Page 15 - August/September 2007 The Game
P. 15

Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper The Game, August/September 2007 15
Green Blankets and Black Cats
Anyone familiar with the sport of horse-racing will tell you every backstretch is rife with superstition. No self respecting jockey ever sets their helmet upon the bed - though nobody can tell me why - and woe to any rider who drops their helmet before a race, because that means they’ll probably get dropped themselves. Trainers also have plenty of their own superstitions around the most seemingly innocuous things - take the post-race wash bucket, for example. Some trainers always fill the wash bucket with hot water and suds before they leave for the paddock believing this somehow increases the chances of winning the race and going to the test barn, thereby circumventing the already prepared wash bucket. Other trainers never get the wash bucket ready for precisely the same reason. I call it tempting the fates by reverse wash-bucket psychology.
One of my trainers says if a horse breaks down always throw away the bridle - and never but never allow any pictures to be taken of a horse in the paddock before the race. Another story tells of a former Hastings trainer so superstitious of the colour green, he wouldn’t allow anything green to touch his horses or be anywhere near his barn. Even the stable hands weren’t allowed to wear green. So fanatical in his belief was this particular trainer, that even after winning a stakes race he wouldn’t allow the officials to drape the green winner’s blanket over his horse’s back!
Still other trainers inspire their own luck and Caesar DeMarnie would have to fall into this category. Now into his seventies Caeasar still owns and trains his own race horses and up until recently he was even riding them. Since the spring season a weekly batch of fresh bumps and bruises had helped convince Caesar it might be time to leave the riding to someone else.
I’d been helping him out for a couple of weeks when I was paralyzed one morning by the sudden appearance of one of my late Grandma Ruby’s favourite feared omens. Caesar had just legged me up onto the back of his strapping big two year old when I spotted a black cat about to cross our path: "Caesar, look out!"
Caesar hissed and kicked some dirt in the direction of the offending feline while I squirmed in the saddle, stricken with the possibilities of this dire omen, already imagining the awful consequences that awaited me when we reached the track.
Caesar tried his best to reassure me. "Don’t worry about that old cat...I gave up on worrying about black cats a long time ago." As he led me towards the track Caesar told me the story of how he lost his fear of black cats.
"Once when I was seventeen my father took us moose hunting for the first time. On our way out the laneway a black cat crossed our path and just like that the old man was ready to call off the whole thing. “We may as well turn around right now,” he said. “It’s no use.” Well, we were all packed and ready to go so we convinced him to go ahead with it even though the old man had already decided it was already hopeless. We’d just gotten our first moose hunting license and we kids weren’t ready to give up on it so soon.
When we got there we started hunting and it wasn’t too long before we found
ourselves a moose.
We took a shot but
only wounded him
and that old moose
took off running
across the country-
side. By the time
we caught up a
mile or so later
another group of hunters had finished him off. “We may as well head for home,” the old man groaned. We arrived back at the farm and discovered while we were gone the cattle had escaped. By the time we got home they’d managed to demolish the entire haystack."
"The old man was beside himself," Caesar grinned. "He just kept cursing that old black cat and saying “I knew we should never have left in the first place."
A good story but still it left me puzzled. "Caesar, I thought you were going to tell me why you’re not superstitious about black cats anymore?"
"I’m not done yet. There was another time when I was running horses in Winnipeg that I had a run-in with a black cat. I had a long shot entry I’d been prepping for this race and I knew he was going to run real good so I bet him big. But on my way to the paddock a black cat ran across in front of us and right then I knew we were doomed."
"What happened, Caesar?" I asked, already anticipating the worst. "Did your horse break down?"
"No, he won the race," Caesar replied. "As a matter of fact he run great...but he almost went down. See what happened, this other horse bore in behind him and clipped his heels and my horse nearly fell. But then he caught himself and picked himself up and won the whole damn thing."
"So I guess after nothing bad happened that’s when you stopped worrying about the black cat being bad luck, eh Caesar?"
"No, because right after he won I looked up and that’s when I see the Inquiry sign flashing on the tote board. Right then I knew I was doomed. See the horse that clipped my horse’s heels had a journeyman aboard, and I was riding the bugboy. The older jockey filed a claim of foul against and the stewards believed him over the bug- boy! He ran right across the heels of my horse but they believed him anyway and disqualified my horse. I ended up having to pay the jockey fee out of my own pocket! It was the worst miscarriage of justice I ever seen on the racetrack."
Another good story but I was still puzzled. "I don’t get it, Caesar...based on what you’ve told me you should be more worried about black cats than anybody. What made you get over your superstition?"
Caesar grinned. "There’s too many damn black cats around here, that’s what. If I had to worry every time a black cat crossed my path around here I wouldn’t have time to worry about anything else."
Five minutes later I was still thinking about Caesar’s story when his horse propped and dumped me on my head. As I limped back to the barn I couldn’t help but shudder recalling another of my Grandma Ruby’s favourite ominous prophecies: bad things always happen in threes.
by evenSteven
From the Consignment of
HUNTINGTON STUD FARM
Hip 229
Filly by TIZNOW out of FLASHY N SMART
By TIZNOW, CHAMPION, 2 time BREEDERS CUP CLASSIC winner. Sire of Champion FOLKLORE, Graded Stakes winners TIZ WONDERFUL (unbeaten), TOUGH TIZ’S SIS, SLEW’S TIZZY etc.
Out of Graded, multiple stakes winner FLASHY N SMART, she is a half sister to a leading sire BOLD N’FLASHY. Half sister to Stakes placed Flashy Thunder.
Hip 97
STEPHEN GOT EVEN filly out of Regent n’ Flashy
Half sister to 3 winners including stakes placed Classic Mike! Out of a half sister to multiple stakes winners
BOLD N’ FLASHY and Graded Stakes winner FLASHY N SMART.
By STEPHEN GOT EVEN, sire of Champion STEVIE WONDERBOY, and Graded Stakes winners DON’T GET MAD, FOR ALL WE KNOW, EXCELLENTSHINE etc.
For inspection prior to the sale please call Dan Mooney or Mary Cudizio
HUNTINGTON STUD • FARM • CORP
11231 Huntington Rd. Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada 905-893-1742 fax: 905-893-1745


































































































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