Page 36 - December 2006 The Game

36 The Game, December 2006 Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
Canada Does Well at the Breeders’ Cup (Todd Pletcher, Not So Much)
For the most part, Canadian flag wavers should be satisfied with Breeders’ Cup results from Churchill Downs this year. Canadian connections were involved with 13 starters among the eight races and a few nice cheques were cashed.
The best moment of the day for the Maple Leaf came in the second-last feature, the mile and half Turf. Red Rocks, owned by Windsor’s J. Paul Reddam, surged from ninth with half a mile to go to win by half a length. It gave jockey Frankie Dettori his second win on the card – he’d also scored with Ouija board in the Filly and Mares Turf. Red Rocks, returning $23.60, was one of five horses on the day that paid more than $20 to win. The win was worth $1,620,000 to Reddam and was one of three cheques he cashed on the day. His two year-old colt, Great Hunter, came third in the Juvenile at a mile and a sixteenth (that was worth $200,000), and his filly, Cash Included, was a respectable 5th in the Juvenile Fillies ($50,000). Reddam also watched as Dancing Edie faded to 8th in the Filly and Mare Turf race and his Sharp Lisa finished 6th in the Distaff at a mile and an 8th.
The two year-old colt, Got the Last Laugh, gave his Canadian owners John Fielding and Dr. Philip McCarthy little to smile about as he staggered in 13th in the Breeder’s cup Juvenile, some 50 lengths behind the winner Street Sense. In that same race, the Mark Casse colt, Skip Code, never got untracked for jockey Patrick Husbands. Skip Code was in traffic at the start, and was bumped around while carried five wide into the first turn. He placed 9th at 60-1.
Eugene Melnyk has had better Breeders’ Cup days – his Speightstown was the Sprint Champion in 2004 - but November 4 at Churchill was forgettable for the owner of the Ottawa Senators. In the Distaff, Melnyk’s Pool
Land led by open lengths to the top of the stretch, but tired and ended up 9th. In the Classic, Melnyk was hoping that Flower Alley would improve on last year’s gutsy second place finish to Saint Liam, but this year, Flower Alley came up empty, beating just two horses in the 13 horse field, ending up about 18 lengths behind the impressive winner Invasor.
There were two other horses in the Classic with Canadian flavours; Brother Derek, owned by Calgary’s Cecil Peacock was on the front end most of the race and earned $125,000 for his fifth place finish. Jockey Alex Solis lodged a claim of foul against second place Bernardini for a little mid-stretch bumping, but both video and the stewards concluded that Solis had no case.
Canadian Billionaire Frank Stronach went home $255,000 richer thanks to Giacomo’s fourth place status in the Classic. Giacomo ran a nice race, rallying from 13th down the backstretch to get within five lengths of Invasor at the wire.
Trainer Todd Pletcher just might have endured the most dismal Breeders’ Cup ever. The day before the big card, Pletcher was asked to predict how many of his 17 entries would win. Pletcher, clearly understanding how cruel Breeders’ Cup day can be - even to the most powerful owners and trainers - danced around the question, telling the assembled media he was prepared for almost any outcome.
“I could go 0 for 17,” he said, with just a hint of a smile on his face.
That turned out to be his most accurate prediction. Not one of Pletcher’s 17 horses got invited to the winner’s circle. For the record, his horses combined for three seconds, two thirds, four fourths, two eighths, three ninths and a pair of 11ths. Pletcher’s filly, Fleet Indian,
pulled up during the running of the Distaff and had to be vanned off.
This 23rd installment of Horse Racing’s World Championships once again had some stunning upsets and life-changing payoffs (six correct in the pick six paid $1,450,707.20). The most impressive performance was saved for the final race. Before the Classic, there had been four Breeders’ Cup races on the dirt and, incredibly, each one had been captured by the horse leaving from post position one. It was clear that the rail was the place to be and an inside strategy was critical. So, in the Classic, when Invasor was forced to go seven horses wide at the head of the stretch, Bernardini, who had taken a much more efficient route to the lead seemed poised to declare himself Horse of the Year. However, Invasor simply stormed right past Bernardini, ignoring the track bias to score at almost 7-1. Not bad for a horse that has only lost once in ten races and had been perfect in three Grade One contests in 2006.
After a sensational year in which he won six straight races including the Preakness, the Travers and the Jockey Club Gold Cup (all Grade Ones), Bernardini has elected to retire to stud (actually it’s a decision by his people, the Darley stable). His second place finish in the Classic along with six victories in eight lifetime races and over $3 million in earnings will do nothing to discourage top-rate mares to seek his companionship at a fee of $100,000.
Hopefully, Invasor will continue to race in North America in 2007. The four year-old colt has never lost on American soil and that alone might be persuasive enough in voters’ minds when Horse of the Year ballots are cast.
The Horse God Built: A Book about Secretariat and the Groom who Died a Pauper
More than three decades after he ran his last race, there is still enormous interest in Secretariat. A recently released book, written by Canadian Larry Scanlan, chronicles not only the connections that the brilliantly powerful thoroughbred had north of the border, but the unique and touching relationship shared by Secretariat and his groom, Eddie Sweat.
The title, The Horse God Built, informs that this is no deconstruction of Secretariat’s career. The horse defined greatness, becoming the first two year- old to be named Horse of the Year and then, as a three year-old, sweeping the Triple Crown, setting time records in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont that have stood for 33 years.
Appearing at Woodbine for a BookTV television shoot, Scanlan told me that the book actually changed direction the more he researched Secretariat’s life.
“HarperCollins wanted a book with a fresh new appreciation on Secretariat with a Canadian angle -The fact that Ron Turcotte was the jockey and Lucien Laurin was the trainer, “ said Scanlan, “But along the way I discovered Eddie Sweat. Eddie is a very compelling character. He was the groom to Secretariat while he raced. I kind of fell in love with Eddie Sweat, so the book ended up being as much about Eddie
Sweat as about Secretariat.”
For the horse, there is no shortage of exhilarating apprecia- tion. On March 31st, the day the colt was born, Meadow Farm Manager Howard Gentry phoned the owner Penny Chenery to say, “Miss Penny, I think your miracle has arrived.”
John Jeremiah
Sullivan in his book
Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter’s Son, said, “The sight of him in motion is one of the things we can present to the aliens when they come in judgement asking why they should spare our world.”
Scanlan recounts an interesting story to illustrate the sheer happenstance of Penny Chenery even casting eyes on Secretariat. Chenery and Ogden Phipps, owner of the stallion Bold Ruler, actually flipped a coin to determine who would own the next three foals from the mare bred to Bold Ruler. Phipps called tails and won the toss. He chose first and as per their arrangement, let Chenery take the next two. One of those was the horse that would be known as Big Red.
The Horse God Built makes a case that Secretariat was as much a necessary
hero for the masses in the 1970s as Seabiscuit was in the 1930s.
“This was the time of Nixon, Watergate and the Vietnam war,” says Scanlan, “People were looking for an unsullied hero and along comes this amaz- ing creature who wins the Triple Crown for the first time in 25 years.”
In the book, Scanlan captures exactly why the world loved
Secretariat:
“Secretariat was everything the
Watergate crooks were not: an elegant creature without vice or motive and beyond corruption.”
Scanlan takes an unusual and compelling turn on the famous horse by infusing Secretariat’s story with that of the groom, Sweat.
“The track is a kind of hierarchy.” he explained, “ With owners at the top, then trainers, then jockeys, then exercise riders, and the groom and the hotwalker are at the bottom. No book that I know focuses on the groom. What I discovered is that there was this profound connect between this horse and this groom, between Secretariat and Eddie Sweat.”
It is the story of Eddie Sweat that
provides the painful underbelly of this book. Scanlan describes the sadness of Sweat at the end of the great horse’s racing career, when Secretariat was taken from him to stand as a stallion at Claiborne Farm. It’s close to heart break- ing to realize that Sweat never got over Secretariat, never forgot him and never got even close to that kind of racing fame again.
According to Scanlan, Sweat received much less in his lifetime than he deserved for his special and loving work with the greatest racehorse of all time. In a small way, perhaps, The Horse God Built elevates the life of Eddie Sweat. Describing the unique relationship between horse and man, Scanlan writes,
“What Secretariat loves about Eddie Sweat is that the man does not fear him, though he does, at times, fear for him.”
The Horse God Built is at times heart pounding and jaw dropping – Secretariat’s astonishing 31-length win in the Belmont is referred to six different times in the book and consumes almost 11 pages. It’s wonderful stuff, especially when Scanlan quotes jockey Ron Turcotte describing the sound he heard when his horse pulled away in the stretch of the last leg of the Triple Crown.
“And then there was nothing,” Turcotte went on, “All I could hear was Secretariat breathing and his hooves....
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Author Larry Scanlon