This Frankel development feels a bit like the Mosses announcing Zenyatta would race in 2010, after she was given a retirement party post-Breeders’ Cup Classic win … and then outlining the same campaign she’d run in 2009.
Say whatever about trainer Rick Dutrow’s record and his apparent inability to hew even the straight-and-wide rules of horse racing, the man gives a great interview. He’s self-deprecating, a little endearingly self-pitying, feisty, funny. He loves horses; he loves winning, too. For all that he poses as an amiable goof, there’s a wily, hard intelligence he can never quite hide. Of course he’s become an outlaw hero to some, in this, the summer of his endless appeal.
Superterrific, prepping the HRF Woodward Stakes Ten Things to Know feature in advance of Saturday’s race at Saratoga, sent me this reminder of Rachel Alexandra’s 2009 Woodward, a classic Ernie Munick video:
Picking up on the closing scene above:
The grandstand shook. We stood and roared for her. I’ll never forget.
