Taking Liberties
Steve Haskin catalogs the various solecisms of “Secretariat,” including:
Penny, Lucien, and groom Eddie Sweat being in the stall for Secretariat’s birth was way too Hollywood and over the top, and was too far removed from reality for even a Disney movie; as was the jockeys for Secretariat’s first race at (“Aqueductâ€) mounting and dismounting their horses in the backstretch (filmed at Evangeline Downs), directly outside the barn. That’s something you’d see in a low budget 1930’s movie. Also, the shot of Penny, Lucien, and Sweat dancing and hip-bumping and Penny washing down Secretariat with no one holding the horse were a bit too much, as was Eddie Sweat standing on the track on the eve of the big race, shouting to the heavens about what the world was about to see.
On the positive side: The “kinetic” racing scenes draw Haskin’s raves.
Whenever, Whatever
Jerry Bossert rants about NYRA’s delayed photo finish uploads:
The only problem is it’s not on demand. It’s whenever the Teletimer operator wants to put the picture on the Web. On closing day at Saratoga, there was a three-horse photo separating Frivolous Buck, Gitchee Goomie and Tutti Va Bene for first, second and third place in the eighth race. The photo never made it up until after the 11th and final race of the card, after plenty fans from across the country called wanting to see it. The operator had a cavalier attitude when asked about it, saying he doesn’t get paid extra for it. This is why this sport is dying. The people in charge don’t care …
Related: John Pricci elaborates on the recent tensions between NYRA and the racing media, mentioned by Nick Kling at the close of Saratoga. Nothing negative, please. “Given the prevailing philosophy at the new NYRA,” writes Pricci, “there is no need for a press office, only a marketing department.”
The Arc Is True
The Baltimore Sun talks with William Nack about “Secretariat,” the movie:
Last month, over the phone from his home in Chevy Chase, he said that “the arc of the movie is accurate. Penny took over the horse farm when her father was dying, and left her family and went East to run the career of this racehorse. It made her and her husband estranged; she had a very difficult time. But she managed to start another life. She ended up blending in well with the Establishment, and she was much admired. That is the guts of the movie — and it’s all true.”
Beyond that, Nack said, [director Randall Wallace] got the pastoral and the prickly textures right.
A neat elision, on Nack’s part, re: the details that maybe aren’t so accurate.
Through the Cracks
Jay Hovdey on how exchange wagering came to pass in California:
… the exchange betting portion was tucked into the bill in mid-August, allowing precious little time for public debate on the merits.
Not so, says the California Horse Racing Board’s executive secretary, Kirk Breed, who points out that exchange betting was discussed at every meeting of the racing board’s Legislative Committee since last March …
For the most part, those committee meetings were undercovered by media and therefore not part of the mainstream conversation in California racing circles. The concept of legalizing betting exchanges was broached only a couple of times at the regular monthly meetings of the state racing board held this year, and then never as an agenda item for formal discussion.
And now it is law. Is this a great country or what?
An example of what gets lost without a robust, independent press, whether professional or amateur, beat reporters or obsessive bloggers …
Vic Ziegel, RIP
The 72-year-old sportswriter died Friday:
… and the only one who could lighten such dark and heavy news would have been Ziegel himself.
Nobody had a more deft touch with written words or humor than Ziegel, The News columnist and former sports editor, who spent his life making readers smile or chuckle over the one-liners he so painstakingly crafted.
I can’t remember ever reading a bad Ziegel column. He could do humor without snark, criticism without condescension. Even covering the biggest racing days, when every little detail that could be reported seemed to have been so, his words always sounded fresh, his stories always new.
“It astounded my father — a man who rode with the Cossacks; the friendlier Cossacks — that a son of his earned a living writing 24-21, 4-3, $12.60 to win,” Ziegel once wrote of his career. “The truth? It still astounds his son.”
7/27/10 Addendum: Allen Barra remembers Ziegel. “But at a particular time, hell, there were times when I think I was the best.” No question.
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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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