The Legend of Zippy Chippy (32 page)

Tack on his new friend for life and stablemate Red Down South, and now two adoring families who love him dearly, and you've got a horse that could have costarred with Jimmy Stewart in
It's A Wonderful Life
. (Although there's little doubt in my mind that after spending time with Zippy Chippy, George Bailey would have jumped off the bridge over Bedford Falls, mercifully bringing that movie to an end a full hour earlier.)

And how did he do it? Cleanly – no drugs. The hard way, with not even a little help from his faster friends, who once in a while let him come close to winning but never allowed him to seal the deal. Zippy did it with dogged determination – fifty losses would have been more than enough to break down a normal thoroughbred. He did it with courage – not one horse in racing's Hall of Fame could endure ten straight losses, let alone ten
times that many, and keep on high-stepping onto the track, ready to rumble. And he did it with a lot of crashing and bashing noises. When Zippy entered a barn, anyone who had anything to do with exercise or discipline got extremely nervous.

People say life is unpredictable, but that's putting it mildly. Life can be downright diabolical. Did you ever think you would see the day when a horse who lost one hundred races would go down in history as a genuine folk hero, while a guy who won seven Tour de France titles will forever be remembered as a liar and a cheat?

“He was an honest horse,” remembered sports columnist Bob Matthews of the Zipster. “I didn't bet on him, but he ran hard. He gave you an honest effort every time out.”

Every day there's the temptation to cut corners, juice the results, spin the truth, double dip, and fudge, just a little. Don't. Zippy Chippy never did, and someday, I believe, he will be in the Hall of Fame. Maybe not the official Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York, but certainly in America's Underdog Hall of Fame, located in the hearts of all of us who try and fail and live to try another day.

The media had a field day with T
HE
C
HAMPION OF
F
UTILITY
and T
HE
G
OLD
M
EDALIST OF
M
EDIOCRITY
and Z
IPPO
! N
INETY AND
N
AUGHT
– a lot of deflected sticks and stones, as far as Zippy was concerned. If you scanned a list of every reporter who came up with a clever Zippy Chippy putdown, you would not recognize even one of their names today. Call it fortuitous or even serendipitous, but the best thing Zippy Chippy ever did was never win a race. If he had won one or even two races, he'd have been known as a “nag.” A win would have only served to blemish his perfect record. With his unbroken losing streak, Zippy is special – a beautiful, lovable, cantankerous oddity, a professional plodder, a hero to those who may hit rough times but always find a way to
better themselves. The believers, they were the ones who bet on him and kept the tickets in order to remember why.

He certainly was not the world's slowest racehorse, not by a long shot. The aforementioned English horse Quixall Crossett racked up 103 losses in his career, often finishing a race when it was getting dark. Japan's Haru-urara topped that by two with 105 consecutive losses. And a Puerto Rican horse by the name of Dona Chepa lost a mind-boggling 135 races. She truly did earn her nickname, “the Hobby Horse,” like the mechanical one that gives toddlers a bumpy ride in front of the supermarket.

Zippy wasn't even the slowest American thoroughbred ever. Thrust put up bigger numbers: 105 losses back in the 1950s. Somehow, all those sportswriters giving Zippy credit for being the “losingest” horse in North America had overlooked Thrust. They had followed the lead of sports columnist Bob Matthews, who, looking back, says simply, “Google got it wrong.” So did
Guinness World Records
.

But none of these also-rans ass-kicked and head-butted their way into thoroughbred racing's Hall of Infamy. Not the way Zippy did. In Britain, Quixall Crossett never lost a race to a cricket player. In Puerto Rico, depressed as she might have been, Dona Chepa never ate a box of cheese-filled
quesitos
all by herself. And Thrust never took a curtain call out of the chute while the rest of the horses disappeared around the near turn.

Namewise, he was hardly zippy, but when you total up all the bruises, bite marks, broken equipment, and dented trucks he left in his wake, this horse sure as hell was chippy. And, okay, oddly enchanting, with an attitude that would make a mule seem obedient. Zippy bit, bucked, kicked, and dwelt his way through a remarkable career until he earned – with no small amount of hubris – the right to be called the World's Worst Racehorse, a
banner Zippy Chippy will wear proudly up until his last day in the pasture. No horse can ever lay claim to that title, at least not while winning over as many supporters along the way.

Zippy's ten-year career as a thoroughbred racehorse was a Herculean quest to excel, to do his best despite the odds, which were always stacked against him. More workhorse than racehorse, more warhorse than exercise pony, Zippy Chippy challenged life head-on and took on all the tight curves and high hurdles that came with it. And now, romping around the big green paddock with his new best friend, both of them dropping to their knees and rolling around in the dust and dirt before galloping down the pasture's edge, he has ultimately won the stakes race of his life. Today, the unlucky gelding that the media often called “the little horse who can't” is this close to getting an appointment secretary. Zippy was never a champ, not nationally and not even at local fairgrounds. He was, however, a world-class scamp. In a world woefully short of eccentrics and real characters, this horse more than filled the bill for those of us who believe boredom is one of life's mortal enemies.

Survival with a splash of fun – that was Zippy's recipe for success. In racing, defeat was not the outcome this horse sought, but neither was it his life's undoing. Not to have tried time after time, that would have been his downfall. Failure is not a pratfall, the inelegant act of falling down in the face of adversity. Failure is not getting up to fight, again and again, in the end knowing you've done your absolute best, leaving the rest to fate. For that alone he can never be forgotten, and long after the remarkable races of other, more successful horses fade, Zippy Chippy will be remembered.

Above all else, Zippy Chippy was an artist. His self-portrait displays strong strokes of defiance and tenacity, but take a few steps
back and you see that the big picture sparkles with life, dazzles with revelry and draws love from those around him. Zippy Chippy was the center of his very own weird and wonderful universe.

At one juncture of his storied career, Zippy Chippy was almost the star of his own movie. On a five-year film option offered by that L.A. screenwriter/producer, Felix had received about $40,000 for the rights to Zippy's story, which he always believed would one day be made by Disney. I have seen the filmmaker's “teaser” video and the photography is excellent, with streaks of gold from a setting sun spilling through windows and cracks. A dozen other horses are heard neighing contentedly in shed row stalls as the star of the show is led out of his pen and down the concrete walkway. They stop. Marisa fetches a box of grooming products and begins primping and fussing over Zippy. Felix is holding Zippy on a tight leash, obviously suspicious that this is all going too well. Zippy is cooperating like he fought to get the part in casting, and then … without warning or malice aforethought, Zippy rips a really loud fart. It's the kind of noise usually preceded by lightning and followed by heavy rain, and I'm thinking,
Good Lord, starring in the film is not enough for this horse. Now he wants creative control!

Zippy Chippy was a horse that simply could not live with success, but strangely enough, in the end it came to him anyway. We live in a world inhabited almost entirely by great attempters. We try and try and try our best, and then we do a little victory dance. Our triumphs are small, our celebrations personal, and that's how we slowly but surely build better lives inside a cold and bitter world. Small steps, one foot after the other, steady and determined down the hard but right path.

So if you were the kid who got picked last for the team – or, worse (and none of us today are proud of this), the fat kid we sent
out onto Mud Lake before the hockey game started in order to test the thickness of the ice, or the girl who couldn't get a date for the prom, or the student who died a thousand deaths standing dumbstruck at the blackboard in front of the class, or the idiot who rubbed his contact lenses after cutting up crazy-hot chili peppers for the pizza when he was stoned and in college (sorry, sometimes I still tear up for no apparent reason!), or the person who got picked on, criticized, beat up, and centered out – here then is your poster boy, Zippy Chippy, America's lovable loser. This was the horse who showed the world that no matter how impossible things seem at the time, you can still come out alive and well down at the other end. Try hard and do good and there's a cool green pasture waiting for when you finally get off that treadmill – as good a reward as any of us can expect.

America, it is said, is the land of second chances. Zippy Chippy proved that America is a country of eternal hope, offering up ninety-nine second chances as long as you're willing to try. As the fame game flourishes in social media and on TV, more of us are meant to feel like losers every day. There's no doubt that the lives of the rest of us are a lot closer to the Zippy Chippy model than that of Secretariat, Man o' War, or Northern Dancer.

Oh yeah, the world will most definitely remember Zippy Chippy, with his perfect record of one hundred losses and his heart the size of that '88 Ford he was traded for, and we will be better for the lessons he taught us in living and striving and giving our all. Sometimes just getting through a rough day takes everything you've got. Following the Zipster's lead and his take on life might just be our best shot. In the end, Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach, came to believe that a winner was not necessarily the man photographed holding the trophy over his head or the woman wearing the finish line across her chest. In the end,
Lombardi believed that it was the one who worked tirelessly, relentlessly, unflinchingly for a good cause and the betterment of all those around him. In the end, Lombardi was often heard quoting these lines from “Thinking,” a poem by the little-known Walter D. Wintle: