JC / Railbird - The Sport

The Sport Archive

“It’s a crap shoot. Nothing more, nothing less. Ship your horse thousands of miles, take a deep breath and roll the dice. You never know: you might beat three, as did Nebraska Tornado on Saturday; just one, as did Mona Lisa; or none at all, the fate of Scandinavia. Or you could end up beating them all. Just like Wilko…. Wilko’s triumph was one for opportunism at the expense of cold logic. It was a triumph for the have-a-go attitude that increasingly deserts those who campaign horses.” (Times)

Kevin Modesti laments the growing respectability of horseracing. “The National Thoroughbred Racing Association has announced that the sixth annual national handicapping tournament in Las Vegas in January will be televised on ESPN. The goal, obviously, is to bring horseplayers, with their speed figures and their hot tips and their hunches, out of the shadows. To take the game of picking winners and make it kind of acceptable. Well, where’s the fun in that? Oh for the bad old days.” (LA Daily News)

“But determination matters more than time. And determination’s often visible, right there on the track, even through the dimness and over the distinct sounds that can seem unmoored — yes, it’s visible right there in the turn, where the horse moves smoothly and evenly as if gliding, like a sprite or perhaps some kelpie, curving with the track and then bursting into the stretch, reaching for real estate and then reaching for the wire but ultimately reaching for something more, something essential, something that must be, because it can’t be anything else, self-definition.” (Dallas Morning News)

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