Elbow Beach, "canter"

Guilain and Hard Way

When you take a terrific photograph and find one little thing missing, it's enough to ruin the photo. Sam walked by, looked at the series from this morning's visit to Gina's yard, and said, "That's a great photo. Too bad you don't see his eye; it would be perfect then." Now, all I can see is the eye you can't see behind Hard Way's mane. I keep it for its other qualities, and the fun we were having when he and Agata got back from Hard Way's and Elbow Beach's "canter", or gallop on the piste jaune at Maisons-Laffitte this morning.

Elbow was being a little silly walking up the road to the training center the other day, lost her balance and brushed her ankle against the sidewalk border, skinning herself like a little kid, which she is. Yesterday, the "canter" -- the French call canter "galop de chasse" and gallop "canter" -- that was supposed to take place and motivated me to get up out of bed and make the predawn drive to Maisons-Laffitte, my husband getting himself up out of bed and following me to make it an outing, was cancelled since she had a little inflammation from her boo-boo.

The "canter" was rescheduled for today, come what may, but instead of taking it side-by-side, race style, Agata and Gina decided to keep Elbow behind Hard Way and take it a little easy. Just in case. Having already lost one of the yard's best hopes for the winter season in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Satwa Sunrise, in a claimer on opening day, having another, Magic, down for several months (1 down and 2 or 3 to go; I can't remember. It's awful either way), seeing teeny, tiny Milly flounder on the fibersand in her first race in France, Elbow just has to get fit, avoid injury and race to win, or at least to place.

She also needs to do this because she is the horse in which I have two legs, the front or the rear, or the near or the far side; take your pick. I'll take any two, as long as they are healthy, strong and fast. Very fast. Elbow is a sprinter, running the 1200 to 1500 meter races, and she has come to France to add value to her profile as a brood mare, worthy of the better covers, by increasing her chances of adding a few more wins to her racing career by having her start her 3-year-old season early in Cagnes. Normally, she will return to England in March, unless we can negotiate an additional race or two, or three, in Saint-Cloud and Chantilly for March.

She was to arrive a week before she did, but heavy winds and rough weather closed the Channel ports, and Elbow Beech spent an extra week walking and trotting in circles in the horse walker. She lost muscle she'd need to win, and Gina made the decision to keep her in training in Maisons-Laffitte, under Chantal and Agata's watchful eyes in the yard and Agata's knees on her shoulders on the track. Soon, the call will come to bring her down, or have her loaded into the STH horse transport truck and sent.

Meanwhile, I am left to imagine any number of possibilities. Elbow could give us all a thrill, make our season and add a little extra shine and cachet to Gina's reputation. But, Elbow could disappoint us; she could come up short, even just short of that. All the elements could be there and in place, and still she might not win; or, something might still be missing, but she'll turn out to have that special something in her spirit or heart that corrects a little missing muscle or an odd turn of foot, which, aside from losing balance from time to time out walking up the street, she does not have. That you can't know until you let them go on a racetrack and see what happens, although I felt certain that I could sense it in Sunrise the first time I went with her to Deauville.

For now, it's Schrodinger's cat, which would make a great name for a horse, except that it leaves room for a little doubt.

My ownership paperwork has gone to France Galop. I have chosen my colors, and even decided on the rug and the colors for the browband of the bridle. I'm not telling. It would be nice to see my silks on the jockey's back, but mostly, though, I hope to see the horse whose training I at least help finance bring a little glory to the yard.

Agata and Elbow Beach

Today, I stood on the grass mound between the two pistes jaunes, and I waited in the quiet morning. I listened to two birds turn in the sky overhead, crying out to each other, and perhaps other birds, somewhere, and waited for the dark spots to appear in the distance. As I arrived, hooves thundering on the sand announced the arrival of another line of horses out for a "canter". I crossed the track and trained my lens on them. When they had past, blowing in cadence with their pace, I watched for them to turn and reappear, coming up the other side. They didn't, and I turned back to look back to the west and squinted.

The tractor dragging the harrow appeared on the far horizon and approached at a funereal pace. All morning the tractor pulls the harrow the length of the tracks, for walking, for trotting, for cantering, and for galloping. all morning, every day of the week. I prepared to greet the driver, when he'd eventually pass. An intentional , single nod of the head and a smile. He'd perhaps raise a hand from the wheel to say good morning back.

"Il doit en faire des kilometres, le type qui conduit le tracteur," my husband had said yesterday, watching the tractor make its way around a curve and down a track Sunday morning.

I watched him approach, and then, two horses appeared, tearing up the sand. They passed him, and kept on coming. I squinted again and thought I saw a streak of white. Elbow. I removed the lens cap and zoomed in, the horses came closer, and I could see the gray-spotted chest above the dark legs and the bright pink stars on Agata's helmet. I wanted to put the camera down and just watch them. Listen to them. It only lasts seconds before they have approached, streaked past, hooves throwing sand up behind their flying tails, and disappear into the dimness of the morning light at the end of the piste. Gone.

Agata on Elbow Beach

And then, they reappear, coming back up the far track. They have made the turn at the bottom, undistinguished by my eyes. I put my lens cap on, walk down the wood planked steps and cross the parallel stretch of piste to go and wait for them, listen for their four-beat galop de chasse come toward me. Usually, I stand there with Gina. Before Christmas, New Year's and now Cagnes, perhaps with another trainer or two, who would chat with Gina about their horses while we waited. Today, there was only I to ask how they breathed and moved, how quickly they recovered. I am no trainer, but I asked, and I was offered the graciousness of a reply.

"Comment va sa respiration?" I asked Agata, feeling a little nervous. I didn't wish to appear like I thought I was more in a position to ask than I was.

"Impéccable," said Agata. "Elle a récupéré plus rapidement aujourd'jui que la dernière fois, aussi," she added. I felt grateful for the extra information. Elbow was making progress.

"Et Hard Way," I said to Guilain, who puts up with me very sweetly, "ça serait super s'il pouvait aller à Cagnes et courir," I said.

"Il va tout seul, lui," came the reply: he goes all on his own, that one.

Not to Cagnes, of course, but on a racetrack.

The problem with Hard Way, and why he hasn't left already, is that he is a lot to handle in training, and Gina needs someone like Guilain to do the speed work with him, only there isn't certain to be someone on hand to do that work when she needs it done down there. Hard Way, Gina has explained to me, lays all his weight, all 600 or so kilos, in your hands, and you carry him. He doesn't use the bit to support himself and run, and that is exhausting. But, with Magic injured, Sunrise claimed, Milly being new to anything that's not turf, tiny and uncertain, it would be something to see Hard Way back racing, in Cagnes, and Elbow taking a victory would be a dream come true.

After they cantered back off, I looked left and then right, crossed back over the pistes, headed through the gate, look left and then right again and climbed into the car to drive back over to the yard and start Magic's box. I slipped her halter over her nose and fastened it behind her near ear and turned her on her good hind foot to attach her to the short lead at the rear wall, only she moved easily. Sometimes she moves with a pronounced limp and hop still. She stood there and worked her bit, rubbing it against the concrete wall. I went and emptied the wheelbarrow, the better to fill it again.

The sun was just beginning to light up the patches between the trees in the park when I dumped the first wheelbarrow of hay in the pit and forked it up onto the lovely, squared pile. It was rising straight in front of me through the trees at the end of the stable when I stuck my head out, sometime later, hearing their hooves clomp back into the yard. I grabbed my camera, and ended up with two series: the red series of Guilain and Hard Way and the blue series of Agata and Elbow Beach in my favorite studio, Gina Rarick's yard in Maisons-Laffitte, and some of my favorite subjects these days, Gina, the horses she trains, and the people around them.
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Colors

Deep, Magic and Milly

It is time to choose my colors. I know nothing about how this works in other countries, including my country of origin, but I am learning how it works here, how one goes about becoming an owner in the France Galop system. Like all things about which one starts by knowing nothing, it is not pour autant a secret. The site tells one how to go about it, in both French and English.

You do not need to be a resident of France, nor do you need to know anything about horse racing, although that is probably helpful, if you would like to recuperate any portion of your expenditure. 

You do need an income or assets, not necessarily wealth, although that is always definitely helpful (and appreciated), to pay the horse's keep and racing costs, or a part of them if you are an associé, or part owner with a leg, or two or three. 

You must also be a person of some moral decency, which will, in the course of things, be determined by the police and the Ministry of the Interior. 

You do not need taste, when it comes to picking out your colors, but it's always nice for everyone else, and your horse and his or her trainer.

And, you do, of course, need a trainer, but that's how I got myself into this, after all.

The colors and the patterns

France Galop offers you a palette of authorized colors from which to chose, as well as a tool to select different combinations of principal and accent colors and motifs. You are limited to two colors, but you may have three, exceptionnellement. Nothing, however, tells you anywhere what constitutes the grounds of the exception allowed. Perhaps you simply submit your choice and see what they say. If they are in a good mood, you get the exception granted.

This is la France, après tout.

As you work with the color tool, selecting various combinations, the system will tell you if the combination has already been attributed to an owner, and if so, who owns it and from what date. It will also tell you if the colors have been subject to a succession, if such is the case. I found that the combinations of red and black that remain available are severely limited. On the other hand, any combination of orange and grenat, or garnet, is. My chosen trainer is not partial to orange, however, whereas I am, and even painted an entire (small) guest room in  it, with the exception of one wall, and I would do it again. I do want my trainer happy, though, and I am left to suppose that she is not the only one in France who is left cold by the color orange.

I'll have to give Gina the other guest room, if ever she leaves Maisons-Laffitte to stay in MSX. For the moment, it is occupied by my stepson, anyway.

I believe I have made my choice, however, although I will not share it until the silks are made up, and my first jockey is riding out on my first horse -- or leg or two of one -- in them. My wish was for them to be simple, elegant, visible and to go with the coat of any horse I might ever be privileged to race and possibly see win, or place. I discovered, playing with the tool, that you know the right, or next best (you must submit three possibilities to France Galop), combination when you see it, and you can't help secretly hoping that those silks might one day be made famous by a horse of exception, which is extremely unlikely, although since the part of chance is always present in thoroughbred racing, never out of the question Like when the seventy-something-year-old retired high school principal Tom McCarthy's $17,000 horse General Quarters ran in the 2009 Kentucky Derby and came in 10th to Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Godolphin Racing's $2.1 million horse, Desert Party, who finished 14th in a 19-horse field. 

A note: Sheik Mohammed spends upwards of $45 million a year on horses. Tom McCarthy has precisely 1 horse in his stables on a 13-acre farm in suburban Louisville.

Gina is more along the lines of Tom McCarthy, a small outfit in a major training center. Her's is a "boutique" stable of fewer than 10 horses at the moment, focusing on the owners' experience and making the world of horse racing accessible to the biggest dreamers with not always with wallets to match, who came to their passion like nearly anyone with a taste for reading born after 1941, through The Black Stallion series. Talking the other morning with my stepdaughter and another pitchfork wielding owner at the yards, I listened to how he came to horse racing, and I was hearing my own story, separated by only a handful of years and an ocean. A little boy, growing up in France just before this little girl did in the United States, read about Alec Ramsay and Henry Dailey, come out of retirement to train a horse he knows is exceptional. 

A warning: Be careful what you read when you are a child, you might just live some aspect of it one day. Like my fairy tales, I married my French prince (désargenté, hélas), live in the French countryside with our black labs, and have frogs in a basin in front of the living room French door. I threaten regularly to kiss them. 


L'on peut toujours rêver de plus.

I wouldn't necessarily bet on a horse, but I will support a yard and a trainer's work, learning until I might (or might not) have the means to participate in the choice of the horse whose jockey will wear my colors and no one else's and win in them. For now, Gina goes to Newmarket and returns with 2, 3 and 4-year-olds, who, while they won't be candidates for the Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, can win and place regularly enough in smaller stakes races, and in order to do that, a trainer needs the support of owners who believe in the quality of her work and dedication to her horses and their owners, who get to simultaneously live their secret ambitions to be a first groom, or at least a lad, and take care of theirs and the other owners' horses.

It's a little scary, though. I know the value of money, the money I have earned, as well as the money anyone else earns, and I am learning about the risks of the thoroughbred stables: colic, viruses, and cracked foot bones that will put a horse out of racing for a race, several weeks, or even several months. If it's the "other owner's" horse, you feel sympathy for him, or her, or them, and for the trainer. If it's your horse, you take a big breath. There goes several weeks' or months' of fees, without any possibility to earn them back on the track, and maybe make a little something for your next horse, vacation or the entry addition to the house.

With all the best of intentions and practices, someone's horse won't be racing for some period of time at nearly any given time. There are no magic solutions or incantations, no silver bullets against illness or injury. One day, a given horse is fine, and you are looking to race her the next week at Deauville. The next day, you walk into her stable, and she is standing on 3 legs. When you move, you notice she hops on all three to shift position and you realize, "Oh shit, she can't put that fourth hoof on the floor," and you call the vet. An earnest roller after a work-out, she has slammed her hoof into the concrete block wall and fractured the third bone. A clean fracture the length of the bone without any displacement, anyway; she'll run again, and sooner than later, but she's out 4 months. That's Magic's story.


Time to open a Baskin 'n Robbins in Maisons-Laffitte.

It wouldn't matter if you had padded the walls; she'd likely have shredded the padding and hurt herself worse, possibly on a metal support beyond, like Hi Shinko did. It wouldn't matter if you have made the stables of rubber, which was the case when another horse, waking from the anesthesia after its gelding, somehow died in his box. Like Gina says, for such strong creatures, horses are fragile, "they will be walking and trip and break something, or walk into a tree and break something." A curious combination not only of strength and fragility, but of intelligence and silliness. 

If you are going to send your owner's application into France Galop, you have to be ready to take it all on, and know your limits. It's a little scary, but how will you ever know where you could have gone if you never begin?
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Maisons-Laffitte, la piste noire