The first past, looking to future races

Fibs and Mark, heading companionably to the warm-up ring, Saint-Cloud

The rites and rituals, the rhythms of the racetrack comfort. The days of waiting for a race finally over, the moment to saddle up, walk and mount in the presentation ring to head to the track provide their own pleasures, small but real ones. The tight circle of professionals and friends gathered at the saddling box; the horse solid and sound, brushed, braided and in every way burnished to a high shine; the sounds of others calling out to one another and horses clopping past; the details of the preparation unchanging one race to the next, day after day. It's always the same, and always a little bit different within that sameness.

There is the relaxation of the nerves. The horses are all here, and the preparation is done and as much is known about one's own horse as can possibly be known. Less is known about the other horses. The racing papers have given their probable odds, and the bettors have made their own opinions known. A list of favorites is drawn up, and you may agree or disagree. You will never know enough about each horse, each jockey and the conditions out there to know who is right until the race is run and over. It will please you, comfort you, surprise you, disappoint you, but it will never leave you indifferent. If it could, then you probably don't belong at the racetrack. You need either a new profession or a new hobby, unless you are a lad or hot walker. To be honest, they look indifferent enough often enough.

Saddled, Fibs headed out to walk with the others, those who had just come off the track and were cooling down or drying off after their showers, and those who were warming up, staying limber for their race to come, whether the next one, or another after that. We'd come with one horse. Some trainers, like Cédric Boutin, had horses standing in several adjoining boxes along the main alley, others out walking, and still others heading to or from the racetrack.

Hellos and news, les bises are exchanged with other trainers, owners, familiar lads. Remarks made about their horses, their chances, their results. Congratulations or encouragement, knowing nods and consolations. Nothing is long-hidden at the racetrack. Everyone knows what your horse looks like, what your racing record is, how long you've been at it, and how you've done.

"T'as fait quoi?"

"6ème," with a shrug, the inimitable Gallic one, and a self-effacing smile, an eyebrow raised, "il n'avait plus rien. Ben".

"Ben. La prochaine fois alors."

"Ouai, la prochaine."

It's never necessarily or even likely going to be the case, but that won't keep you from the racetrack. You have owners, they have horses, and you must enter them in races that suit their talents and abilities. The professionals need to make money, usually; the owners need to enjoy themselves, and not to lose their fortunes, great or small, or not to be worthy of such a description in the first place. The horses need to do what thoroughbreds do best: gallop with other horses and try to beat them.

In the presentation ring, the horses paraded around us, their number blankets white against the green grass, the green leaves and their dark and supple bodies. The jockeys for this race, a 1600m (8f) 13,000€ and 17,000€ claimer for 5-year-olds and female jockeys walked from the locker room across the winner's circle and joined their trainers and owners. Smiles and greetings, instructions exchanged, photos taken, the television cameras rolling (but you don't pay attention to them), the jockeys are led to their mounts and given a leg up. Some horses take it in stride, others buck a little, considering a full-out rearing up. Lads and owners-enjoying-being-lads calm their charges, and one by one they head to the track to gallop easily toward the starting gates, bettors taking their last looks before casting their bets, if they haven't already. The public is sparse. It's a lovely June evening, and the restaurant terraces are full all over Paris and in the center of Saint-Cloud.

Fibs accepted his jockey and headed to the track like a professional. It was his 30th start. He knows his job, and that job is fine with him. He is an honest and considerate horse. We watched him go and headed, by ones and twos, up to the Owners' and Trainers' Lounge above the grandstand and the post to watch the race on the television screens. We'd come out to see them come up the homestretch.

Heading out to the track

Fibs and the other horses entered their stalls without the least fuss. They were 5 and older. They'd been around long enough to know, and they were all healthy enough to find a race a pleasant prospect on a sunny evening. Before we knew it, the bell clanged, the gates opened and 9 horses charged forward. Two took an early lead, and the rest remained bunched together.

"They're being stupid out there like that. Damn. Fibs has his nez au vent."

It was true. Carla and Fibs were on the inside toward the middle of the following pack. He had no benefit of a draft. They came on, positions only slightly changed heading into the final turn. Fibs remained on the inside.

"OK. That's not bad. She gave him the shortest ride around. Now."

But, rather than the surge forward we expected, following the lead horses who ought to be tiring and retire the distance between them, Fibs travelled out past the two horses behind him toward the outside. We stared at the television screen. I knew what Gina was thinking, "He's hanging badly, but he runs straight."

"He's never done that before," she said. And then he slowed to an easy gallop, heading toward the post like he had the jockey's mother on his back on a Sunday morning on the trails. The other horses, most of them, anyway, continued the race, and one won, 4 placed, and Fibs tripped past the post like he was anywhere but at a race course.

"That was a strange race."

"Indeed. I have never seen anything like it," concurred Sebastien. We looked at each other and blinked, followed Gina down the stairs, out past the horses who had had the good fortune to remember this was a race and enter the winner's circle to meet the jockey.

"This is the part I dread," I said to her young niece. I don't think she asked why.

We heard that he travelled beautifully all through the backstretch and into the last turn. He was a wonderful ride. A real pleasure. But she hadn't liked the footing along the rail coming into the homestretch and pulled him to the outside. He stopped, she explained; there was suddenly -- nothing. My mind flipped back to Elbow Beach. She was fast, too, but she failed to finish. Still, this horse had won races. He liked this distance. He didn't like heavy going, and the turf had soaked up early summer rainstorms.

"I wonder if he didn't take being pulled to the outside for being pulled up." Sebastien nodded.

"I think it is possible, too."

We were, quite simply and quite frankly, perplexed. Here was a horse who had run more than two dozen times and knows his job, and all you had to do was let him run straight and find his own footing.

Later, after his shower and drying off, after simple chat and laughter (it is enjoyable, win, place or lose, when you are with friends and the sun is slanting through the trees on a hill above Paris), I walked by myself to my car in the owners' lot. The attendant with the bright and good-humored eyes who had greeted me asked, "Alors, qu'est-ce que votre cheval a fait?"

"C'était étrange. Une course très étrange." He nodded, listening. "Juste après le dernier tournant, le jockey l'amenait vers l'extérieur de la corde, et je pense qu'il n'a rien compris." He nodded again and smiled.

"Soumillon fait souvent ça."

"Mais, ce n'était pas Soumillon."

"Vous auriez peut-être meiux fait de rester à Roland Garros," he said, and smiled his sympathy.

I had arrived 2 hours earlier a litte out of breath from the stress of the traffic in Boulogne-Billancourt and Saint-Cloud, having gotten up to leave half-way through the second set of the second women's semi-final. Maria Sharapova was on her way to securing her place in the final, although Petra Kvitova seemed to be finding the resouces to maybe cast doubt on the outcome. It wasn't easy to leave, but the stunned sound of my trainer's voice saying "Ohh-kaaay" on the other end of the line when she called and asked where I was, and I had replied "Just thinking about leaving Roland Garros now," was enough to remind me that owners have duties, too.

"Mon entraineur m'aurait tué," I replied, smiling back, feeling a little conspiratorial, and stepped toward the other young attendant, holding my door open, and placed the euro coins cradled in my cupped palm into the space of his own.

"Je vous remercie, Madame."

"Cest moi. Bonne soirée, Messieurs," and I climbed into my car, hoping not to stall heading out of the owners' parking lot owing to my high, wedge heels.

It's time for more sensible shoes, as long as this violon d'Ingres remains remotely sensible, and at least I got my rayons de soleil to make Fibs' coat and my silks shine, even if the performance was anything but bright and shiny, for whatever reason. Next time out, June 23rd at Amiens. Having done his first race in France, he is free to enter a far wider range of races, and better luck next time. In racing, luck is better than genius, they say. At least Jane Smiley says it.

For more race photos, click here.
....

Grazing after the race, Fibs hears horses galloping in a later race,
his full concentration is on them over on the track.

Anticipating race day for Fibs and Flannel

Cooling down after a "canter", May 25
followed by Hard Way

I have done this before. Four times. But this is nothing like those other times.

The race for which we hoped was today at Maisons-Laffitte, but with 69 entrants, Fibs and Flannel, a 5-year-old gelding by Tobourgg out of Kayman Cai mare Queens Jubilee, wasn't going to get in. We'd have to go for the back-up entry, the 8th, Prix du Mesnil-Villement, a claimer at 1600m (8f, a mile) tomorrow at Saint-Cloud, and if my trainer Gina Rarick told me once, she told me once per multiple daily conversation for the past week, at every possible opportunity (no chance of not getting it) that the field of 9 is a tough one: these aren't real claiming horses; they are horses who have earned themselves weighty handicaps and who are slumming it a little to get some races in. Their owners will defend them.

Tougher than the fields, for me, is following the logic sometimes. Essentially, one must argue, the cost of defending certain horses in such a race is negligible in comparison to their past and future earnings. And some people just like seeing their colors on a jockey's back from the comfort of the grandstand in front of the Owners' and Trainers' lounge or  their table at the restaurant, surrounded by duly impressed friends and clients with betting tickets and black, or at least platinum, cards in their wallets. This cannot be my case. Mine is altogether different. First of all, my dog ate my green card. Second, the Sport of Kings is slumming it letting me play, and has kindly offered the claiming system as my point of entry, as well as access to the valet parking and reserved sections of the track.

Like everyone else, I harbor fantasies and dream of standing next to my horse, its jockey and my trainer in the Winner's Circle, the most hallowed of the privileged sections of any track. This is my right; a claimer wins like any Groupe I horse. I know my place, but I struggle daily with it. Can I really afford to indulge this, my violon d'Ingres? Or, have I entirely lost my mind and all rational senses? If I can be smart and cool-headed enough, might I continue to indulge in it, or will I collapse under the weight of the stress of the worrying?

It is supposed to be fun, they say. Have fun! they say.

There must, then, be, I have discovered, a threshhold; an amount of disposable income that serves as the key in the lock to fun. There must be, perhaps, income that may be called disposable, tout court. If not, there must be a stop dollar wall, as a friend and fellow owner in Gina's yard in Maisons-Laffitte says. It's the point at which you stop and get out as soon as you hit it.

But I want my chance, and I want to see if it is at all possible to get the parts of the machine working, the horses moving through the box in the yard, the system, making modest profits or minimal losses that amount to a pleasant net gain or coming very close to breaking even and result in an experience of fun. I am not optimistic, but the individual serving as my bloodstock agent has replied in capital letters and with utmost clarity and succinctness when I express my desire to keep my horse, "NO." No, you may not. No, you must not. Do not get attached. We love them all, but the only way to be sure to make any money is to sell.

So, I must chose the horses I buy wisely, enter them judiciously, and then let them move on.

The best horse is a sold horse.

I have heard it hundreds of times now, and it doesn't sit any easier, not even once the bills start coming in (the ultimate reminder, along with your name and colors on the racing program and the jockey's back) and you know that this is absolutely true and must not be argued with. The bills do help, though. I must remember to thank my trainer's bookkeeper, and so must my bloodstock agent, who makes a little tiny fee every time I make a purchase. This is fine, too. As long as I am doing at least as well.

And so, this lovely, honest horse will be most successful for me by finding his longer-term home by the July sales in Newmarket. I will have the photos I have taken of him at which to look and by which to remember him. I can follow first his career, once he will have left the yard, and those of the others I will buy and move on. If I am lucky enough, I tell myself, I will buy him back when he is 10 and will have finished his career and be ready for a second one, carrying me on lovely trips through the forest, at a stately walk and leisurely gallops de chasse. If it won't be Fibs, finally, perhaps it will be one of the others I do not know yet.

Tomorrow Fibs will face the favorites, Settebellezze and Ocean Moon, and their dauphins, Celebrity Choice, Rey Davis and Delta Black Sheep. It is likely that he will find himself on the rang du con, the 6th place, just at the foot of the podium without a check for his efforts, yet beating Tucker's Law, Jamindar and Russian Davis. But, there is always a chance, that's why it's a race. No one knows the outcome before the race is run. Fibs has a chance. Paris-Turf writes of him, Fibs and Flannel mérite qu'on se penche sur son cas." In other words, he deserves attention and respect going into this race, and I will hold onto those words in the seemingly interminably endless hours stretching out between now and post time tomorrow, 8:10 pm.

I am hoping for one of the belles éclaircies forecast for tomorrow evening after a morning of wet skies to break out when lady jockey Carla O'Halloran is given a leg up into the saddle by Gina, fellow owner Mark at his second favorite place (after the winner's circle alongside Hard Way), the lad's, holding Fibs' lead, setting his chestnut coat on fire and lighting up my colors, golden-orange and claret, in the long June evening sun, copper radiating light like new, burnished centimes, drawing everyone's eyes to him, shining somewhere toward the front of the pack coming up the homestretch.

I want to be able to jump from my seat, arms liberated from my fists clutched at my stomach and into the air over my head, my heart to stop slamming around in my rib cage and rise along with them, watching him pull out and ahead, fighting to beat just another horse coming up to the post. The usual "I want" of the owner.

But, more than wanting a win for me, I want Fibs to shine for himself. If he is going to move on, let it be with dignity and respect for his honesty, his heart, and the good motor the good Lord gave him, and a positive number in my account with France Galop.

That'll be enough.
....

Jockey Carla O'Halloran, Cagnes-sur-Mer, February 2012

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.