Jockeys
Aspire to Win, Girls!
Unlimited Budget is among the 14 contenders entered in the Belmont Stakes. Someone should read “Lean In” to the filly before Saturday, apparently:
“It takes a special filly [to win a Triple Crown race], one that is willing to stare down the boys and say, ‘No, this one is mine,’ †said Dr. Mary Scollay, the equine medical director for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. “It’s so much about personalities and intimidation when these horses match up. I think it’s the same reason women don’t have as much, and the same kind of success, as men in the workplace.â€
Three fillies have won the Belmont, out of 22 starters. That’s not such a bad record — only 141 colts or geldings have won, out of more than 1200.
Rosie Napravnik has the mount on Unlimited Budget, which makes her the first female jockey to ride in all three Triple Crown races in the same year. That’s wonderful, if also a reminder of the progress still to be made, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of Julie Krone’s history-making Belmont win.
Meanwhile, at Suffolk Downs —
Elusive Son (inside) outfinishes Step Brother in the first turf race of the meet.
Tammi Piermarini, the leading rider at Suffolk for the past three years, tops the jockey standings again after three days of racing, with five wins from 19 starts. Gary Wales and Andria Terrill are tied for second with four wins apiece. Piermarini’s first win of the meet came in race two on opening day with Broadway Hat, shipping in for trainer David Jacobson. The once-pricey auction purchase obviously found his level, taking the maiden $5K by four lengths. Trainer Ambrose Pascucci made the claim, the only one so far this summer.
Piermarini’s second win came in race six on the same day with Elusive Son, whose thrilling by-a-neck victory over Step Brother withstood a stewards’ inquiry into a little stretch bumping. The first of her two wins on Wednesday’s card offered a different kind of thrill — Mister Dixie, a 5-year-old gelding making his first start since July 2012, won race two by 12 1/2 lengths in :57 3/5, a tick off Rene Depot’s 1972 :57 2/5 track record for five furlongs.
Another rider, Jordano Tunon, scored the biggest upset of the meet yet when he won race six on Wednesday with Lapantalones Fance, the longest shot in a field of 10, paying $87.20 to win. While that might have been the highest win price of the week, it wasn’t the first time since Saturday that exotic payouts have been high enough to trigger the new, onerous 5% tax on winning bets paying over $600 instituted by a 2011 change in Massachusetts law (and affecting only Massachusetts residents). “[T]his is a dealbreaker for Mass. horseplayers,” tweeted one. Per a notice in the Suffolk program, track management is working on a fix. Get in touch to support their effort.
6/7/13 Addendum: Jay Hovdey on the 1993 Belmont Stakes: “It has been 20 years since Colonial Affair emerged from the gloom of a rainy New York afternoon to carry Julie Krone and the colors of Centennial Farms to victory in the 125th running of the Belmont …”
Rosie’s Ride
This 60 Minutes segment on Rosie Napravnik may be the first coverage of the jockey (who’s riding Mylute in the Kentucky Derby) I’ve seen this spring that doesn’t remind me of Freddy Rumsen telling Don Draper that Peggy Olsen’s insight into the Belle Jolie campaign “was like watching a dog play the piano.”
Go ahead, joke, “There is a filly in the Derby. The thing is this one has two legs, not four.” Wonder, “Can a woman win the Kentucky Derby?” Say, “You can almost classify her as just ‘jockey,’ now.” Because Napravnik can ride: She’s 25, and she’s won the Kentucky Oaks and a Breeders’ Cup race within the last year. So far, in 2013, only Joel Rosario has won more races than Napravnik; only four other jockeys have won more money. And she has the right attitude:
“There still are owners and trainers that don’t want to ride a female. The only way that I deal with that is, you know, to try to beat that person in a race, beat that trainer or owner in a race.”
Napravnik might not be on the Derby winner this Saturday, but she’ll be on a Kentucky Derby winner before her career ends. Bet on it.
3:30 PM Addendum: Napravnik tells Byron King she’s pleased with how the 60 Minutes interview turned out: “They did an excellent job with it.”
Heartbreaker
What it’s like to ride against Frankel:
From half a mile out, it’s like having someone suck all the energy out of your own horse…. He kills off the opposition. He breaks hearts…. you’ll watch him go by and just lengthen away into the distance. It’s awesome.
Post time for the Champion Stakes on Saturday: 11:05 AM ET/4:05 PM BT.
Only the ground is a concern: “… if it’s heavy, we are in no man’s land.”
2:25 PM Addendum: Grimthorpe raises the possibility of scratching Frankel, depending on the course condition. Would that be it, then, for the colt? Or would a scratch open up the possibility of a Breeders’ Cup tilt? (Ever hopeful.) Tweets @corneliusracing: “don’t believe #Ascot run ‘hangs in the balance’ …”
10/20/12 Update: Frankel will definitely run.
Rider’s Eye View
The late John Oaksey’s bittersweet account of the 1963 Grand National:
It was, I think, setting out on the second circuit that the thought of victory first entered my head. Carrickbeg had long since made the fences look and feel like hurdles and, after jumping the water well behind, he moved up outside his field turning away from the stands with a surge of power that warmed my heart.
At Becher’s second time round he made one of the few mistakes I remember, and for an awful moment his big brave head seemed to rest on the quarters of another horse stumbling in front of us. But then, somehow, we were clear, and at the Canal Turn, as Ayala blundered badly, Carrickbeg nipped inside him like a polo pony.
Now there were only a handful ahead, and as the fences flicked by we pulled them back, one by one, until four from home, when for the first and only time in this hectic, wonderful race, fate took a hand against us.
He was denied the win. “I know who you are,” a man said to him on the street years later, “you’re the b—– who got tired before his ‘oss“.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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