"Blame" Wins

Zenyatta

Americans love their sporting events. It is arguable that we love sports a bit too much. If only Americans competed as hard to be better at math and science as we root for our favorite players and teams. Thoroughbreds manage to touch me more deeply than other athletes for a number of reasons. I love them because they are innocent and they love the sheer joy of competition. I love them because they are uniquely brave creatures during competition. Many thoroughbreds are so courageous they will give their very lives for their sport. And unlike the vast majority of modern elite human athletes, racehorses are modest. They do not engage in shameless self-promotion.

LeBron James

The only body-graffiti and adornments thoroughbreds require are the identification numbers that are tattooed on the inside of their lips and the shoes nailed to their hooves. And the only “attention” that these thoroughbreds ever purposely call to themselves after their success on the battlefield is the attention they might need because they are injured. It would seem that God gave racehorses way too much class to show up their opponents after they have prevailed over them in competition. Equine athletes never demand a contract re-negotiation because it turned out they were far more capable of doing their job than their agents previously thought. There were a number of New Mexico connections associated with the efforts of the great thoroughbred mare Zenyatta and her efforts to win the Breeder’s Cup Classic yesterday. For starters, New Mexico-bred racing mare Peppers Pride and Zenyatta had both won 19 consecutive races.

Peppers Pride After Her 19th Consecutive Win

Though Zenyatta had been racing the best horses on the planet and Peppers Pride raced only in New Mexico, both were tied for the most consecutive wins in North American racing history. Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, the rider of Zenyatta, hails from Roswell, New Mexico. The story of Zenyatta transcends athletics. It offers citizens a microcosm of human behavior and entrenched power structures. Five years ago Zenyatta went through the sales ring in Kentucky with a pesky rash that marred her appearance. The result was she was ignored by racing experts and was sold for a bargain price to her owners Jerry and Ann Moss. By 2008 Zenyatta had been carefully developed by a patient trainer, John Shirreffs, into an outstanding athlete. She was named the best racing mare in North America at year end even as she made plans for the 2009 season. In 2009 wine mogul Jess Jackson shelled out many millions of dollars for an already proven three year old filly named Rachel Alexandra after a 20 length win in the Kentucky Oaks race.

Though the filly was brilliant, it was Jackson who saw to it the filly skipped the Breeder’s Cup Classic. This manuever left things up to Zenyatta to face the best male horses on the planet. Last November Zenyatta did just that and she beat them all. However, at year end a huge block of east coast-based (mainly New York turf writers) gave their “Horse of the Year” votes, not to the still undefeated Breeders Cup Classic champion Zenyatta, but to Jackson’s high-priced filly, even after she skipped the biggest race of the year.

Yesterday Zenyatta returned in the same race. Again she was the only female in the Breeders Cup Classic and this time she was the oldest horse in the race. Zenyatta remained unbeaten going into the race having won five more times in 2010. Her career record was 19-0. In the end yesterday, after weaving her way through traffic, Zenyatta came up a few inches short. When the photo flashed at the finish line, Zenyatta had passed a wall of great horses, but one of her male competitors, another fine racehorse aptly named “Blame” was a head in front. Of course Zenyatta went by Blame a couple of steps after the wire, but it was not at the point on the track where the finish line had been drawn. Surely she must have thought she won the little game she enjoys so much. But all of us more intelligent humans knew she had just missed. Immediately, the New York based turf writers in the television media anointed Blame as “Horse of the Year” by virtue of his winning of the “big race.”

With all that can go wrong in our human-dominated world, a place where money from Wall Street banking firms in New York tends to corrupt the rules we are all compelled to live by, it is hard to explain why the existence of a spectacular racehorse could move millions for more than a moment.

Perhaps it is my own silly sentiment that is to “blame” for my adoration of Zenyatta. Still, I am reminded with nearly every passing day, that alarming news comes from places like Afghanistan and Yemen thanks to groups conspiring in schemes that might cause more Americans to pay the ultimate price for opposing the murderous intent of radical Islam. In the magnificence of Zenyatta I am reminded that people of nearly all religious faiths including Islam are particularly fond of thoroughbreds. It would seem that no athletic endeavor we know of seems better suited than thoroughbred racing competitions, to bring together people who seemingly have so little else in common. Maybe it is in this sense that the particularly noteworthy efforts of Zenyatta represent such a unique phenomenon. Only such a rare event could bring such a sense of mutual joy and excitement to people all over the world, even those considered to be bitter enemies.

In the end the accomplishments of Zenyatta will pass into the folklore of racing legend and each of us will go back about our daily business. In the weeks ahead, east coast turf writers will cast their votes for “Blame,” the New York Yankees will survey the talent landscape and use inflated New York bailout dollars to bid on the best free agents in baseball. The U.S. House and Senate, flush with fresh campaign contributions for the next cycle will contemplate what if any additional stimulus Wall Street investment houses and commercial banks might need to "save the country." In the meantime Zenyatta will head off to Kentucky where Peppers Pride already lives. She will enter the glorious world of motherhood while the rest of us go about our lives. The power in the racing business is a microcosm of life and perhaps we are all to “blame.”

"Blame" Wins