The nature of Sisyphus

The felled tree

Sisyphus doesn't grumble. Sisyphus doesn't complain. In fact, Sisyphus rarely speaks. Sisyphus does the job, whatever job -- the job doesn't matter --, and Sisyphus does not give up, ever.

My husband came home from work yesterday evening, and looked down from the stairway to where I stood on the loose dirt of the embankment below the tree, axe poised to take out another bit of flesh. I was alternating between sawing through the trunk with the chain saw and hacking away at its circumference, reducing the size of the saw cut required to get through it, and now I was dealing axe blows. I had heard the motorcycle pull into to the space between the house and the garage, and he had certainly heard the axe head hitting tree.

"Do you want some help?"

I thought about it for a second, looking at him, waiting for my answer. To refuse was, a little oddly, unkind. It was also going a little too far. My elbows and shoulders ached. He was moving down the stairs, closer to me.

"OK."

"But, why are you using the pickaxe, and not the chainsaw?"

"First, it's not a pickaxe, it's an axe." I knew he knew that, but it annoyed me. Everything was annoying me. "And, second, as I have pointed out, the chainsaw is too small to handle most of the jobs for which we need it around here."

"It was good enough for cutting the firewood," he said in his defense, and the rest trailed away, "but it's true we order it cut now."

"What is the harm, when we are buying one of a tool, to buy one that is bigger than we need for most jobs, but can at least do them when we need it for them?" I think he muttered back that he knew. I handed him the axe.

He positioned himself where I had been standing, and prepared to swing. The axe came down once, twice, three times against the trunk, higher by a good 8" from where I had been working to remove the wood. I waited for the silence between the third and the fourth hit.

"Why are you working up there? I was trying to remove a chunk from down there, near the chainsaw cut."

He considered it for a moment, and lowered the axe for the next swing. The axe came down again, once, twice, and he stopped and swore, then gazed up into the branches of the tree, draped in cascades of bindweed and choked to within an inch of its life by thick ropes of ivy. There were, actually, more ivy leaves than elderberry ones up there. I was losing my Sisyphean patience.

I said, as nicely as possible, "Did you come to help, or to complain and look at the tree because that isn't going to bring it down." This is how he works.

Sisyphus was seriously annoyed.

He raised the axe again, and it came down several more times. We changed places, giving each other a break, and then, just before a blow, he stopped and said, "My elbow hurts at the prosthesis."

That was alarming. Several years ago, he had nearly died falling from a high wall, head first, breaking the head of the radius badly shielding his head from the impact. His elbow took it, and the radius had finished several centimeters beyond where the elbow should be.

"Stop, please. Don't do it. It isn't worth it. I can bring this tree down."

"Why don't you wait until Thursday, when we can rent a bigger chainsaw and save you this trouble? We can saw straight through in minutes."

I knew that. I had already thought about that.

"Why Thursday?"

"I am on duty tomorrow night. Wait and we can do it when I am home after."

"I am perfectly capable of renting a larger chainsaw on my own," I said, turning away from where I was preparing to start at the trunk again to face him.

"Yes, but I can help you when it gets dangerous, when it's ready to come down."

This time, I looked up at the tangle of ivy and bindweed over my head, and turned back to him.

"I have brought trees this big down here before, several of them. I can do this one, too."

I did not say that I could not stand the idea of waiting. Why? I could do other things. I knew it. I looked down the length of the light guage chain-link fencing on top of the embankment, sagging under the weight of the ivy using its posts for shoulders upon which to sit and sprout magnificent balls of shiny dark green leaves, like heads with bouncy green afros, which I had already trimmed. They annoyed me, too.

Add caption

I could return to cutting the ivy out from the chain-link behind the posts, and snipping away the inside layer of rusted chain-link. I could very well do that and rent a chainsaw to bring the tree down Thursday. This was a perfectly reasonable proposition and alternative.

"No."

Sisyphus had just spoken, and we both looked a little surprised.

"It's alright. I can do this."

I must have stopped soon after. It was getting late. I was tired. There was dinner to make, and I had just admitted that nothing could stop me, not even perfect reason. I am rational enough to understand reason, even to reason, but something stronger takes over. A glimmer of new penetration and understanding caught my eye from between the comingled leaves of ivy and elderberry.

I had all the following day to reflect on that. In fact, I had as much time as it would take me to bring this tree down. I looked back at the trunk after my husband began the climb up the stairs to the house, and tried to estimate just how much time. There was progress. At least half the trunk was removed. I looked at my tools -- an axe, a sledgehammer and wedge, and a puny chainsaw --, and my resolution set. I have a tempered will, but why? Why had I never stopped to wonder why, or even if it was really such a thing about which to crow? It was not entirely true that Sisyphus does not complain. Sisyphus does a lot of that, actually. No, not while she is doing the job, whatever job, the job doesn't matter, but after, when she feels undervalued, then Sisyphus delivers speeches containing strings of charges and complaints.

The axe fell again and again, and the chainsaw screamed and smoked its way deeper and deeper into the flesh of the tree, and Sisyphus considered why. She scrutinized her progress with the tools at her disposition, the only ones of which she would avail herself, like a settler, a woman bound to survive and make a life, even, and planned her way through that trunk. She looked up at the leaves not to breathe, but to consider the angle of the trunk, the mass of the higher, nearly vertical branches, the location of the neighbor's chicken abadoned chicken coop, a tile-roofed masonry structure, solid, but not something she cared to demolish for him, bringing down the tree that diminished both of their pleasures in their properties, and calculate which way it would most likely fall because fall it certainly would. Failure, for Sisyphus, is not an option, and failure to fell this tree was out of the question. It was coming down, and it was coming down as soon as physically possible.

But, still, she considered why. Why did it matter so much? Why had it all -- all of these gigantic, absurd, time-consuming and repeated projects -- mattered so much? Sysphisus thought she knew. It took only to see the question, and wonder why she had been unwilling to ask.

This was not the same tempered will and determination that saw her and Fibs out on the trails, galloping across the field, listening to the rhythmic snort of his breathing you only hear at a gallop, and that she had only heard on the piste jaune at Maisons-Laffitte, the racetrack, or from the horses in the highest level show jumping events, heard her horse just below her body breathe this way, carrying her on a journey and in the delight of movement, even though they were related. No, this was something else altogether. Perhaps, though, she considered, it took that other determination to hint at the difference and give rise to the reflection that brought with it the realisation that she had been fighting a battle, not against nature, not for the glory of the victories she counted as hers, even if they later proved less worthwhile and satisfying than she had imagined, and created a lot more work for Sisyphus along the way.

Sisyphus, it happened, was not happy. The work, the jobs she executed, whatever job -- the job didn't matter --, was an expression of her tempered will in opposition to every other force in her life. It started as something to do: resurrect a tangled, lost garden and make it beautiful; but, it had become a struggle, a fight. It was supposed to redeem the garden and herself;  it had became her weapon, her means of punishment for everything else, and a shield all at once.

The too small chainsaw weighed a ton. Her arms ached. And then it's teeth caught flesh, and it moved, screaming, but without smoke, through the last bit of fiber. It was almost done. She inserted the wedge and considered the weight of the sledgehammer. It wasn't for much longer. After the blows, she listened for the cracking, racing backwards to get away from the trunk in case that last groan was the end before it fell.

She sent a message on Facebook, "I feel kind of badly."

"Why?"

"It was a living thing."

"It will be alright."

"The tree or I?"

"LOL. You."

She took a photo of the tree trunk, now sitting on the wedge instead of the lower part of its now severed self. The wedge knocked out, a long electrical cord tossed up into the crotch of a branch and the trunk, and a game of tug-of-war later, rocking the tree forward and back, the trunk slid off its perch, and the tree fell back. Not forward. Back.

Sisyphus muttered, "Shit."

She thought she would feel triumphant. She only felt depressed.
....

The Shibboleth

"The Crack" (Shibboleth)
Doris Salcedo, 2007
Tate Modern

To say that all stories contain many stories is true. There are stories that can be told in a blog, and others that must wait for the novel and the movie (I would like to be played by Frédéric Pignon). There is only so much truth one can reveal and remain a decent human being. To say that there is more than one truth in a story is a given. I try to tell as many as I see, honestly. To say that this horse was the shibboleth in our precariously sewn, even basted, patchwork family would be one truth shared by everyone in this story. Some might blame the horse. I blame the people. It could have been anything, and, at other times, it was other things. This time, it was a horse, and this time, it was a decisive yank that tore that faulty stitching out between the squares.

Horses are special. They are large, and they are hard to overlook. They require many things that cost a lot of money. They are a life-long responsibility (theirs), and their lives are long, if we care for them well, and if we are very fortunate. They inspire one of the most dearly held of human desires, to have one and to ride. They have, then, a special ability to catalyze the good and the very not good, to generate strong feelings and fericiously defended points of view. They can federate, or they can fracture, lay bare the cracks one can otherwise blame on them, with their heavy footfalls; it all depends on the story, and the humans involved in that play. Horses, and the having of horses, is about love, respect and wisdom, and it shows where the love, respect and wisdom lack.

The other truth was that Fibs was there, in a box at the boarding facility owned by a family who had left the neighboring pony club, and taken two of the girls along with them when they decided to go out and compete on their own, not necessarily with the knowledge and consent of all of the other parents. One of those girls was my husband's daughter. Another was a younger girl, of some talent, and possessed of a very big mouth and large voice, equalled only by her exhuberance and difficulty to manage, who had been shown the gate. As an owners' boarding facility, it implied one thing: owning a horse or pony. However, two stories were coming to their dénouement -- one that involved me, and one that involved my stepdaughter --, and they shared a common point of origin in the mutual desire to ride and have a horse, and my having set her on the bridle path. How convenient would it have been had I not shared that desire, and so kept myself off that intersecting bridle path in the web of them in the forest. How many collisions would have been avoided.

It was a tale that could have had the word "fairy" before it for its ending, but instead it did for the theme of a stepmother and a child. The opposing truths would clash around the assignment of the adjective "wicked". To be clear, I have not, and I never would, demand the hunstman to bring back her heart. I might, though, have asked him to lose her somewhere, not very far from another barn very far away. I might still be waiting, but I have no huntsman.

And, if there are multiple truths in every story, there are as many possible starting points. The farther back one begins, the easier it is to weigh the merit of the truths, but the harder it is to keep track of it all. This story will be said to have begun with a horse who needed to find a home, his owner, a young teenager who had manoeuvered to put herself in the position of needing a horse, and her father into that of concession. I will add, in fairness to myself, that I had long argued in vain for a half-board on a horse able to jump more than 50cm without hip pain for her. Refusing the smaller things will often set you in far deeper manure.

There are other characters: the instructor who left the pony club to work with these three girls and for the owners, the owners, a mother, another ex-instructor who preferred caring for horses to teaching others to ride them, and a Polish handyman, who by the looks of him was perfectly cast to play Prince Charming, or the wise fool, or, ideally, both at once, but in a story without a sleeping beauty.

This story began the day my husband said, "And, if we brought Fibs out here, and she [his daughter] could ride him?" It began with a sigh, and a warning.

"You do understand, don't you, that Fibs is only just being retired from racing, and he is not ready to do what she needs a horse to do?"

I don't recall if he nodded or even acknowledged that I had spoken. I nodded and went to get on Facebook and send a message to keep Fibs from going to someone else, filled with so much relief and misgiving that I felt neither. I had whispered to Fibs that I would look out for him, maybe come find him one day and take care of him; I knew my husband had been strong-armed by his daughter and a bunch of people he didn't know, and I knew this horse did not fit the bill; and, I knew that things being what they were, she and I did not make for the best of partners in a thoroughbred race horse, about to come off the track and into several different peoples' imaginations in several different manifestations. A tall order for a 16.1 HH chestnut gelding, even a great great grandson of Secretariat.

Before I sealed his fate in one direction, I called the instructor. She owned a retired race horse, who had served time in the riding club as a lesson horse. My wishful thinking was in overdrive. I wished that she had trained her mare, and that she would know how to work with my stepdaughter to do the same thing with him, while I knew she was 25 and suspected she had done no such thing herself. My husband wasn't the only one selling himself the Brooklyn Bridge, but what was the alternative? Watch Fibs go away and release the gray certificate from the Haras Nationaux that had my name and his on it? My first ownership papers. I told her about Fibs and my husband's idea for his daughter. I asked her if she would work with her and help her prepare Fibs. She said she would be delighted to do it, and that it was an honor to be asked.

I think I heard the distant ringing of an alarm bell. I chose to be thrilled. It was a disaster.

There was the gift on an expensive leather halter with an engraved nameplate, and I took photos of Fibs with my stepdaughter.

There was the waiting for the work to begin, and nothing happened. I had said that he was a bit thin and had not been fed well for three weeks,possibly, but he was fine. Active, alert, and strong. A period of acclimation had passed, and he was doing well. And more time passed. Time in which murmurings of a half-board on the instructor's mare began to fill the barn air and drift home. One day, the instructor took Fibs and I out to the outdoor and she lunged him, while I took video. He knew how to lunge, but he was judged to have a bit of stiffness on the right side. I called the osteopath recommended by the boarding facility owners, and she pronounced him a little stiff, but nothing full turn-out and work would not help him work out. I couldn't help but notice the resounding silence and lack of enthusiasm her professional judgement produced. On the one hand, that meant working him. On the other, it meant a lower boarding fee from us. He returned to his box, and I returned to waiting, less than patiently.

The September days all ripped off the calendar, successive October days tore off one after another like the falling leaves, and still nobody seemed interested in doing anything with Fibs. I was raised to be polite, and patience seemed like a nice way to be polite, so I worked at remaining patient. I was new to the barn, and I was new to horses. Surely, some sort of work would begin? I knew one paid for that, but we had spoken of work, and we would pay for it. Was nobody interested in that? It did not seem in any way to be the case, and the murmurings on the half-board on the instructor's mare had turned into demands of my husband, who never came up there and did not return calls, to make a decision about the half-board, while the smiles with which the formerly friendly instructor had greeted me when I arrived had turned to acting like I was not there, or staring daggers. The truths were multiplying dangerously. It was Alien 3, not Black Beauty.

I gathered my politeness and tried speaking to the instructor, who informed me, as though I were the dullest hay bale knife in the barn, that Fibs was an utterly inappropriate horse for my stepdaughter, what was I thinking? And, he had a back problem!

The veterinarian came to see Fibs. They would do a flexion test, watch him move at the walk and the trot, and a "girthiness" test. He passed the first two without incident, but chen the instructor pulled up on the cinch and smacked him into movement, he reacted.

"See? He's girthy." She shot me a look to kill. How, I wondered to myself, was the vet not feeling the lack of love?

The vet walked over, ran her hands along his back, and shrugged. He looked the picture of perfect health and happy movement. The instructor was preparing her next blow of the mace.

"He can't be ridden, can he? He's not appropriate for a 16-year-old, is he?"

"How much experience does she have? Has he been ridden? Has anyone put a saddle on him and tried?"

The instructor shook her head no and shot me another look, the mace drooped in her hands.

"Well, put a saddle on him and see," said the vet. I led Fibs out of the round pen, trailing behind the vet and the instructor. They had other horses to see. Fibs returned to his pasture, and I gazed at him.

"Well, Fibs, I guess it's pretty clear, isn't it? Nobody intends for anyone to ride you, or do anything at all with you. What are we going to do now?"

He might have raised his muzzle from the grass and pressed it to me, or I might have wished for that. I looked out over the fields dotted with horses and divided by fences, against the line of trees at the edge of the forest, and listened to the traffic on the highway. I might have felt like I was going to cry. The truths were becoming noisy and ugly. There was my husband's, and there was mine, and the intructor's and my stepdaughter's, and there was the owners'. I was the one forced to glimpse them all and see that nobody was going to be happy here. It was mid-October. The owner's wife called me.

My husband was demanding to know when Fibs would move to full turn-out, as it had been intended from the beginning. The owners, through the wife, at first, were demanding to know when he would make a decision about the half-board. His daughter and the instructor were demanding the half-board. I talked to her  like the sensible, mature woman I hoped she was and presented our point of view. There were good reasons for my husband to hesitate, and we had expected his daughter to work with Fibs, not take a half-board on still another horse, but this was not happening.

I heard about his back, which her equine osteopath and vet had declared a non-issue. I heard about the necessaity for him to have 6 months of doing nothing to get his mind off the track, and another 9 months at a very minimum to be retrained to do anything but race around a racetrack, never mind that he had been hacked out in training since he was a youngster. I heard about the dangers to which I was insisting on exposing him, in putting him in turn-out in November, a thoroughbred facing his first winter outside a barn in clement Normandy, not, I thought, Siberia. I heard an acknowledgement that the instructor was young and immature. I heard that my stepdaughter was expected to be in lessons with the other girls, on a suitable horse, and vanning to shows. So, it was clear, then.

Fibs and I were shoved to the margins of the farthest fields when November 1 came around, and the daggers turned to a shoulder attuned to the weather growing colder. We had no friends at our barn, outside another owner, and the handyman, who looked on with what I was sure was compassion, and could expect none. It was not any better at home. The truths were on the verge of a declaration of war, and what had we done wrong?

Well, I knew what I had done wrong. I had gotten involved with a race horse. But, what had I done wrong since this later beginning to the story? Edgar Allen Poe would have told me to listen to my beating heart and answer my own question. I had not wanted to share my horse, this was true, but had I refused? No, I had called the osteopath and the vet, and I had asked when work would begin. And, had I caused our banishment? No, I told Fibs as I brushed him, praying to be left alone in the barn and not speared with freshly sharpened daggers. I could not be said to have been overflowing with niceness, but I had not been the one to mislead.

Others might not agree, came the thought. Did you expressly say that you would not also get another horse for her to ride in lessons and in shows? No, you said that it was a question of finances, and you said that your husband would have to decide that. They were asking for that decision. Did he know that this was what had been intended? No, but did he ask? No. These were all assumptions. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. His daughter done what she wanted, the opportunity presenting itself; he did not ask the questions he should have; the owners dealt with a minor and the minor's stepmother; and, you are all screwed seven ways to Sunday. 

Fibs might have raised his muzzle from the nap he was taking and pressed it to me, or I might have wished for that. I looked out along the aisle between the boxes to the big green doors, beyond which lay the fields dotted with horses and divided by fences in the night, on up to the highway where the headlights made beams in the dark, and listened to the horses chew their hay. I might have felt like I was going to cry. The truths were at war. All I knew was that I was still his human, and that he depended on me. If nobody else were going to work with him, then I would have to learn and do what little I could. The cracks were there and running all over the barn floors and walls, and adding to the ones that already made webs of our walls and ceilings at home.

I could let Fibs go, but he was mine. I loved him. I cared for him. I took him for walks in the forest along the bridle paths others rode, and between the trees in the spaces between, and even, sometimes, between the trunks of the trees that grew in two, and he followed me, better, for the most part, it never failed to occur to me, than my poorly leash-trained lab. I regretted everything that had happened since he arrived from Maisons-Laffitte and missed the easyness of the pony club, the comforts that would have been afforded by the obvious solution of a half-board at the pony club, but could I regret Fibs and my name on his certificate of ownership? How, I wondered, on those walks and during those long grooming sessions, all I knew how to do at all, could I ever reconcile that? And, Fibs might have raised his muzzle from the ferns and pressed it to me, or I might have wished for that, while I gazed into his eyes and sealed my fate.
....

Fibs, November 11, 2012

This is a serialized story over an agonizingly long period (I get busy). For the earlier parts, you might like to read:

The Story I have not told, Fibs and I
A place to start
Pas de tout ou pas de deux?
Starting at the very beginning

If you enjoy the stories, and what you see here, please leave a comment and give us a g+1 and a Tweet. Thanks!

A place to start

Fibs finds freedom, September 3, 2012

For some reason, the veins standing out against the muscle on his hindquarters and legs, just under the deep copper coat, like tracery in Gothic church windows, make me think about his story and about how destiny works, and whether it exists. He was foaled in North Yorkshire, pretrained in North Yorkshire, and lived the first few years there, as well, before going to Newmarket, to Maisons-Laffitte and finally to "la boucle". He raced, and then he stopped racing. He knew people, and they knew him, but how well? Had he friends? Did he miss anyone, and did they miss him?

"He's grumpy," I was told, the implication was that others were not, or were less so, and possibly better prospects, but I was not prospecting. My name was already on his certificate of ownership. I was his owner. If I weren't, I wouldn't be propsecting.

Or, I would have been, since I wouldn't yet have learned my lesson, that I am decidedly not remotely close to prepared to be a race horse owner. Sadly. I would like to have the sort of disposable income that makes risk fun, exhilarating, and be able to take the losses and the setbacks in stride. Really. Fibs taught me that I do not by teaching me what racing is. Had it not been he who taught me that, it would nearly certainly have been another horse in his place, and the story would have been the story of me and another horse who was not Fibs, a less grumpy horse, perhaps.

In ordinary life, the one I led right up until I heard about Fibs and Flannel and thought breaking even was the worst that could happen to a hapless and unfortunate owner of a single race horse -- I apparently have an amazing ability to hear what suits me and a frightening lack of imagination, which was a surprise to me and has led me to consider the difference between concepts like "spontaneity", "romance", "determination", and "risky" --, I was not looking for a horse. I have a husband, who works, and a child and stepchildren, and we are the sort of people who do not have Great Means, and who see to their children before themselves. In that life, my stepdaughter was riding, at my behest and with my encouragement, and I was not. When she was 12, I took her to the big sports clothing and equipment store and purchased the essentials after her trial lesson at the pony club: helmet, boots, chaps, breeches, and a crop. She was ready to mount. One day, she brought a crop to the house for me.

"Tiens. Maintenant peut-être tu monteras avec moi," she said. Here, perhaps now you will ride with me.

"Ah, c'est gentil, mais non, ce n'est pas pour moi." It is not for me.

The crop sat in a corner, next to the backgammon and chess cases that had travelled from the States, getting a headstart on the thick accumulation of dust the crop would eventually attain. I dust too infrequently.

To be truthful, it was not for me, either, that we had wound up in a trainer's yard in Maisons-Laffitte. First lessons had led to three or four "galops" (like the snowflakes in ski lessons) acquired, and we had also become acquainted with the pricetag of a taste for riding and ambition in it along the way, and I was looking for ways people who cannot afford quite a number of thousands of euros a year can satisfy the desire to ride, bigger, better, faster.

I had noticed that my stepdaughter always smiled in competition and that speed did not seem to alarm her, and reading the racing blog in the New York Times around the Breeders' Cup, nearly two years ago, I came across the story of an American journalist in Paris, who had given up reporting to train race horses full time, Gina Rarick. I went to her website, read about the horses available, including a share in Satwa Sunrise, clicked on the links for the training center in Maisons-Laffitte and watched the France Galop video describing its wonders. The little girl who remembered the Walter Farley books joined me and imagined Alec and Henry and the great Black Stallion and Flame on those exercise tracks in the early morning Parisian mist.

I opened my email, typed a message of introduction and asked if we could visit. I had a young teenage girl who might find a future as a stable slave and exercise rider there.

Two weeks later, the answer came. In true Gina style, it was brief, cheerful and frank, "Sure!"

Instead, it was the little girl who had read The Black Stallion, and every other book about horses she could find, who found her future there, and the husband of her older self who would learn who he had married. I was an architect. A woman who earned her living and keep, from the earliest time in her life, who had provided for her son, and knew what $5 had to buy all the way through college, and who didn't forget later in life. Now, from considering a leg or two in Satwa Sunrise, to having two in Elbow Beach, 6 months later, I owned Fibs and Flannel, and another 4 months later, he was stepping off a van and into my immediate life. Cinderella had found her Prince Charming, and the Wellies he brought fit. Perfectly. He wasn't black, either, like my literary dream stallion; he was red, like Flame, his arch enemy, and he was a gelding. At least that much.

And, he was "grumpy".

So was my husband. And so, I would learn, and already suspected, would we all be. The wrong person in this story had the horse.

Also, he was a little skinny. Nothing some groceries and a little Phosphalugel to protect his tummy couldn't remedy.

I was learning already. The initiation begun at Gina's, where I listened to every word uttered by her, by her assistant, Agata, and by the vet, Jérôme, had just shifted gears. This concerned the horse in my direct care, boarded near my home. The vet was on the other end of the phone line with the owners of this private owners' stable, listening and asking questions. Fibs would need the Phosphalugel for a week, two would be good, unlimited access to hay, and a gradual increase in the grains as he adjusted to being fed regularly again and put weight back on. By my friend's eye, he had lost some 35kg in the 3 or 4 weeks since he had last raced in late July. I took the paper held out to me and headed off to the pharmacy for the bottle of thick, white liquid he, my horse, would be ingesting morning and evening to coat his tummy and protect against colic and ulcers.

I was full of hope, and a little worried: not about my horse, but about how we were going to work out everything around this horse, and what his presence in our lives meant. A former race horse  in a stable is, I suspected (rightly), a lot like an elephant in the room, the one everyone is avoiding discussing. Yes, that one. I suspected that we weren't all on the same page, because we had never been, because we were a "recomposed family" of ill-fitting and missing pieces in a difficult environment, and because just getting a dog a few years before had been "challenging" and nearly led us to divorce court, exposing the insecurities of certain ones with respect to the goodwill of others.

This would be the beginning of trying to hope, while taking things day by day and suspecting that things could go all wrong, beacuse of all the things left imagined and unsaid; of seeing and hearing without knowing what it all meant and why; of taking delight, while not feeling free to do so; for the simple fact reigned and governed everything: the wrong person had the horse.

If the garden had been the place where I could take refuge and reflect, make things happen and find some satisfaction and a little solace in the life and the stepfamily we had undertaken, my consolation prize for the professional life I had left behind, the horse would be the thing that cleaved and laid the bones of our situation bare.

This, I knew, is also a place to start. His story before, I also knew, was going to be nothing next to mine from here on out.
....

It's just a jump to the left

Fibs and Flannel, first canter and new colors

Fibs and Flannel, Piste Jaune at Maisons-Laffitte, May 25
In flight

If I was an owner with Elbow Beach, it's true that it was nothing like it is now that I am an Owner, officially approved by and registered with France Galop, and the owner of Fibs and Flannel, by Tobougg out of Cayman Kai mare Queens Jubilee (in the year of the Queen's Jubilee, a sign perhaps), making purchase decisions, ordering my silks, signing contracts, and, yesterday, standing on the mound of grass alongside the piste jaune, waiting for my horse to come blazing up and past us where we take stock of the horse's action, respiratory effort, relative speed and power.

It's where we realized the issue with Elbow Beach that we believed explained her lack of turn of foot in the homestretch. It's where we realized that Fibs is fast. Fast, I hope, enough.

Full reach

When he arrived in the yard in Maisons-Laffitte from Newmarket May 7, I went out to see him the next day and found a horse dripping with muscle in the shoulder and hind quarters, with a nice deep chest. Even I could see that this was a horse built for the mile, 8 furlongs, 1600 meters.

"Up to maybe 2000 here," said my friend and trainer now Gina Rarick, "But, we'll start him at a mile."

Good, consistent milers are rare enough, and it's a good length race to run well here, and he likes the turf, and runs just about as well on the fibersand. There would be plenty of options for him.

"I watched the video of his last two races in England again, and I think he was just losing interest. They are hard on them over there. I think all we have to do," said Gina "is make him happy."

This is the yard to do that, and it's the part that makes it the hardest if you're in the clamining races, with the chance of losing the horse to someone willing to bid higher than the price at which you are willing (or able) to defend. King Driver has a blue plastic soccer ball in a net that can be hung from the wall of his box or held by Agata in a game of tug-of-war, her hand and arm to his teeth and neck.

Everyone gets pets (except the stallion) and company, music during evening stable and individually adapted meals, according to the horses' needs and tastes. The boxes are squeaky clean and fresh, the straw plentiful, the hay tasty, and both are free of dust to bother the throat and lungs.

Owners wield pitchforks and walk their and others' horses, take the news of the yard, show up for each other's races, bring carrots and photos. The gate is always open, except when it is time for the afternoon nap and peace and quiet reign.

The other bit of work was to develop his back muscles and help him heal a sore spot along his spine, just before the croup, from where the saddles in England bothered him. He ran with his head up and his back hollow. Here, he would strengthen his back and learn to run with his head down while carrying a jockey.

Fibs did not move into the yard as the fanciest horse, nor as the most expensive horse, the horse in whom anyone could have the highest hopes and expectations. He arrived from the spring Breeze Up & Horses In Training Sale, Lot N° 35, not the best sale with the best horses. That's in July. But, the sale was taking place, Sebastien was going and returning with horses, and with the departure of Elbow Beach, I was without a horse. I could see what Sebastien had shipped over and if Gina thought anything was worth training, or I could just wait until July.

His race history was good enough; his paper was alright; but, he could be up for sale at the Tattersall's spring sale because there was something developing, something wrong, or not right enough, or because the barn needed to make room for younger, more promising horses that hadn't reached their ceilings yet. Racing is relative; he could be useful in the claimers and handicaps, but only seeing him, watching him move, going over his legs and feeling who is is would tell.

Gina gave the nod; Fibs was a horse who might well do what we hoped, and, so, he stayed in the yard under my patronage as the possibly useful horse, a horse who might bring in more in a claimer than was paid in Newmarket, and his papers and shipping.  A horse who might help me acquire a better horse still, or who would at least work and pay his bills in exchange for good care and the chance to run.

Yesterday, the yard's regard for him climbed a notch the second he passed us, standing alongside the piste jaune.

"He's good," said Gina, sounding, just possibly, agreeably surprised. "He's straight, and he has a large stride." I definitely heard satisfaction.

He'd cantered, what the French call galloping, the speed work, with Hard Way, and Gina turned to Hard Way's two other owners, she herself being the third, as well as his breeder, and pronounced him ready for Longchamp June 11. At that moment, I hope I might be forgiven my selfishness, I only had ears for what she had to say about Fibs, eyes for Fibs. Hard Way, as much as I adore him and am enchanted by his story, seemed a million miles away, somewhere out in Fibs' orbit.

We made our way over the other side of the piste jaune to the trail alongside, the place where Gina asks her questions and finds out what the exercise riders have to say about the horses' performance, while they turn in lazy circles around her, and Ludovic on Hard Way and Agata on Fibs trotted peaceably up toward us, where we waited.

"Il est bon," said Agata, and I got lost behind my camera lens, watching them turn about Gina, half-hearing the conversations around me, and the words He's good. He's good. He's good. Il est bon, il est bon, il est bon turned around and around in my ears.

Later, Agata came up to me in the yard and said, "Il avait encore a donner. Il aurait pu prendre Hard Way à la fin là et vient avec Hard Way devant. Il est bon."

Il est bon, il est bon, il est bon.


You don't let them actually race in speed work, though. Hard Way was the one set to gallop out front, and Agata's job was to gallop Fibs, staying back. Let one get along side another, and you've got a horse race, not a morning speed session.

My silks were ready at Petitspas on the main street in Maisons-Laffitte, making and selling everything you need to train and race a horse, and we headed off to pick them up, my heart a little bit in my throat. I could always change them if I hated them. I had had such a hard time making up my mind, but I didn't want to have to go through that, show myself as anything but decided and knowing my mind, at least for the choice of my colors.

Monsieur greeted us like he always does, and we followed him through the workshop, smelling of leather and full of scales, tools and an assortment of different machines for sewing everything from fabric to leather, where his assistant looked up from where he was working at the long bench along the windows of the courtyard and smiled toward us, to his office, from which he emerged with a smile and a clear plastic bag in his hand. Neatly folded inside were my racing silks. My colors.

I imagined them up on the wall at Deauville or Longchamp. I have no right to, but no one does not imagine this. I saw satiny golden orange and a color like a deep claret wine, so close to "win", shining through. I hardly dared form an opinion, but it seemed generally favorable around me. We drove back to the yard, and Gina pulled into her place in front of the gate.

"Do you want to take the silks home?" she asked.

"You usually keep them, don't you?" It occurred to me she thought I might want to show them to my husband. "Keep them here with all the silks."

"OK, I'll keep them with the others," she said, drawing back her hand and the silks shining in the sunshine through their plastic packaging. We started to cross the street.

"That way there can't be any problem; everything is here and ready."

The trainer brings the silks to the race in the little pouchshe has just for that purpose, leaves them in the cubby near the jockeys' locker room, and brings them back to launder them after the race. We turned to cross the street.

"You don't want to take them into the house?" I said.

"No! Let's take them over to the yard; we always show new silks off to the yard," she added, laughing.

It's true. It is a big moment. New colors coming into a trainer's yard means new business: a new owner, another horse, more racing opportunities and business. There are endless moments to mark and to celebrate in racing, even the sorrier ones, like a race that doesn't go according to expectations, when a jockey doesn't follow his orders or a horse has a bad day against tough competition, and none is to be missed. Ever.

Gina walked down to the barn and ripped open the plastic, turning to hold up the casaque in the bright noon sunshine for everyone's inspection. I watched from the safety of my camera lens. Agata voiced her approval and her surprise at finding that she approved.

"C'est beaucoup mieux en vrai que sur papier!" she pronounced, a huge smile across her face, "Le satin brille et ça change tout!"

I realized she had carefully hidden her fear that the silks would be hideous from me, but because they were shiny, and not just muddy ink on heavy ivory paper, or what it looked like on the simulator on the France Galop site, whichever she had seen, they had saved themselved from being awful, and even pleased.

"J'avais vu les échantillons des tissues chez Petitpas," I offered, by way of hopeful explanation, "alors je savais que ça donnait autre chose que sur l'écran de l'ordi ou papier." I had seen the cloth samples at Petitpas, I explained, so I knew what they would look like. Sort of.

"Et, je voulais que ça brille au soleil, que se soit des couleurs heureuses qui se voient."

She nodded, still smiling, and went to take the silks from Gina and pulled them over her head. I turned to Mark and added, "And I have the horse, as it happens, to go with them." He raised an eyebrow and smiled, nodding Yeah.

It was true; he shines like burnished copper, a bright, shiny centime in the sun, and the colors are perfect for him. It is just another coincidence.

Watching Agata pull the silks into place, I thought, I even have an enthusiastic and beautiful exercise jockey to model them for me, and got back behind the lens. She went to shut Milly's box door against the strong sunshine and heat and mugged for me, laughing and celebrating new colors.

"Il fallait oser le faire, mais c'est bon," she concluded, folding them back into their clear plastic bag and setting it on the bench alongside everything else one needs to care for race horses in Gina's barn. "C'est vraiment bien."

"C'est ça qui compte le plus," I told her, "que tout le monde les apprécie car l'on travaille tous ensemble." The whole yard wears the owners' colors, so it's best, I think, if everyone likes and is proud of them.

I feel like I might be a little bit crazy. I am not the person of whom you think when you think of a thoroughbred race horse owner; I am far from from it, possessing some of the qualities, but lacking the main one, the wealth, but there's something driving me. I don't make a lot of impulsive decisions; I can't afford to, but I am doing this for the experience, for the pleasure of being around these animals and everyone who is also compelled to be around them, for whatever lessons I will learn, and for whatever stories I will have to tell.

Because, you can't know the stories until you live them, and you can't tell what you haven't lived.
....

Fibs

Hard Way adds a chapter to his story, and a victory to his record

Hard way and jockey Christophe Lemaire enter the winner's circle

Hard Way's back at the racetrack, and things will never be the same again.

I used to trip off to the races in the wake of throughbred racing trainer Gina Rarick and her retinue, a kaleidoscopic cast of support staff, clients and friends, camera in hand, with a sense of interested detachment. Even when I knew the horses running and their owners. Even when I was the owner of the horse running, which has been the case 4 times on a two-leg share in Elbow Beach. Even when the horse did well. But that's all changed now. Racing, for me, will never be the same again because Hard Way returned, and Hard Way won. And Hard Way is not just any horse.

He made it look easy. He made it look like the race was being run in slow-motion, and at his bidding. It was his race. His and jockey Christophe Lemaire's race to run, and to win.

He made it look like he'd known all along, all those months in the cold dark mornings and tucked in after a manger full of oats, apples and Guinness in Agata's company, listening to the radio, for the long dark winter nights. Like he'd been waiting for this, through those early spring lengthening days.

He knew he had come back to the yard in Maisons-Laffitte for a purpose, taking up the priveleged stall next to the sellerie, Gina's office in the barn, where the only phone is in her pocket and there's no desk. A trainer's work is in the boxes. In the training center and the forest. At the racetrack. Gina's office is for old photos of horses, including Hard Way at Deauville in his younger days, white boards for communicating who needs what and how to contact someone who knows what to do in an emergency, a cupboard with a supply of benign verterinary first aid supplies, for when you can take care of it yourself, shelves of wool saddle blankets from England and racks of racing saddles, counters covered with pots of leather grease and pallets with sacks of grain and racehorse mixes, crates of practically give-away price apples from the market in Maisons-Laffitte.

And he knew, like he knew everything else a racehorse needs to know, that this purpose was to race again, even if Gina herself didn't know it yet when she brought him back in the truck.

Saturday, May 5, the wait was over. The long months of conditioning from early retirement to race form were accomplished. His shaggy winter coat and leg feathering gone since his last preparation race at Lisieux on April 15, a new Hard Way -- one, who of everyone, only I had never seen -- emerged from his box on the backside like a butterfly from its cocoon, transformed into a shining, sleek being tuned to race. It was enough to take your breath away, if you hadn't happened to be paying attention recently.

He looked at us, glanced around the walking circle, where a few of the others who would run against him in the fifth were turning, under a storm gathering overhead, and one would swear that Hard Way sighed with satisfaction.

I'm back, and it's good. I'm ready. He nodded to Agata, Gina's assistant in the yard, and they set off to walk around and around.

This horse is the special horse in the yard. The horse with the story and the love of his trainer, who is also his breeder and holds a share in him, and everyone around her racing stables. Hard Way, the horse you'd be tempted to say was dealt the "hard knocks", asked to take the "hard way" in life, but you'd know no such thing from being around him and having the pleasure of his gaze return your own. The horse who loved to lay his head on Gina's shoulder during evening stable and let her lean into his big chest. This is a horse who knows grace. A lovely state.

Orphaned when his dam, Nicosia, a German bay with 1 win and 7 places in her 28 starts, the last 8 of them for Gina, died, he was raised by a wet nurse, a solid, working plowshare mare on the other side of the farm from the thoroughbreds, who he could see, but didn't particularly care to join. He grew up apart and a little fearful of those bold thoroughbred colts who ran together. Even of the fillies who nudged each other like their dams, and whispered, he almost certainly thought, about him. He was afraid, Gina told me, telling me her favorite story -- his -- again, of the other horses. He didn't like to run with them, or even get too close to them. He didn't, really, see himself as one of them, and that didn't change when he got to the yard, and eventually to the racetrack.

Hard Way didn't care for breaking from the starting gate and finding all those horses running behind him. Hard Way preferred, if possible, to get away from them, and winning was a particularly good way to do this.

And then Gina noticed in early August of 2010 that something had changed in Hard Way's stride. Even at a trot. His last couple of races at Saint-Cloud and Clairefontaine with Lemaire and Olivier Peslier on board, his performance hadn't been the same.

The vet said nothing was wrong; he was running fine, but Gina knew him better. She'd ridden him long enough to know something was wrong. The scan showed a crushed Atlas, the first vertebra, just at the base of a horse's skull. Hard Way's racing career was over. Early in the fall of 2010, Gina drove him in the van to Normandy to let him enjoy the pure, damp breezes that blow from the channel and eat all the lush green Normandy grass that humidity bestows on France's horse country his long life of leisure before him would afford.

But, Hard Way languished in his emerald pastures. He cooled his heels and despaired. He watched the other horses and kept his distance, I am sure. He kept his head down, nosing through the long wet grass, lifting it to look to the southeast, toward Paris, and he thought, I am equally sure, about Gina, and Maisons-Laffitte, and racing.

And one day, Gina decided to bring him back. He might as well keep her company in the yard for all he was enjoying his early retirement. And she rode him, and he seemed -- better.

Gina had another scan done, and this time it showed an intact, repaired Atlas; it had calcified. Gina thought about training him again, and the vet said, Pourquoi pas? Fais-le courir et on vera bien, and that was how it was that Hard Way was back in training by the time I set foot in the yard for the first time around Thanksgiving, just 5 months before his comeback race.

That Saturday, there was more electricity in the air than the gathering thunderstorm, unless Gina's nerves brought it on. The other races went on; we trooped up to the Owners' and Trainers' lounge to occupy a table, eat plates of desserts or fromages from the buffet and drink champagne to calm Gina's nerves and pass the time. People circulated, exchanging greetings and bits of coversation, squeezes of the shoulder or elbow and half-knowing smiles, like couples in a ballroom, bits of business to facilitate, racehorse or social. It was there that Sebastien and I saw Esles blow past the competition and the post and grabbed the Tattersalls catalog for the upcoming Guineas Breeze Up and Horses in Training Sale Sebastien wasn't missing, suddenly motivated by a colt in the pages liberally peppered with black type, another by Motivator, and way out of our range, as it turned out.

Then it was time to saddle Hard Way. The relief of something to do. The way time passes on the backside, in its own raceday rituals and rhythms.

Jean-Paul Gallorini had a horse in the box next door -- they'd raced earlier in the day in the Group 2 race, le Prix de Greffhule -- and he came by to wish Gina and Hard Way well. Laying his hand on the white stripe down the middle of Hard Way's forehead, it looked for all the world as though he was receiving the blessing of one of Gina's own mentors and friends, one of the best trainers in France.

And then it was time to lead Hard Way out to the presentation circle. Last this time. Last in, and, necessarily, last out. The presentation ring is where Hard Way evacuates whatever emotions gather in him before a race. In these moments, he is best ridden by a jockey with bronco experience, and his grooms had best love him, or they'll not forgive the minor wounds.

Finally, there is the moment when the horse and his rider pass onto the track, to trot and then canter toward the gates, when the trainer, the owner, and the grooms retreat to their vantage posts to watch the race and await the outcome. When last bets, including mine that day, with the last 5 euros bill I had in my wallet, 2 to win and 2 to place, are made, before everyone gathers in front of the television screens or presses their binoculars to their eyes. The horses circle as one by one, more or less readily, they walk or are pushed into their gates, green metal doors clanging shut behind them to wait the last horse in, and then the steward gives the signal, the bell clangs, and everyone thinks "They're off," like several hundred silumtaneous and silent prayers.

Hard Way broke at the front of the field of 20, and then, before disappearing from sight, Christophe Lemaire settled him back a bit, letting the others overtake them until Hard Way was on the hind end of the fourth horse. I had chosen a place on the rail in the grandstand just below the plate glass windows of the Owners' and Trainer's Lounge, where most everyone else was watching on the television screens to watch every move the horses and their jockeys made, and then they were coming round the final turn. The announcer said "Hard Way". I listened. He was closed on the rail, near the horse out front. I was trying to listen and to watch, what was happening on the track and in front of the screens up behind me all at once. I turned and missed the moment Christophe and Hard Way found their opening, skipping past the horse that stumbled right in front of them, watching Mark and Steve, Steve's daughter and Graham, and his wife see it. I turned, and there was deep blue and yellow out in front on a dark horse.

Hard Way. Hard Way is out front!

I snapped photos in rapid-fire succession, holding my breath, watching Christophe and Hard Way pull away on the sodden turf, looking for all the world like they were out for a morning galop de chase in the Rond Poniatowski, followed by a bunch of school boys and girls who were far outclassed. And then Christophe sent a message up the reins to Hard Way. If Christophe were American, like Gina Rarick, it might have been "Whoah, boy, easy now. You don't have to win this one by much. Let 'em look good, too. Atta boy" that he was telegraphing up those orange rubber reins for the others had gained ground by the time they crossed the post, but not by enough to catch Hard Way who won by nearly 2 lengths. Christophe had given him the perfect ride.

I turned to look through my camera lens back up at the doors, from which Hard Way's fans were bursting into the stands with shouts and smiles, hugs and wet eyes everywhere. Pandemonioum. This was not your average victoire à Saint-Cloud, and neither were the photos with the horse in the winner's circle or the fête pour arroser la victoire after. There was nothing blasé nor every day about it. Hard Way had gone into retirement broken and emerged again healed to win. Not for a moment had his owners lost a shred of confidence in him; if Hard Way were back to train and run again, they were there to make it happen.

And that is how it is that I will never return to the racetrack with the same detachment I once had. How I am not even sure my own horse's victory one day might rival the way we all felt when Hard Way entered the winner's circle, head held high, Christophe Lemaire looking almost goofy with pleasure up on his sweat-soaked back, the dark print left by a hand laid in congratulations on his damp haunch. Lisa beaming at his far side, and Agata radiating the purest joy on his near, and Hard Way found himself at the center of a training and racing enterprise built on the best horse sense and friendship, love for the horses and the sport, and everyone was gathered here, around him, to celebrate it on this day.

Today, Hard Way runs again. This time at Maisons-Laffitte. Christophe Lemaire was to have been on board once more, but fate dealt another hard blow and there will be a different jockey for another day; one more lesson that racing teaches: no one ever knows what is coming next or gets to write the story before it happens, and that is exactly as it should be. The interest is in the journey, the day-to-day, and, win or lose, a story will be lived and live in the telling.

Here's to Hard Way, all that is good in racing.


Merci.
....

Hard way out front in the homestretch

For the RaceDay photos, click here.

For Hard Way and Elbow Beach, it's back to the racetrack

Prix René Couétil, Lisieux April 15
Tania des Ongrais

Perhaps it was the stiff, cold wind blowing across Normandy from the north. The horses were nervous before the race. We knew Hard Way was a handful -- Lisa got permission to have his gentleman rider mount before entering the presentation circle and get him out again before he had completed a full turn, and still he bounded out and put Guilain Bertrand through a rodeo to remember --, but they nearly all were.

Twisting, turning, rearing and rocking, determined to rid themselves of their riders, or just let something out, something to do with the excitement before the race, the wind, and the smells carried on it, but it only lasts a moment, and then everything is in perfect order. A warm-up followed by the orderly procession of 14 obedient and civil horses to the tape start, and they're off.

Hard Way got a good start and then sat out near the front in second or third position for most of the race with a steady race pace. Guilain moved him into the rail coming into the last turn, and they came out and into the homestretch in front, but the most experienced gentlemen riders were just behind, and made their bids. Maxime Denuault up on Sandinnar, the Aga Khan Stud mare and half-sister to Deep Ocean, saw the hole to thread between Guilain and the rail, while Florent Guy up on Quadriller, trained by Jehan Bertran de Balanda, squeezed him on the outside while the winner, Sabletory, ridden by Jean-Philippe Boisgontier, came up strong on the outside with the Gérard Augustin-Normand horse, Saint Aubin ridden by Mathieu Brasme threatening from behind.

Cire du Fray thought about it, but Hard Way wasn't going to let another horse past him and finished 5th, 4 3/4 lengths behind the winner, Sabletory, followed by Saint Aubin, with a nice showing, coming on strong from behind and overtaking the leaders through the homestretch, Quadriller, and Sandinnar.

It was Guilain's second race ever. A chance to gain race experience, while for Hard Way, it was a training session in his preparation to hit the Paris racetracks after 18 months in a retirement he decided he didn't want. Seeing him in his box at Gina Rarick's yard in Maisons-Laffitte, or in the training center of a morning, I didn't get it, but watching Hard Way spring out of the presentation circle and race was a revelation: the cream puff turned into sound and fury, a whirling dervish only to settle right back into his lovable, affectionate self off the racetrack again.

A crushed vertebra wasn't enough to stop Hard Way. He'd encased it in calcium and set it aside, making it clear to his trainer that he wanted to be in his old box in the stables on the rue Champaubert, and, preferably, on the nearest Paris racetrack.

He'll have his chance in about three weeks at Longchamp.

For now, I have to get in the car and go see another horse race. One Elbow Beach in whom I have a half share. Elbow is running her first sprint since her arrival in January from England, and today will tell if she is what her pedigree says, a sprinter at 1100 meters, or if she is the exception to her family's rule and a miler. She'll start in the third race at Maisons-Laffitte with one of the best values, but variably rated, depending on whether you're consulting Geny.com and Paris-turf.com, which have her at 11:1 odds, or ZEturf.fr, which has her at 26.3. Geny gives her an outside chance. I'd be delighted with a great and safe race, and a place.

We'll be running, like yesterday, against horses -- the two top favorites Gandalak and Dampierre -- owned by His Highness the Aga Khan and Gérard Augustin-Normand, respectively. Jockey Fabien Lefebvre, who knows her well, will be on board. I  have butterflies in my stomach.

There was question of lunch at the racetrack before the race, but this is the most nervous I have been before a race, and I think I'll scratch that and hope for reason for a little champagne after.

For the photos from around the racetrack at Lisieux yesterday, click here.
For the battle up the homestretch in Hard Way's race at Lisieux, click here.
....

Hard Way and Agata, after the race

Deep Ocean wins one

Trainer Gina Rarick on Deep Ocean,
Maisons-Laffitte, December 22, 2011

I nearly opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate, but, since I am alone, I decided to opt for Hard Way's nutritional supplement of choice, a Guinness in honor of the son of Sinndar, Deep Ocean's victory today at Lyon Carré de Soie in the 8th, the Prix Président Buffaud. And not just any victory: a victory by four lengths.

If you're going to win, you might as well do it in style. 

Deep's usual jockey Gérald Pardon was on board and stayed warm and safe just behind the front runners until the final turn, when he asked Deep to step on the gas on the outside, and Deep made it look like a romp in the park, accelerating easily and overtaking, little by little, everyone in front of him, like a stealth bomber, until there was no one between him and Gérald and the post and room for three good-sized horses between him and everyone else. 

He looked like Usain Bolt in the last few meters, and if he were a man and not a horse, I swear he'd have looked over his shoulder and pumped his fist on his well-muscled chest as he loped over the finish line. 

It was Deep's day, and whether Paris-Turf keeps up with all the horses or just the several solid favorites, we in and around trainer Gina Rarick's yard at Maisons-Laffitte knew that it was but a matter of time before the four-legged and feisty ATM carried the day and brought home the biggest check. 

Let's take a look, though, at Paris-Turf's prognostics. 

In a field of 15 runners, 7 were given favorite. In order of finish, they were: Caroz, trained by Jean-Pierre Gauvin; Le Falgoux by Cédric Boutin; El Mulino by Thierry Larrivière; Successful by Bernard Goudot; the venerable El Vettorio, a 9-year-old German gelding trained by Cédric Boutin; the nearly as venerable L'Impressioniste, both in terms of age and prize money won, by Fabrice Chappet; and the equally venerable Théorique by Mathieu Boutin.

And, what did Paris-Turf have to say, quite precisely? I translate:

Caroz has had a chance to rest up since his last race and seems capable of fighting for the victory. Le Falgoux, who's back on a race track on which he has never disappointed, the regular El Mulino, and and Successful, capable of good things on his best days, can get in his way, barring his success. The eldest, El Vettorio, L'Impressioniste and Théorique, also deserve credit. Blamar and Poletto are not to be neglected.

And Deep Ocean? Where is Deep in all this? 

Deep, as it concerns him, was mentioned as a "regular chance". He and I snort in their general direction because Deep, as it concerns him, did indeed leave them all in his dust.

And, Paris-Turf, what did they have to say about this, once everyone had a chance to taste Deep's dust? 

For Caroz, favorite for the win, and who didn't class: "Among the front runners until just after the last turn, conceded midway up the homestretch and was clearly dominated."

Le Falgoux, in 9th place: "After waiting in the middle of the pack, didn't finish badly on the inside, just behind the leaders."

El Mulino, who did not class: "Front runner after the first turn, maintained his lead until the last 400 meters and then fell back."

And, Successful? He finished 2nd: "After waiting in the middle of the pack, on the rail, had some difficulty breaking out in the homestretch, and then finished fast, but well behind the winner Deep Ocean."

As for El Vettorio, L'Impressioniste and Théorique, they finished 3rd, 8th and 6th, respectively.

Reserved for Deep, the winner: "Coming up on the outside line, in Livia Noire's wake, took the lead just coming into the homestretch and flew to the post, winning brilliantly."

Deep Ocean and jockey Gérard Pardon pass the post

So, do not, I say, forget this fils de Sinndar, Sinndar, qui, portant les couleurs de l'Aga Khan, a été vainquer de l'Arc de Triomphe 2000, beating the favorite Montjeu and denying him his chance at back-to-back Arc victories. 

My partner in Elbow Beach, for her time racing with us in France, pointed out that Sinndar is racing under the number 5 in the Arc, like Deep Ocean and three other of the horses who won in the nine races yesterday at Lyon Carré de Soie.

I can recognize that there are many horses out there racing, many horses with excellent papers, some who have exploded onto the scene, others who have more quietly taken their place, racking up the places without lighting up the boards with victories like so many diamonds in a rivière, who have, nonetheless been oh so thoughtfully paying their bills and making a little extra to slip under the straw bedding, but, now, Paris-Turf, and everyone else, take notice: Deep Ocean, on the right track -- ideally, right-handed --, in good form (which he is, make no mistake, trained by Gina Rarick) and ridden by Gérald Pardon is no "regular chance"; he is a favorite.

Still, this is a horse who, at 5  years old and in 2 years and a month or two, has run 20 races, won 3 and placed in 10, which means he has won or placed in 13 of 20 starts for a 15% win percentage, 50% place and has a 65% chance overall to bring home his oats, straw and trainer's fees.

Enjoy his dust. 

In the story of thoroughbred racing, it's royal dust. Pure gold.

....

Maybe Today, for Elbow Beach

Elbow Beach at Cagnes-sur-Mer, February 18

This horse that seemed the cream puff, gathered and collected in her first days at Gina Rarick's yard in Maisons-Laffitte, but who turned out to be a little something else again in the saddling area prior to post time on both starts in Cagnes-sur-Mer in February, where she took fourth place in each -- I haven't written, yet, about the second race --, is set to race again today in the 5th, the Prix de Saint-Valéry, at Deauville.

She lowers her big head down to your legs and then rubs it up the length of your body to say hello, lingering a moment at our lower back.

Hello, Elbow. 

And then, one day, she moved that big, old head away, only to swing it back toward my unsuspecting nose, stuck directly in the trajectory of her swing. Agata fixed me up with some arnica, and I learned a lesson about Elbow that she hasn't failed to drive home in the saddling area before her starts. Last time it took three people, pushing with all their might, to keep her in the box to finish the job and get her saddle safely cinched for Fabien Lefebvre, who was up.

I won't, unfortunately, be there to witness the saddling or the race. I won't even be able to watch on the television. We are still in Chamonix Mont-Blanc, and even if we came down from the slopes for the race, we don't get Equidia here. I'll have to wait for the phone call to tell me how she did, and sign up to watch the video later.

Today, she has another chance for a win or a second place, but nothing's ever certain in racing, or as Gina puts it "of course, there is always the unexpected, which is what makes it a race."

There is always the unexpected, which is what makes it a race.

That, it seems to me, is one of the finest quotes from horse racing, ever.

It's a 1300 meter on fibersand for 3-year-old fillies who haven't yet won, and they will fly on the fibersand, so Elbow should be able to stretch out early, which Gina thinks is to her advantage. She has a good top speed, and Fabien Lefebvre, who knows her very well now and likes her action and speed, is up again. All good for us. Ioritz Mendizabal, who won at Cagnes in February and then flew to Dubai to take a first place there a day or two later, before returning to Cagnes to race again, will be up on Caracesca. I really wish I could be there to see this match-up.

We're hoping for the chance to keep her here in France long enough to race her on the 1400 turf on the "coude", or "elbow", at Longchamps, the track the most ideally suited, in Gina's mind, to Elbow's style of racing. Besides, how can you miss the opportunity to race Elbow on her eponymous stretch of turf?

C'mon, Elbow, do us proud today, and, please give everyone a break in the saddling box, alright?
....

Gina Rarick at Cagnes sur Mer, February 18

First race, a place for Elbow Beach

Elbow Beach after the race at Cagnes, Feb 2

It has been almost a week since the first race horse in which I have a couple of legs ran her first race in France and came in 4th at Cagnes-sur-Mer in the Prix de l'Ile Sainte Marguérite. Turfoo had given her 5th place. Our trainer Gina Rarick didn't expect her to place. She was short on work. Very short on work.

Elbow had spent a week or so in mid-transport from her trainer's in England, Dr. Jon Scargill's Red House Stables in Newmarket, Suffolk, at a stud closer to the English Channel, walking and trotting in a horse walker after being off training since November and placing 10th in her last race, a 1400 meter race in Salisbury on October 10. The weather had turned bad, the seas were heavy with strong gusts of wind, and the ports were closed. Elbow would have to cool her heals and put off seeing France until things quieted.

Looking at her race history alone does not give a prospective owner, or part owner, the chair

Snow dog

Fia, a dog, a stick, and some snow

Among the joys of true, snow-covered winter is watching the dogs play in the snow. Not that it's really any different than watching them play in the grass, but the contrast of lustrous black dog on pristine white snow is certainly stronger, and snow flies up dramatically from under those powerful paws, and gets to fall again. Pure energy.

She's warming up for Argentière in the Chamonix-Mont Blanc valley in two or three weeks, a year after we placed Baccarat's ashes above the glacier on the backside of les Grands Montets and at the roots of a giant fir in the forest of the Moraine.

And, to own the truth, it's not "dogs", anymore, but "the dog", Fia, my "dark angel". One plays, the other tries to avoid her and to sit on the steps out of harm's and impact's way. At 12 in one month from today, I can understand Rapide. It's getting harder to make it back up the long middle stair of the garden, with it's 28 steps. She takes them one at a time.

One day, she'll not return, but for now, I am relieved when I see her pick her pace up into a trot as she rounds the fish-pond-in-a-(former)-fountain.

So, who wants to come play? Xander? Ramona and Hudson? I know you're all too far, and, Hudson, you'd probably rather sit on the sidelines with Rapide, although I think you'd find the climate in harmony with your ancestral memory.

Samantha? Do you want to come to France and play in the snow?



Perhaps as soon as those crazy but lovable and funny people with whom she shares her home start acting like humans and let her out the damn door. Sheesh.

Scooby Doo? Coco?

Coco, training center Maisons-Laffitte, Jan 13

Prof, you can sit on the steps with Rapide and watch the young ones romp.

Prof, "du dos", with Rapide and Fia

I'll join you two, with my camera, and then just as soon as Gina and the horses are back from Cagnes-sur-Mer, Rapide, we'll head to Maisons-Laffitte for another late afternoon play date in the Rond Poniatowski.
....