe make a great friend, I was going to -- eventually, at the right moment -- talk about ownership, although how I ever got the idea that such a thing might be possible for myself, I have no idea. I was following a hunch, and I tend to trust my instincts, fallible as they have been proven to be.

So, it was with particular interest that I heard that Satwa Sunrise was in that box over there, the first of Gina's out on the courtyard, after the 4 belonging to the neighbor. Next to her was Magical Flower, a younger filly, followed by the two colts, and then Triple Tonic and Gina's baby, Hard Way, in the barn. Last was the other Newmarket acquisition for Cagnes-sur-Mer, 2-year-old Surrey Storm, over by the yard owners' front door. I didn't make a beeline for Satwa Sunrise's box. It was only in the course of the morning, when Gina was getting her ready to ride out for her work, that I first approached her.

She was a big filly, or so she seemed to me. Gina confirmed it. She was easy to approach, calm. I walked around her and looked her over, ran my hand down her muzzle. Later, when she was back and the sun was fully out, warming the box doors on the northeast side of the stables, she and Magic stood there with their heads out, like sunflowers, eating their hay. It was harder to photograph Sunrise. Magic had better light, possibly better features, just a knot of white hair on her brow to Sunrise's flame. She wasn't a favorite. Not yet.

As the weeks went by, and I developed a little competence at basic yard duties, I came to have reason to go into each box and interact with the horses, delivering hay, topping up the water, cleaning out manure. Gina and I still hadn't talked more than passingly of ownership, and never of owning Sunrise's remaining two available legs. I was prepared to be patient. The horses and the other owners trusted Gina, and I liked her and her way of working; I figured I could trust to her methods in developing owners, too. Still, I talked to Sunrise a little differently, trying on what it might feel like to have a particular interest in her. She didn't come after me. She stood there and accepted my awkward embrace.

Okay, I thought, stepping back, feeling a little silly, I did that. I felt like a young teenage boy just after his first kiss, possibly wearing braces and glasses. Sunrise looked about as nonplussed as the object of such a young boy's interest probably felt. She might as well have readjusted her own glasses on her nose. She stood there and looked at me, not unkindly.

I found a nickname for her.

Good morning, Sunshine, I said. Other times I tried it this way: Hello, Little Miss Sunshine. She didn't seem to care what I called her. I knew it was for me.

I was still watching her. I didn't know her yet, but I was pretty certain I had reason to like her. It amounted to her presence, her way of going about her life in the yards and her work. She hadn't done anything really to distinguish herself, but I thought I was seeing something in her. If there were horses coughing, it wasn't her. If there was fever, she had none. She was said to be a bleeder, but she never so much as cleared her throat after a work-out, that I know of. She posed, in short, no problems, no real worries.

It was the first time I accompanied her to Deauville with Gina and Mark that I knew for certain, as much as anyone who actually knows as little as I do can know. It was watching her stride off at Mark's side to her box on the backside that I had my first hint; this is a racehorse. It was watching her walk around the exercise ring in the middle of our Maisons-Laffitte courtyard of stables that I saw her look at and see her world, including the people who are part of it, and I thought, She is intelligent. She is interested. She knows where she is, and why she is here, and it is good with her.

She held her head high and looked all around her. She stepped lightly at an athletic, wide-awake pace. And each time she came around to her corner of the courtyard, she turned her head and looked at her people: Gina, Sebastien, Annie, Annie's friend Denise. Me.

Yes, me. After all, I had known her nearly since she had arrived from Newmarket. I had helped to feed her, give her fresh water, and I had cleaned her box and talked to her, hugged her and offered her caresses, exchanged regards. I had admired her size and her strength, and her quiet, calm demeanor.

I noticed how everyone kisses and leaves a lingering hand on Sunrise. Mark while she was with the vet. Annie, when she offered her encouragement before heading to the owners' and trainers' section of the grandstand to watch her race. I noticed how gently she accepts her saddling, and how smartly she stepped out to the track.

"J'aime beaucoup ce cheval," I said to Sebastien, who has been around Gina's yards for years. "Je pense qu'elle peux vraiment faire quelque chose."

Sebastien had picked Satwa Sunrise out with Gina at Newmarket, but before the deal was sealed, he had found a thing or two to pick at about her. I couldn't find anything. Then, she ran a great race and acted afterwards like it was nothing. She'd only finished 9th out of a field of 16, but it wasn't her fault. Where were the problems? I was sure she was going to do something, if the next jockey let her thread the first hole that presented itself coming out of the last turn and fly.

She runs like a light bulb operated by a switch. Off, she is calm, gracious, alert. On, she runs like the southerly wind of which she was made. There is no fuss. Nothing lost. Everything with Satwa Sunrise is easy and easy going. If I had wanted two legs before that day, I had no idea until then what it was to want them.

We took her to Deauville again yesterday, and I fell hard for this horse. I fell for her watching Annie love her. I fell for her watching her let Alexandra walk her. I fell for her watching her nuzzle Alexandra's neck while she received her breast plate, race blanket and saddle. She watched everything; she watched everyone; and then, she walked out to race and ran from the southerly wind.

She found her eye in the needle this time, and Tristan Normand let her thread it, coming out of the last turn. He had kept her on the rail, and then the front runner on the rail began to fall back as she surged forward, and she tried to catch the number 10 horse, Counterbid, followed hard by three horses, nose to nose. The number 11 horse, Dolce Bambina, and her jockey made their bid, but were beaten by a nose by Sunrise for the second spot.

We were delirious, jumping up and down, yelling, Annie clutching her cane and beaming from Sunrise at the post to Gina and the rest of us. We hugged and kissed and trooped down the staircase, bathed in the sunlight that came out at post time after the early afternoon deluge. Unlike last time, when I had hoped for it, Sunrise made the sun come out, and Tristan's silks the color of sun and sky shone in it. Annie walked alongside Gina and Mark, and Alexandra leading him, still up on Sunrise, into the winners' enclosure.

"Qui l'aurait pensé? Ma Sunrise dans l'enclos?" said Annie, turning to me to share seeing the wish she'd made at lunch fulfilled, and I wanted those two long legs more than ever, but joked to Gina, "I knew you didn't want to give up your two legs, and I knew why last time." She laughed.

I didn't feel jealous, not even of the ones who had found their way to the guichet to place their bets for the win and the place on Sunrise. I knew they'd be turning their tickets in for more money than they'd handed over the counter just 10 minutes before. I wasn't sure how I felt about betting on the horse I accompanied to the racetrack.

Later, over champagne just before leaving the racetrack and heading home, I wondered aloud if it was silly only to want to feel the joy of them doing well and not having anything to else to gain, aside from the prize money eventually. After all, betting is allowed. It  brings money into the coffers of countries around the world, and it helps to pay the prize money. It keeps the sport fast turning big -- very big -- business going.

"No," said Mark, "it's a good attitude."

I wondered, and I snapped photographs of Annie beaming, Gina gratified. Genevieve, a breeder and friend of theirs, satisfied. Mark, well, Mark I remember his goofy grin, walking Sunrise around the exercise circle after her shower. Now I knew what Mark looks like when he is very happy with a horse, when his horse does well. I remembered Sunrise turning as Annie approached her, reaching into the pockets of her powder-blue wool coat, light blue and yellow colors in honor of her husband's city and happier days still, for the heart-shaped sugar she always remembers to bring for Sunrise, "I'm old-fashioned," she said, "I do things the old way."

Gina called out to Mark, who stopped and let Sunrise turn to Annie, leading her off the circle. Sunrise lowered her big head and turned her gaze to Annie's hands at her pocket, took her heart-shaped sugar and pressed her muzzle against Annie's palm. They stood there like that, and looked at one another.

"Elle les aurait pris de votre poche," I said to Annie as we walked away.

"C'est vrai! Elle le fait" she replied, nodding, and Mark walked back onto the circle, his hand on Sunrise's flank, a smile surely still on his face, the taste of heart-shaped sugar, near victory and steel in her mouth.
....

Mark and Sunrise, after her race

"When God created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt cast thy enemies between thy hooves, but thou shalt carry my friends upon thy back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And though fly without any wings, and conquer without any sword." 

-The Koran Horse Prayer

Second Place for Satwa Sunrise

Satwa Sunrise with owner, Annie Casteu

Walk around a racetrack some day with Annie Casteu, and you will see what it is to be known and appreciated by everyone, not least of all by her horse. I didn't realize it the first time, my first time at the races; I was shadowing trainer Gina Rarick closely, and Annie is not the sort to brag and drop names, to rush up to people with broad gestures and flourishes. No, they stop and offer her cheeks la bise, which Annie returns with genuine pleasure. I asked how it is that everyone knows her, a small woman, walking at a rapid pace with the imperceptible help of her cane. You notice the cane when Annie is using it to stand, which is not easy for her. Movement, however, still seems as natural to her as it is to the thoroughbreds with whom she has been in love for nearly 50 years. Annie leaned toward me, a smile dimpling her cheeks and bright, dark eyes, and said, "J'ai été jockey."

"Vous avez fait des courses à cheval?" I stopped in my tracks. She raised her eyebrows and nodded, enjoying my surprise, her smile deepening, if that were possible.

The Annie I had met when Satwa Sunrise ran her first race in France in Deauville on December 21 was a retired professional woman, a long-time employee at Schering-Plough. That's how I thought of her, anyway, until today, when I discovered that she also had a degree in law and talked the people at Schering-Plough France into hiring her and letting her race thoroughbreds on various tracks around France once a week. That was in the mid-1960s. This is not your everyday French woman, let alone woman, but I am learning not to expect the ordinary in the planetary system that orbits Gina, who is already no ordinary racehorse trainer. The racetrack is a place to be seen and to see, another of the world's great stages, but for Annie and Gina, it's all about the horses, and today, it was Sunrise's day to shine.

I expected it. I can honestly say that I did. I even predicted it. I could have been wrong, but while Gina had advertised for a partnership for Satwa Sunrise, it was other horses for whom she seemed far more interested in finding owners for a leg or two, horses not even in her yards at Maisons-Laffitte yet. Her silence after Sunrise's hampered but interesting 9th place finish last time out said more than any comment she might have made, and about the only one she allowed was that Sunrise had shown us a lot, notably that she does not appear to be as much of a bleeder as she was made out to be. It occurred to me that Gina wanted to keep those two legs, and I wouldn't blame her, but the simple truth of the matter is that it takes time to register a new owner, and Gina takes the time to let her potential new owners make certain this is what they want to do.

There are no guarantees in horse racing. Horses might look like they will run fast and have a heart as big as the harvest moon over the endless plains, or they might look like a lot less and do it anyway, but they are subject to illness and injury, tendons strung to snapping, and there are only just so many races in each of them. Like Gina says, "You don't know how many bullets you have left, so you think before you use one," and each bullet is the horse's chance to help pay her oats and her vet bills; no race, no money potentially coming in, and money going out as surely as the horse will need clean bedding and a meal the next day, and the day after, and the day after that.

For sensible owners, a win or a place is a chance to pay the bills, and the joy is the joy of a good performance and the joy of seeing the bank account replenished that much. For wealthy and ultra-wealthy owners, well, I can't say; I don't know any yet. Sunrise didn't shout that she was a winner, a "good" or "useful" horse, but she is proving herself to be just that. If Sunrise is still around the yards when my ownership status is approved by France Galop, because there is always the chance that she'll be claimed, I'll be hoping for a chance for one or two of those beautiful legs.

Today, those legs carried Sunrise to the post in second place, ridden by Tristan Normand in the Prix du Val de Saire, a race reserved for horses born in 2007 and earlier, and for jockeys who haven't yet gotten 15 wins in the last year, and in a little less than two weeks, she will travel for the winter season to the all-weather track at Cagnes-sur-Mer, the reason Gina bought Sunrise at Newmarket in October for Annie, for a mere 2,000 guineas.




The worry today was that Sunrise might have attracted a little more interest than might have been desired. The 1900 meter race she ran was a claimer at 18,000 euros. A big, strong and good looking filly, Sunrise looked even better with a second place finish, and Annie put down a modest defense. She had gotten her for Gina to take to Cagnes, and Cagnes was where she must go, for Gina and herself.

The system in Cagnes is that the boxes are allotted in groups of 3. Last year, Gina had 3 boxes and took 4 horses. You figure out where the needed box will come once you get there, if you have the courage to take the chance. This year, Gina asked for 6 boxes and got them.

Being a nice person has its advantages. So does knowing to whom one should give the bottles, and that holds true for claiming Annie Casteu's horse right before Cagnes. On ne pique pas le cheval d'Annie Casteu juste avant Cagnes.

Having 6 boxes, Gina needed 6 horses, and the line-up was Satwa Sunrise and Milly, or Surrey Storm, both purchased in Newmarket for Cagnes, Deep Ocean, Strictly Rhythm, King Driver and Magical Flower. King was out with a nagging cough, and Gina made the decision to have him skip Cagnes, bit the bullet and had him gelded. Down one horse, she started to look around, when Magic, feeling at the top of her form, had a vigorous post-work roll and crashed a rear hoof into the wall of her stall, fracturing the coffin bone. That made 6 boxes and 4 horses, but you don't give up a box that comes up vacant suddenly; you find a horse.

Enter Elbow Beach, a 2-year-old gray mare being sent down from Red House Stables in England, where she is trained by Dr. Jon Scargill, to get a win to increase her value as a brood mare. Enter my first experience as an owner in thoroughbred horse racing. It's not too big, and it's not too small, in fact, it's just right. ElB, or Elbé arrives Thursday, if the seas of the English Channel calm down a bit, and will be here for 6 weeks. One of Gina's American owners will take the other two legs. A short term commitment, and a decent chance of winnings against a limited exposure in training fees and possible veterinary costs.

I am still fretting over my colors.
....

Today's racing sheet