Horse Racing Saved My Life

This is an older piece; never published and not terribly funny but painfully true. The recent PETA revelations made me dig it out. 

Horse racing saved my life. Sadly, I didn’t hit the Pick Six when it was $3 million; the most I’ve ever won is about $38. Horse racing however, did give me a new career, new friends and associates and a sense of purpose.

Roll back to 2001. Even before 9/11 it was easily the worst year of my life. My dog and cat died within two months of each other. Then my uncle lost his fight with Leukemia.  While I was in Connecticut sitting shiva with my family, my new boss at the record company (remember record companies?) ordered me back to LA. To fire me.

I bumbled through for the next year or so trying to find work. Most of my old business associates were chilly. I wasn’t surprised: in the music business once you lose your gig, you might as well have Ebola. Particularly if you are over 40. And female. In what seemed like moments, I went from booking rock stars on TV shows to selling calendars in a mall kiosk.

Weeks into my redundancy, my show horse had to be retired.  For the first time in 30 years, I had nothing to do in the morning. Instead of being at the barn at 6:30 to ride before work—I had no work and nowhere to go. Getting out of bed became challenging.

Then William Shoemaker died. Though I hadn’t been to the track regularly since college, I considered myself a racing fan. On a whim I went the memorial service at Santa Anita. It was sad, but the people were warm even to an obvious outsider

I started going to the track in the afternoons just for fun—Lord knows I didn’t have enough money to gamble. That led to watching the horses work in the mornings.

It was better than Disneyland. And free. At any given moment there were dozens of stunning horses galloping down the track.

                

The best time was as the enormous tractors dragging the dirt finished. There would be 20 or 30 horses impatiently milling around. They were like little kids waiting for recess: some stood quietly while others were kicking, bucking and generally throwing hissy fits. As soon as the all clear was given, they got down to business. Running.

                

I was fascinated by the outriders. They were often my age or older, since in racing -unlike the music business -being over 40 isn’t a dismissible offence. They didn’t always look pretty, but damn could they ride! Occasionally a horse would lose its rider and the track buzzers and sirens would go off warning of the loose horse. The outriders would kick into gear. They’d charge down to the loose horse and cut it off and grab it in one smooth move.  They usually had the horse back to the gate long before the rider unceremoniously limped home.

                

There was a feeling of camaraderie around Clocker’s Corner where I started hanging out. Trainers, owners, riders and visitors all gathered around the coffee stand to chat and gossip. After a few weeks Rosie knew I just wanted coffee, and handed it to me with warm greeting. So did everyone else. If I missed a day, people noticed. Racing is a roller coaster world: the trainer or jockey who hadn’t won a race in a month just might hit a streak. Careers are rarely over—just on a downswing.

               

  Before my music biz career, I was a freelance music journalist. I began pitching features to the Blood-Horse, and was lucky enough to find an editor willing forgive the fact that I was (and remain) a rank amateur in the horse racing world and let me write a little.

                

Getting ideas was easy in the mornings. A man was wearing a tee-shirt with a fire department logo and a horse that read LAR. I talked to him and discovered he was a fireman who had taken one of the country’s few Large Animal Rescue training courses. I was taking to a jockey one morning and he told me about breeding homing pigeons as a child. I convinced the Los Angeles Times to let me do a piece on the huge –albeit almost invisible-- sport of long distance racing pigeons. My horse show background led to a piece for Blood-Horse on Michael Matz long before Barbaro broke his leg and the nation’s heart. I was privileged to spend an afternoon with Merv Griffin at his horse ranch not long before his death. The racetrack is filled with interesting characters, and I became one of them.

                

I met trainers, vets, owners, grooms and track personnel and discovered that most racetrackers share a few characteristics. They work horrible hours—weekends and holidays included-- and are on call 24/7. And they hate when their horses are injured or ill. The worst part of their job is when a horse dies.

                

When a horse goes down—whether it’s Eight Belles or George Washington in a graded stakes, a gelding in a cheap claimer or in the morning works—the backside mourns. They are a close knit group and for most the horses are not just their livelihoods, but their family. When a horse dies, it’s never just another day. There is a pall over the backside.

                

Racing is a brutal life for the horses and the humans, but it’s a part of me—and hundreds of thousands of others, that we could never give up. In the past my dream was to work the next monster tour and chart topping artist. My new goal? Getting my pony license.  And I dare you to tell me it’s not as rewarding.