Goodbye, Tom Ainslie
“Richard Carter, a newspaper journalist and author who wrote on crime, medicine and baseball but was best remembered for his books on racetrack handicapping under the pseudonym Tom Ainslie, died last Saturday in New City, N.Y. He was 89″ (New York Times).
Among the books Carter wrote as Ainslie are “The Compleat Horseplayer” (excerpt), “Ainslie’s Encyclopedia of Thoroughbred Handicapping,” and “Ainslie’s Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing,” a now classic handicapping primer. “Before him, there was a widespread assumption that the only thing a horseplayer would want to read was a pamphlet with some quickie system in it,” said Andrew Beyer of the author. “He was the first person to really write literately and intelligently about handicapping” (DRF).
More from Bill Finley: “Anyone who has ever written a handicapping book, enjoyed a handicapping book or profited from reading a handicapping book owes thanks to Dick Carter.”
Pandora’s Box
From one of the new additions to the Railbird library, found at Lyrical Ballad in Saratoga — which, along with Robin Bledsoe’s Cambridge bookshop, keeps me well-stocked in racing books:
“The new horseplayer opening Pandora’s Box: A Box loaded with disappointment and spirited fun, and always chock full of treasure for lucky guys and dolls.” — From “A Primer for Eastern Racing,” by Norman Kisamore (Dodd & Mead, 1963). Note disappointment comes first, ahead of fun and treasure. The game hasn’t changed so much in the last 40 years …
Readings: Hemingway
From a Paris Review interview with Ernest Hemingway, 1954:
Hemingway: You go to the races?
Interviewer: Yes, occasionally.
Hemingway: Then you read the Racing Form…. There you have the true art of fiction.
Readings: Morvich
The Kentucky Derby, as remembered by Morvich.
At length, after long waiting, the Derby hour struck. It was late, nearing five o’clock. But the air was warm, the sun bright.
Ah, my friend, how to describe the feeling that animated me as little Al Johnson, my jockey, rode me to the barrier? Beautiful women filled the clubhouse boxes. The stands were densely packed, and ablaze with many colors, for these Kentucky women are not afraid to put on gaiety at a fete. And as we moved along, the track, it could be seen there were dense masses of men packing the outer rail to and beyond the quarter pole …
Ah, but when I appeared on the track, you should have heard the clamor. It seemed to me it would rend the heavens above, or shatter my ears. Sweeter music was never heard … ‘Morvich! Morvich!’ was the cry from all sections …
That parade to the post. How describe it? One must see such things to know what they are like. There were ten of us, thoroughbreds, the class of the turf, and let nobody tell you we did not know it. What beautiful things they were, those other horses. I could not help admiring them, even envying them a little, their grace and perfection of form. Yet it was I who was Morvich, the Unbeaten; I, the least well-favored of them all.
At the post I wanted to be off at once. This would not do. There had to be perfect alignment. Several times I darted forward. Finally, one of the starter’s assistants took my head, and held me thus until the barrier lifted. We were off!
The race was in the first hundred yards. For in that distance I was free and clear of the field, I had the rail, and there could be no jam or piling up the turns.
I covered that first furlong in a little under eleven, killed the field at the start, and took the heart and fight out of all those picture horses. First one and then another of the field would forge ahead and try to come up with me. But each who thus bid for fame held on but a little while, then fell away. Behind, I could hear the whip being plied as we came into the stretch, and I knew those beautiful horses were being given whip and spur in the endeavor to force them up to my race. But no whip ever touched me. And I would have run faster had it been necessary, but little Al never let my head out, even in the stretch, but always held me in …
And so I came home, just galloping, at the end. I had taken the lead, I was never headed, and I won by two lengths…. Whatever else I shall do, whatever laurels I shall receive in other races, cannot compare to this:
That I, the ugly duckling, the horse sold four times before an owner could be found who would put faith in me, ran undefeated through a season and won the Derby crown. — From “Morvich: An Autobiography of a Horse,” by Gerald Breitigam (Rotary Press, 1922)
Readings: Heinz
They were going to the post for the sixth race at Jamaica, two year olds, some making their first starts, to go five and a half furlongs for a purse of four thousand dollars. They were moving slowly down the backstretch toward the gate, some of them cantering, others walking, and in the press box they had stopped their working or their kidding to watch, most of them interested in one horse.
“Air Lift,” Jim Roach said. “Full brother of Assault.”
Assault, who won the triple crown … making this one too, by Bold Venture, himself a Derby winner, out of Igual, herself by the great Equipoise … Great names in the breeding line … and now the little guy making his first start, perhaps the start of another great career.
Readings: Drape
“Their horses had gotten here. They had survived bruised hooves, pulled muscles, ulcers, fever — a medical dictionary worth of ailments — as well as their own bad races in weekend after weekend of prep races. They were Kentucky Derby horses.
“They had earned their yellow workout saddle cloths with their names embroidered on them and a stall beneath the famous twin spires of Churchill Downs. They had a place in the starting gate of what has come to be known as the greatest two minutes in sport.
“Their owners and trainers had survived, too. The best and the worst, however, were still in front of them …” — From “The Race for the Triple Crown,” by Joe Drape
Readings: Nack
“Pincay thought he had won his first Kentucky Derby. Before him stretched the emptiness of the racetrack. He was in front and handriding, his whip uncocked and at his side. As they all came to the five-sixteenths pole, Turcotte looked ahead and saw Sham and thought he was running very easily and wondered for a moment if he could catch him. Already the move had lasted three-quarters of a mile, and in it Secretariat had run every quarter mile faster than the preceding quarter — the first in 0:25 1/5, the second around the clubhouse turn in 0:24, the third down the backside in 0:23 4/5, and now he was rushing through the fourth quarter at the rate of 0:23 2/5. Through it all, Turcotte had remained a figure of patience in a whirl of motion, his actions deliberate, his timing precise, his earliest instincts sound. He had ridden with an insight into the momentum of the race and the way the colt had been responding to it, sensitive to the scope of the move and to the possibilities it implied if it were left alone to run its course. And that was what he had done — he was confident it would leave him close to the lead at the turn for home — and now they were racing past the five-sixteenths pole and he measured Shecky Greene, saw Sham, and decided he had waited long enough. He was hand-riding, pumping on the colt, when he first chirped to him. Nothing happened, so he chirped again. Nothing happened again. Turcotte cocked his stick, turning it up, like the stave of a picador arming himself, and flashed it in front of Secretariat’s right eye, and that was when he felt the surge of power, suddenly, as if there’d been a change of gears.” — From “Secretariat: The Making of a Champion,” by William Nack
Readings: White
“What about the first horse I ever bet on? That was in Lexington, Kentucky, where I had gone to seek my fortune in an atmosphere favorable to the competitive spirit. (I had held three or four jobs around New York that winter, but they were prosy things at best and I felt I was losing my fine edge so I got out.) My first horse was a female named Auntie May. She was an odd-looking animal and an eleven-to-one shot, but there was this to be said for her — she came in first…. Kentucky was lovely that spring. I got twenty-two dollars from the contest and would have let it go at that if I had not chanced to fall in with some insatiable people who were on their way to Louisville to enter other contests. I went along with them. It seems I got hooked in Louisville. The Derby was a little too big for me, I guess. Easy come, easy go. But I didn’t quit. I was temporarily without money but I still had a sonnet or two up my sleeve. After the race I returned to my hotel (I didn’t say I was registered there, I said I returned to my hotel) and wrote a fourteen-line tribute to Morvich, the winning horse, and later that evening sold it to a surprised but accommodating city editor. If you will look in the Louisville Herald for Sunday, May 14, 1922, you will find my sonnet and see how a young, inexperienced man can lose a horse race but still win enough money to get out of town.” — From “The Life Triumphant,” by E.B. White
Readings: Barich II
“Losers walking around with money in their pockets are always dangerous, not to be trusted. Some horse always reaches out and grabs them. In my case it was Plumb Dumb Bandit, sixth race, June 8, five furlongs on the turf. There was something about the way she looked, the feeling I got as she crossed over the main track and planted her hoofs confidently on the turf course. Confidently? How could I be falling into that trap again? On the other hand, how could the mare be going off at thirteen to one? She had three thirds in four starts, was five years old and Kentucky-bred; I was captured by the heartwarming suspicion that if her entire racing history were spread out before me, instead of just the most recent portion given in the Form, I’d discover in her past a victory or two in the grass. Yes, I was convinced she was a turf horse (anyone could see it), and I made my bet and watched her move confidently from seventh to first to take the race, winning by an indisputable length and returning $26.80. I won’t say how much I collected, but it brought me close to even again, or maybe a little better, which meant, of course, that I had to make further bets to break the stalemate. The process is endless, I thought happily, endless.” — From “Laughing in the Hills,” by Bill Barich
Readings: Barich I
“All week long I kept winning. It had nothing to do with systems, I was just in touch. When I walked through the grandstand I projected the winner’s aura, blue and enticing. Women smiled openly as I passed. I drank good whiskey and ate well. One night I went to a Japanese restaurant and sat at a table opposite Country Joe McDonald, the singer who’d been a fixture at rallies in the sixties. Joe had a new wife with him, and a new baby who refused to sit still and instead threw an order of sushi around the room. A chunk of tuna flew past my ear. Even this seemed revelatory, the domestic roundness of a star’s life, his interrupted meal, carrying the baby crying into the night, and I knew that someday soon Tuna or Seaweed or Riceball would appear on the menu at Golden Gate and I’d play the horse and win. Things fleshed themselves out before my eyes. In a liquor store I bought two bottles of Sapporo Black and went back to sit on the Terrace steps and listen to my upstairs neighbor’s piano exercises, the dusky fastness of ivory. This tune, I thought, will never end.” — From “Laughing in the Hills,” by Bill Barich
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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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