Page 24 - May 2007 The Game
P. 24

24 The Game, May 2007
Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
Another Platts in the Saddle
Try, Try Again
By evenSteven
By the time you read these words, horses and riders will be galloping into the fourth month of training at Hastings Park. I started this season excited to begin exercising horses for a single barn, which I hoped would eliminate many of the growing pains I experienced during my freshman campaign. Looking back, I realized some of last season’s difficulties came as a direct result of my late beginning. Starting to gallop horses in May is not the optimum time to work oneself into the loop. The more desirable horses already boasted riders, leaving a motley assortment of equine delinquents only too happy to corrupt a green-broke gallop boy.
Last year my most difficult assignments were the "tough" horses I galloped, most of whom could apparently conceive of no greater pleasure than circling around the bullring at ludicrous speeds while I pulled and puffed and pleaded for mercy. It’s difficult to state with any degree of accuracy how many runaways I piloted around the oval during my first season as a gallop boy. Like hangovers and root canals, having a horse run away with you is an experience both body and mind instinctively try to forget. Fortunately, by the end of last season I felt like I had made some progress, thanks to numerous trials by fire and the welcome advice of my peers.
This year I looked forward to beginning with a clean slate. I would start the season with unspoiled horses to ride and plenty of time to get fit together, thereby hopefully avoiding some of last year’s pratfalls. Two months of rain and one dislocated rib later, I find myself looking back almost fondly upon last season’s tough horses–at least with runaways you usually only have to worry about them running off in the forward direction. Thus far my spring training has been exciting thanks to a few talented horses who’ve displayed a remarkable talent for going different directions simultaneously. Almost every day brings a new demonstration of the amazing abilities of the equine athlete.
My first unceremonious dismount of the season came at the hooves of a black four year old named "Stormy." Following a successful winter off-season of eating alfalfa and lounging in the fields on her own recognizance, Stormy returned to training as a shaggier and more robust version of her former self. One morning, as we huffed and puffed around the oval, I felt the saddle slip. Because we were about to pull up anyway, I wasn’t overly concerned. However, as we slowed the saddle slid up the mare’s withers, a development I can only conclude displeased my mount, since Stormy picked this moment to either stumble or stop dead in her tracks. This dilemma will remain forever unsolved, since I was too busy somersaulting through the air to arrive at any definite conclusions. I landed flat on my back in the mud, directly in front of my horse, whose forward momentum carried her overtop of me. I lay in the
mud and watched Stormy’s shaggy belly pass overhead, conscious of the hooves falling right beside my face without ever once grazing me. A few feet further on, Stormy stopped, turned around, and ambled back to inspect the muddy human who had so recently gone from astride to beside. Together we walked back to the barn like an old married couple, both pleased to have ended our sudden estrangement in such an amicable fashion.
Not quite as amicable has been my relationship with the aptly named "Try" a handsome and muscular four year old chestnut, nicknamed "Rodeo" by those who’ve seen him in action. His most seriously held conviction seems to be that I have no business remaining on his back. The first time I climbed aboard I didn’t even have time to get my feet in the stirrups or my girth tightened before his head dropped and off we went to the rodeo. I had no choice but to suck my legs around his stocky little barrel and hang on for dear life. After sixty seconds of admirable bucking, spinning and plunging, Try elected a different tact and bolted up the shedrow while hotwalkers and horses alike dove into whatever foxhole availed itself. For the first time in years, teaching high school suddenly seemed a reasonable proposition.
Over the next couple of weeks Try continued to practise his favourite overture featuring minor variations on his main theme. Between these episodes, I continued to walk around bowlegged, nursing every pulled muscle from knee to chin. But after four or five equally determined efforts, Try still hadn’t managed to dislodge me, and it seemed as if he’d finally conceded defeat and accepted his role in life. As it turned out Try was just biding his time, waiting to find a better place for his next attempt. At some point it must have occurred to him there was lots more bucking room on the track than in the barn. On the fateful day we finally parted company I could feel him gathering himself as we cantered down the backstretch and up popped his hind end. That wasn’t so bad, I remember thinking. The next thing I knew my feet were floating in the air somewhere up behind me and my face was smashing into the back of Try’s wildly plunging head. Compared to this, hitting the ground suddenly seemed a delightful alternative.
Pleased to have finally earned his liberation, Try galloped back to the gap where he was caught and held. I took my time walking back, hoping in the meantime the birds twittering around the edge of my vision would slow down before it was time to climb back on. A minute later I was back in the saddle and all my little chestnut horse got for his trouble was an extra penalty lap. Still, I couldn’t help but admire his spunky determination, which hopefully bodes well for his career as a racehorse: If at first you don’t succeed, try, Try, again.
2-year-old Abigail Platts, granddaughter of Champion former jockey, Robin Platts, looks like a natural aboard retired thoroughbred racehorse, Dundurn at a farm in Schomberg.
Meanwhile at Fort Erie Racetrack
Jockey Happy Ando is ready for
racing at Fort Erie this year. Happy
returned to Fort Erie on April 7 after
spending four months racing on con-
tract with the Malaysian Racing
Association. The journey was a suc-
cessful one for Happy as he had 5 wins
as well as a win in the $100,000 Da Ma
Cai Stakes. The Association races
Saturdays and Sundays at three different racetracks, the Selangor Turf Club in Kuala Lumpur, the Perak Turf Club in Ipoh, and the Penang Turf Club in Penang.
Happy says he will likely return to Malaysia after the 2007 Fort Erie meet ends in November.
Seven-year-old Inca Prince after working in 36 flat, with jockey Maree Richards in the saddle, poses with trainer Michael Cohen (left to right) Maree’s agent, J.P. Souter and owner John Ross. Inca Prince(by Langfuhr) raced at Thistledown in November and came home with one win and one second. John Ross has been an owner at Fort Erie for three years now and has visions of one day owning a stable of ten horses.
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Sissy Woods, wife of trainer Jim Woods, is feeling small aboard “Big” Ben, her 7-year-old ranch horse from Alberta.
Ben is the official barn “pony” and babysitter who goes out to the track with all 12 of Jim’s horses during training.


































































































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