My Year of the Racehorse (11 page)

At this point in retelling his life story, Martin finishes his tuna fish sandwich, taps the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, and asks me if I'd mind sitting outside. We settle in a seat on the patio, where Martin resumes his story while chain-smoking. After winning races like the Argonaut Stakes and the Milady Handicap, Martin began training for others, including another Canadian high roller, oilman Frank McMahon, who won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness with Majestic Prince in 1969. “He was a delightful man to work for,” Martin says through a veil of smoke. “I'd just explain what I was doing and he wouldn't interfere. He was a gem because his word was so good.”

In 1973, McMahon spent $47,000 on a dark bay colt sired by Damascus, who won the Preakness and Belmont in 1967, from a mare called Bill And I, “who was the queen of the bushes in Ohio.” The horse's vowel-heavy name, Diabolo, was the result of a clerical error that added an extra “o.” Working the colt at Holly-wood Park with three other colts McMahon had just bought in Kentucky, Martin knew he had a special horse from the start. “He went down in twenty-two and three,” he remembers. “Ninety percent of horses can't run that fast in the afternoon. He pulls up in thirty-four”—over three furlongs—“and the clocker said, ‘Who in the hell was that?'”

With racing legend Willie Shoemaker aboard, Diabolo won the Del Mar Futurity as a two-year-old. Laffit Pincay, Jr., who eventually broke Shoemaker's record of career wins, took over as rider the next year in 1975 at the California Derby, where the colt broke Noor and Citation's jointly held track record for nine furlongs at Golden Gate Fields. This led to Martin's one trip to the Triple Crown.

“It was nice to know there was a runner in the barn,” Martin says, smiling. Of the thousands of horses he's trained, this will be the one he'll always remember first.

IT'S PAST MIDNIGHT and, as normal, I'm bolted to my laptop. A problematic passage in a story leads to Internet research, which leads to Internet dawdling, before finally, inevitably, ending with Internet creeping. For the past hour, I've been sifting through the online leavings of Linda Lee, who's gone from being “In a Relationship” to conspicuously un-listing her status on her online profile.

Eventually, cyber-stalker's remorse kicks in and I cautiously back away from my computer as though it were a bear on hind legs. On my kitchen table, basically an open-faced storage unit, Sid Martin's box of scrapbooks sits without yet being parsed. I pluck a Stella Artois from the fridge and lug the first book to my armchair.

The material starts from the beginning of his racing career, when he was only a teenager: the photos of him galloping a horse; the shots of him as a jockey in the winner's circle with women in hats, finger-wave hairdos, and fur coats; the newspaper clipping of his first win at Longacres in Seattle. Martin's scrapbooks are like the photo-lined walls in Randi's break room.

It makes sense for an eighty-year-old man to have such documentation of his accomplishments, but then my imagination creaks trying to imagine the teenager who first put these clippings together. Most young adults I know have enough trouble remembering where they left their cell phones. Certainly, Sid had to have been a meticulous young man, or maybe his mother started cutting out the newspaper articles. It occurs to me that this isn't the scrapbook of a teenager who felt he was destined for greatness so much as it's the collection of a young man who realized, right from the start, that he was part of a world that contained greatness, excitement, and glamour.

When I finish my beer, I pick up the next scrapbook while looping back from the fridge. This binder covers Sid Martin's Triple Crown year, when Diabolo came tantalizingly close to victory in all three races. It's the Kentucky Derby, in particular, that gets Martin most excited, or, at least, it takes up the most scrapbook space.

Martin includes a long letter that his wife Grace photocopied and sent to her friends right after returning from Louisville. With no feigned worldliness, Mrs. Martin's letter captures the excitement of being a VIP at the Run for the Roses: the first-class plane ride, the banquets held in honour of the trainers, the TV and radio interviews, and luminaries like Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the “Six Million Dollar Man,” and Howard Cosell. The Martins sat in a box near the finish line with Frank McMahon and his family. “The governor called ‘hello' to Sid from his box behind us,” wrote Grace Martin, who passed away from cancer at fifty-four. (Martin's current partner, Dawn, works at one of the mutuel windows at Hastings.) “Glen Campbell and his wife were with him. I thought Glen gave me [a] sexy little wink, but maybe he had dust in his eye. I'll never know!!”

Diabolo, a fidgety horse who used to thwack a tetherball outside of his stall to keep himself occupied, was calm in the days before they left for Louisville on a chartered plane. Martin, in contrast, was “sleeping only 2 or 3 hours a night and couldn't seem to keep his meals down... the horse arrived in grand condition,” writes Grace, who had her husband's knack for zingers, “but the vets gave Sid a tranquilizer.”

I edge back to my computer and enter “Kentucky Derby 1975” into YouTube. A two-minute clip pops up. The twenty horses emerge from the gate—a burst dam of coursing horseflesh. Hanging outside, Diabolo, in yellow blinkers, moves up from the back half of the field to sixth in the backstretch. The infield spectators at Churchill Downs rush the rail as the horses pass them; many of the people bounce in the air, hoping for a better view. “He weaves himself through, horse after horse, like drawing a map,” Martin told me earlier. “He got where you want to be at the quarter pole. And then he went after Avatar.”

At the far turn, Diabolo is on the outside duking it out with Avatar, another California horse ridden by Shoemaker, for the lead. The race is going perfectly for Martin and his horse. As Diabolo and Avatar change leads—when horses turn, the leg that leads out must be inside—they bump into each other. Diabolo gets the worst of the collision and loses his stride going down the lane. Foolish Pleasure, the race favourite, dances ahead of both horses to reach the wire first, followed by Avatar, who'd later win the Belmont. Diabolo recovers, eventually, to finish two lengths behind in third.

“First Diabolo bobbled, and then, recovering, lugged in on Avatar,” Whitney Tower wrote in the Sports Illustrated cover story of the race. “Almost as if in self-defense Avatar bumped Diabolo, knocking him completely off stride and just as completely out of contention.”

When we spoke, Martin clearly disagreed with the assertion, but wouldn't elaborate. “Anything you say will sound like sour grapes,” he told me. “Those things are what you call history.”

Watching this race, though, inspires me to fire up my word processor and begin another section of The Winning Ticket Inside You.

CHAPTER TWO

We have all had failures in life. The early setbacks in my life were nothing special: manuscripts bounced, articles quashed, and futile personal prospects that I pursued down online cul-de-sacs. What compounded these losses—the real failure—was my inability to get past them.

The eventual victors quickly forget the hurt, even if it kills them. One good strategy is to employ humour. At the track, I learned this lesson from a venerable horseman who had come as close as possible to winning his profession's greatest baubles, only to have them cruelly wrenched away from him by ill fortune. “I've always been able to look at the funny side,” he told me, three decades after his near-triumph. “There's no use crying because it only gets your cheeks wet.” So many years after his disappointments, he still laughs, even if the smile is rubbery and stiff on his face, like a dental dam...

AN INTERMINABLE MONTH, the plumpest patch of summer, passes between races for my horse. During this once-a-year spasm of uninterrupted sunshine in Vancouver, it's as if every man, woman, and child in the city has come upon a $20 bill on the street. The people I know scramble around manically, making weekend plans on island cabins or campgrounds; work becomes an obligation that's discharged half-consciously, the way you load your dishwasher.

Still wired from the horse's success, I want to while away this intoxication in public, where I feel my magic will have the greatest effect. Of course, the horse figures in all my social interactions, my trump card to end conversational threads involving child-rearing and yoga classes. The only hitch for me is that when I tell people I'm a part owner of a racehorse, it automatically prompts them to wisecrack, “Which part of the horse?”

After hearing that joke about six hundred times, I attempt to alter the wording. I say I am a fractional owner, a co-owner, a shareholder of a racehorse. But people still ask me which part of the horse I own. Eventually, I turn the joke around by saying I'm only part of an owner.

“Which part?” I'm then asked.

“I'll give you a hint,” I say, holding up the back of my hand. “It's one of these fingers.”

In June, I find myself at the wedding reception of a high-school friend in the ballroom of a harbourfront hotel. I'm seated with a couple I've met only twice before—the others at the table are strangers. After a prolonged debate about the wisdom of measles vaccinations for children, I allow myself to expound on Blackie. This, naturally, leads to a brief overview of horse masturbation techniques.

“Colts please themselves by thrusting their erect dinks in the air or bouncing them against their stomachs,” I say, flapping and jabbing my forearm to simulate both kinds of masturbation. The guys' eyes gleam like polished silverware; their companions' carry expressions of dismay.

“So would a horse breeder want to eliminate this as a way of preserving the stud's juices?” one guy, a cousin of the bride, asks me; his wife hands him the stink-eye. “Or would the horse have enough to go around?”

I scratch my chin—only because it's itchy. “According to my information, a horse doesn't usually ejaculate when he masturbates,” I say. “But I also read a scholarly article that says that breeders will discourage stallions from masturbating through ‘schemes and devices such as stallion rings, brushes, and cages.'”

(In that same article, entitled “Spontaneous Erection and Masturbation in Equids,” its author, Sue M. McDonnell, also observes that “when the horse was bouncing or thrusting the penis, the facial expression usually suggested pleasure and contentment similar to the kind observed during solitary grooming. A trance-like, glazed-eye appearance was occasionally evident.”)

There's one woman at the table who's been brought to the wedding by her boyfriend. Earlier in the evening, our conversation about books halted shortly after she told me she only read titles about gender theory and spirituality. She works in information services at one of the local universities, has high cheekbones, frizzy black hair, and wears a nose stud.

“Let me say I'm sure this project of yours is well-meaning,” she tells me, leaning across the table. “So you might not be aware of how disgusting horseracing really is.”

“Is it because of the bean?” I ask, nodding at the dried-out piece of horse smegma lying in front of my salmon dinner.

She ignores the bean. “I'm sure you're doing this with good intentions, but I don't think you understand the cruelty of horseracing.”

“Have you ever even been to a racetrack?” I ask her, trying not to sound peeved as I pocket the bean again.

“I go riding horses every other weekend,” she says. “The cruelty of horseracing is well-known.”

“But have you ever been to a racetrack?” I ask again.

She deflects this question as though I'm trying to trick her into the back of my idling van. The tone of voice she adopts isn't argumentative, but lulling, like an adult trying to talk a child out of an irrational fear. “At the track, horses die every day from broken legs and bleeding lungs. Do you know that?”

Her boyfriend looks away, sawing through his chicken breast intently.

“But that's only a fraction of the races,” I say limply. In fact, it's four in every thousand races in North America—and the ratio continues dropping.

“And every day, horses, which are natural pack animals, live in confined spaces.”

“Dogs and cats are pack animals, too,” someone at the table suggests, “but no one thinks it's cruel when people adopt them.”

“Horses get used to being in stalls,” I add.

Right then, someone at the head table starts clinking his wineglass, and the attention of the room shifts. The Woman Who Hates Horseracing waits until the bride and groom smooch. “They don't get used to it,” she announces into the applause that accompanies the matrimonial osculation. “Their spirits are broken.”

NOWADAYS, GOING TO the track when my horse isn't racing is like being a parent at a kids' soccer game that doesn't involve his own child. Okay, it's less disturbing than that, but you know what I mean—it's not as fun. And yet, in the long stretch between contests for Blackie, I can't stay away from Hastings. The gambling bug has fixed onto me and has exploded from too much blood.

Visiting the track prompts me to ask myself continually how to proceed when you love doing something you'll never be good at doing. Normally, with newfound passions that require talent and practice, either I dabble and lose interest (e.g., with darts and bowling) or I go full-tilt and lose perspective (e.g., with online Scrabble). I'm starting to realize I'll never be a successful horseplayer—I'm both too cautious and too indifferent. Whatever I bet I can afford to lose, but I don't want to make wild, uninformed wagers, either. As well, when I open the Form, I start copy editing for style and grammar.

This last realization proves inspiring one Sunday afternoon. Maybe what I need to do, if I can't win money, is to meld the sport with my own actual talents. As a word nerd, I should instead master racing's idioms and slang, an achievable goal that also serves another non-essential purpose. I remove my to-do list from the wall above my computer and strike a line through one of my items:

1.
BECOME A HOME OWNER
BOUGHT A RACEHORSE

2.
FIND TRUE LOVE
VISITED A BREEDING SHED

3. SETTLE DOWN & START A FAMILY

4. SEE THE WORLD

5.
LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE
TALKED LIKE A RAILBIRD

6.
START A RETIREMENT PLAN
REDUCED GAMBLING LOSSES

7. GET A TATTOO

I've already learned from Randi that a horse that “pukes” in a race quit in it—and didn't actually hurl; that an apprentice rider is called a “bug boy” because the asterisk beside his name on the program is insect-like; the favourite in a race is called “the chalk” from the days when odds were tallied, and erased, on a blackboard; a “rabbit” is a horse that runs up front early in the race, setting the pace before finishing well behind it; and that “Upset” is the name of the only horse who beat Man o' War. (It's been erroneously claimed that the meaning of the word “upset” as an underdog victory originated from this 1919 race.) While I know I'll never pass for a horseman, at least I can use their lingo properly.

Aside from an occasional copy error, the Form is another joyous source of esoteric language. It has race information found in the program, like previous race results, Beyer Speed Figures (designed by Washington Post columnist and star handicapper Andrew Beyer to account for differences in distance and track surface to provide a standardized rating of a horse's speed), and trainer winning percentages, but it also contains an excess of commentary. Riffling through my copy one summer Sunday, I can't help thinking that the racetrack could use some of the PR spin and the coddling euphemisms of constructive criticism seen in every other corner of public discourse.

I mean, in what other context would “failing to menace” be such a bad thing? Boxing, I guess. But in most other places, failing to menace would be regarded more positively, and in other occupations, children's entertainment or restaurant hostessing, say, it would be grounds for a positive workplace evaluation. How about instead of failed to menace, maybe made everyone feel at home? Similarly, a horse that set pace, gave way should be described as didn't need to prove anything, okay with himself. Why beat up on a horse that already lost?

But in fact, I'm here this Sunday not for the reading material, but to meet with Chad Hoverson, the most veteran rider at Hastings. After I befriended him in the cafeteria, Hoverson invited me into the jocks' room, where the riders dress and mill about. I've told him that I'm hoping to land a magazine assignment about the subject—a few years ago, I sold an article about the grooms imported from Mexico to deal with a labour shortage—but in truth, I just need a pretext for a peek-a-boo.

The space is lined with stalls for the riders. The veteran riders have marked their areas with engraved nameplates; other, friskier jockeys have covered their stalls with topless girlie photos. Near the front of the room the riders are weighed by the enchantingly named Clerk of Scales. Valets hurry around with riding equipment and towels. The track simulcast plays on a screen in the middle of the room.

As I sit with Hoverson, the jocks' room disappoints me with its camaraderie and locker-room ball-breaking—I was, in fact, hoping for more friction. The fifty-five-year-old assures me it's only jolly before the races begin.

“There was a fight the other day. One of the riders was mad at another one and the screaming got into fighting,” Hoverson explains patiently in Idaho-bred American English. “It isn't like we all have our own private rooms. Stuff happens out there where things don't go right, you know, whether it's a guy who shuts you off, and the heat of the moment will get to you.”

I find it hard to imagine Hoverson, who has blue eyes and thick, sandy-brown hair, in a jock-room brawl, not because he doesn't seem tough—the previous week I saw him with a black eye after he was thrown from a horse who clipped heels with an opponent—but because the veteran is probably the most courtly man I've met at Hastings. His unflappable good manners stand in contrast to the informal, off-colour worldviews found in the backstretch and belie the stereotype of jockeys as the Shetland pony–sized rock stars of the track.

Some jocks, of course, would argue they've earned their egos. After all, they ride hunched over their thousand-pound horses, their asses in the air, perpendicular to their feet. To approximate that position at home, try wrapping a bungee cord around a pole and then holding on to it while you lower yourself to a ninety-degree sitting position. And then place that pole on the bed of a truck going thirty-five miles an hour on a curving, bumpy road while someone throws mud in your eyes. Then ride a mechanical bull in a telephone booth to simulate the pain of being thrown by a horse coming out of the starting gate. I've been trail-riding twice and am sore just sitting on a horse as she walks.

Compared with grooms and hot walkers, the top jockeys are certainly paid like stars. Minus the quarter he gives to his agent, a jockey makes $50 per mount and ten percent of the purse. In 2008, for instance, Mario Gutierrez, then twenty-two, was the top rider at Hastings with $1,580,274 in winnings on 427 starts. Even at this small-time track, the top riders do pretty well for six months' work, with some of them also finding spots at winter tracks. By contrast, a less-established rider or an apprentice, someone who hasn't quite learned how to control the power of the horse and intuitively sense the pace of the race, might have to supplement his living as a gallop boy.

Hoverson, who's worked in over two dozen tracks including Santa Anita and Churchill Downs, arrived at the track at 5:30 AM to work horses, which helps him gain a sense of a thoroughbred's tendencies and preferences. His first ride is a colt—a maiden who “failed to menace” in his two trips to the gate this season—in a six-and-a-half-furlong spring for $25,000 claimers. At 10-to-1, the horse was given the second-longest preliminary odds by the morning line handicapper. “If I get lucky, I hope to lay about third in the race,” he says, sitting on the bench in his stall. “He can run a bit but he's still a little green and hasn't quite figured the game out yet. I try to give him a clean trip and teach him things. You can only do what they'll let you.”

Hoverson slips on the blue-and-white silks that belong to the owner of the horse. “The average rider has maybe a ten percent effect on the performance of the horse,” he says. “You've got to feel what horses are capable of, what they're happy with. You've got to place your hands where they like it. Some horses like a shorter cross, some like a longer, leaner cross. Some of them don't want much of a hold; some do.”

A buzzer sounds inside the jocks' room—fifteen minutes until the race—and the jockeys move into the paddock, where they make anxious banter with trainers and owners and mount their horses for the post parade. From the grandstand, I watch the race go how Hoverson doesn't want it to go. Rather than lying third, his young horse trails immediately after departing the gate, lingering on the outside from the first turn and hanging back throughout the race.

I wander back into the jocks' room after the race. “The horse is just being timid,” he tells me, mopping the mud beard caked on the bottom half of his face with a sponge. “He's got more than that, but when a horse moves beside him you can feel him twitch. Instead of running like he can, running free, he's running with me pushing him, and at this point in time I can't make him go quickly as I could in the past.”