Zenyatta
Questions, Questions
Steve Haskin keeps up the quest for answers:
Speaking of Rachel’s retirement, some fairly reliable tidbits heard through the grapevine include Jess Jackson and Steve Asmussen knowing she would not race again as of a week or two ago, and that it was nagging foot problems that prompted her retirement. Another cited suspensory issues. See what happens when you are not forthright in announcing the retirement of a horse such as this.
It is hoped one of these, if true, will be made public in the next day or two to give closure to Rachel’s retirement.
Would it make a difference now to learn there was an injury?
Here’s one question answered: Jockey Patrick Valenzuela, who has the mount on juvenile graded stakes winner JP’s Gusto, will be able to ride at Keeneland and Churchill (and in the Breeders’ Cup) this fall. The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission unanimously granted Valenzuela a license on Thursday.
Gary West asks: Can Switch beat Zenyatta? I think not, but if she were to do so in the Lady’s Secret on Saturday, it would highlight a downside to the big mare’s careful California campaign. Zenyatta has more to lose by losing to weak competition than she would in a race such as the Beldame Stakes.
Thinking Ahead
Zipse at the Track picks up on the argument advanced earlier this month by Steeplestakes (via Equidaily), that Zenyatta has not done enough at this point in the year to be considered a Horse of the Year candidate. I suppose it’s a pleasantly diverting debate to have while we await the Breeders’ Cup, but it’s also kind of meaningless. After all, Zenyatta’s connections have made it known all along that her goal was a repeat win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (which Zipse does acknowledge). They’re all in, and their strategy will probably pay off; unlike last year, this year’s Classic will decide who’s Horse of the Year.
It’s more interesting to me that Zenyatta will likely repeat as champion older female without having started against most of this year’s top distaffers. Of the 10 Ladies’ Classic contenders ranked by DRF (PDF), she’ll have met Rinterval (second in the Hirsch, entered in the Lady’s Secret) and Zardana. She won’t have raced against Life At Ten, Unrivaled Belle, or Persistently (entered in the Beldame) or Blind Luck and Havre de Grace (entered in the Cotillion). That’s nothing to hold against Zenyatta, who can only run against those entered against her, but it is a depressing comment on how rarely the best racehorses meet on track, as is Blind Luck shipping to Parx for a stakes restricted to 3-year-old fillies instead of Hollywood or Belmont to challenge her elders.
As Chris Rossi, aka o_crunk, commenting here and in a recent Thoroughbred Times Today piece, has pointed out: The game is getting watered down. Steven Crist lays the blame partly on slots-fueled purses.
Related: There’s a very civilized discussion about Zenyatta and Andrew Beyer’s recent column happening in this comment thread.
A Historical Curiosity?
Andrew Beyer on why Zenyatta isn’t an all-time great racehorse:
My judgment is based partly on the fact that she has compiled her record by running mostly against moderate female competition — such as the field in Lady’s Secret Stakes on Saturday. But the main reason for questioning Zenyatta’ place in history is that fact that she is a synthetic-track specialist, albeit the best in the brief history of these surfaces. In my view, it is a dubious distinction to be the poster girl for the surfaces that have robbed the sport here of its unique character.
The surface issue hardly registers, and will even less in 20 years. What will always raise questions is her conservative campaigning, particularly this year.
ESPN Is to Sports …
College football fans tuned into ESPN this Saturday will get a chance to see Zenyatta. As part of a Breeders’ Cup Challenge telecast running from 6:30 to 8:00 PM ET on ESPN Classic and ESPN360, ESPN will break in between games at 7:15 PM to air the Lady’s Secret Stakes from Oak Tree at Hollywood Park.
I can’t knock exposure, especially for a champion with a story fit for Oprah and a game that has such loyal fans, but I keep thinking about a comment by Ed on the Plonk post of last week: “it’s hard to believe that it was just 12 years ago that ESPN was still televising the Little Brown Jug LIVE.”
Well into the 1990s, you could say ESPN was a true sports network, with an eclectic line-up that included football, baseball, soccer, golf, bass fishing, and the X Games. If people played it, ESPN aired it. Changes came with ABC/Disney ownership, competition from other networks, and an ambitious expansion plan that rode the rise of cable and the web, turning ESPN into the TV-radio-digital-print behemoth it is now. There’s a downside to this dominance, though, a homogenizing of sport, an emphasis on the popular and lucrative.
Think of it this way: ESPN is to sports as Playboy was to sex.
Like Hugh Hefner’s groundbreaking men’s magazine, ESPN transformed an industry, becoming hugely influential to a generation of young men and radically reshaping their perceived interests. Along the way, it became less a celebration of all that is athletic than a platform for aggregating massive advertiser-friendly audiences. That means fewer small-market sports, whether hockey or horseracing, and more major league sports and specious “news” coverage. When all of sports was a niche, more sporting niches thrived. Gone mainstream, broadly appealing sports “narratives” gain prominence.
What that means for racing is that events such as the Breeders’ Cup need ESPN to reach the largest possible audience of sports fans, but ESPN has no need for horseracing — which is why on Saturday, Zenyatta will be the entertainment between football games, not the main attraction.
It’s not a BC Challenge race, so it won’t be appearing on any ESPN channel, but Blind Luck versus Havre de Grace in the Cotillion Stakes at Philadelphia Park Parx on Saturday looks like a must-watch race. It’ll be the third meeting between the two 3-year-old fillies. Stakes winner Awesome Maria, making her second start of the year, is also entered. The Cotillion is part of the second annual Lady Riders Challenge, a very cool, under-reported event.
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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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