Jessica Chapel / Railbird

Readings Archive

Writing the Racetrack

… with a literary slant …

Natalie Reinert, exercise rider:

But that was ten years ago, and I’d proven time and time again that I hated real jobs. I hated careers, I hated offices, and salt-laced lunch breaks, and, yes, air-conditioning, too — stale and tasteless and fluorescent-colored days — even worse in New York, where the winter sun rises after the business day begins, and sets before it ends, so that the brightest light you see all winter might be the neon and LED madness of Times Square glowing into a snow-filled sky.

Two horses galloped by, nostrils fluttering and snorting with every stride. I saw a break — the homestretch was empty. I gathered my reins, bridged them against the filly’s neck, and sent her back into a jog, and then a canter.

(Via @sidfernando.)

Elizabeth Minkel, pari-mutuel clerk:

I remember one woman with four young girls who came up to my window and went through the standard routine: frazzled, sunglasses dangling from her lower lip, she flipped through the program as her daughters shouted out horses at random. “I want the three!” one would yell, jumping up and down, and the woman would sigh and mutter, “I guess we’ll have the three,” holding up a single crumpled bill to accompany each bet. I imagined Mother Ginger sweeping a dozen dancing children under her skirts. As she sorted her stack of tickets, handing one to each girl, she glanced over all of her children and looked at me ruefully. “I just hope,” she said, “that I’m teaching them the right thing.”

Happy reading.

Posted in Readings on July 13, 2010 / Comments Off

Reading Palmer

On the Second Pass, John Williams resurrects Joe Palmer for a new audience:

I don’t want to give the impression that an interest in the sport, or a knowledge of its history, is entirely unnecessary to an enjoyment of This Was Racing. But it’s easy enough to skim any confounding details and focus on the more universal sentiments. Like many great writers and conversationalists, Palmer mostly circled his ostensible subject, rarely landing on it. The most memorable stretches of the book aren’t about racing at all. They’re about recipes for jellied whiskey or the Australian hobby of “kangaroo chasing” or listening to a band torture “My Old Kentucky Home.” (”I could have played it better on a comb.”)

More than half a century removed from his work, it is good to be reminded of what a master turf writer Palmer was. Read the complete review (and then, if you haven’t, “This Was Racing”).

From the archives: An excerpt from “This Was Racing” about trainers Duval and Hal Price Headley, Menow, and the 1938 MassCap.

Posted in Readings on February 4, 2010 / Tagged Joe Palmer, Racing History, This Was Racing, Turf Writers, Turf Writing / Comments Off

Readings: Alexander

News came yesterday that jockey Milo Valenzuela, retired in 1980 and inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2008, had died at the age of 74 following a long illness. Valenzuela rode many good horses, including Tim Tam and Round Table, but none were better than five-time Horse of the Year Kelso, with whom he won 22 of 35 races. The excerpt below from “Chocolate Sundaes and Old Shoes,” by David Alexander, recounts one gallant loss, the 1964 Suburban, and was originally posted on this site April 18, 2005.

The Old Man was running at last like the champion he had always been and he was gaining, no longer inch by inch but foot by foot, and Yacza, who must have thought it was over at the quarter pole, suddenly discovered it had just begun and his whip went down on Iron Peg’s dark bay hide to sting him into the realization that he was no longer playing with the boys he had beaten by six and seven and thirteen lengths, but with the men now; specifically, with the greatest Old Man of them all.

The daffodil-yellow and smoke-gray banner of Bohemia was waving proudly again down the middle of the stretch. The dark face of Milo Valenzuela was grim at the instant it came into the focus of the binoculars I grasped with sweaty paws. And now the crowd broke its silence as they went to the eighth pole and the yards between Iron Peg and Kelso became feet, and as they passed the sixteenth pole the feet became inches.

‘Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!’ It was a keening, plaintive prayer. I think the ones who had backed Iron Peg into almost equal favoritism with the old champ had forgotten the tote tickets in their pockets, for they were yelling, ‘Kelly, Kelly, Kelly!’ too.

A veteran horseman who had no vested interest in Kelso was standing beside me. I knew him as a calm and unemotional fellow. Suddenly his hand began to pound the ledge in front of him compulsively and his voice rose to the shrill hysteria of a schoolgirl’s.

‘Old Man! Old Man!’ he shrieked. ‘Jesus, let the Old Man win!’

The Old Man didn’t win, not quite. But the usually heedless crowd, the crowd that sometimes hissed and sometimes booed when champions have lost, was faced with the rare thing called greatness, and for once the throng fully recognized what it saw.

Posted in Readings on September 3, 2009 / Comments Off