A few years back there was a phenomenal race mare named
Zenyatta. She is my hero.
Zenyatta is what the racing world calls a freak. In racing that’s
a good thing. Of 20 starts, she won 19 in a
row. I saw them all—including her
maiden victory on Thanksgiving.
Zenyatta immediately appealed to a special group of fans—women. That’s uncommon- most racing aficionados are
men. But when the Queen, as she was
dubbed raced, women turned out in loud droves. They carried homemade signs and
banners and often had friends and little girls in tow. A Zenyatta race guaranteed a huge uptick in
track attendance in a sport that badly needed it.
It was also a hoot. Her fans turned it into an occasion.
Some dressed in her racing colors (a not particularly flattering combination of
turquoise and pink), others wore hats with giant ‘Z’s on them. I quickly discovered that these were my
people. Nobody cared about age or gender.
Actually that’s not true. Zenyatta became a folk hero
precisely because of her age and
gender. She didn’t start racing until she was four—quite old for a
Thoroughbred. That she was a mare made her even more special. The racing world reveres
it’s stallions for the money they bring in the breeding shed when they are finished
at the track.
From the moment she entered the walking ring before the race
Zenyatta was on. While the other
mares paced quietly, Zenyatta danced.
She paraded around the ring, dragging her groom behind her.
When she came on track her rider, Hall of Fame jockey Mike
Smith, would take her to the eighth pole and let her just stop and gaze at the
crowd. The fans went wild every time.
When Zenyatta ran, she was a tease. She was a closer, so
she’d always be far behind the pack –sometimes as much as 11 strides- as they
came into the final turn. Then she’d just lengthen her step, and demolish the
other horses. She didn’t like to win by a lot, just enough to rub her
competition’s faces in the loss. Every race was dramatic.
When she was five, about halfway through her career, I
decided to write a book about her. I knew there was a market—at the time Zenyatta
had more than 75,000 Facebook friends. Queen Z had her own blog which her fans
read and quoted it voraciously.
Also, everyone involved with the horse was interesting. Her
connections, the owner, trainer and jockey, became rock stars to the fans. Zenyatta’s
owner Jerome Moss, is the ‘M’ in A&M records and was used to dealing with
real rock stars. Zenyatta is named for the Police album Zenyatta Mondatta.
John Sherriffs, the trainer, is understated but highly
respected. He’d won the Kentucky Derby for the Mosses the year Zenyatta started
her career. Mike Smith, the jockey, had his ups (a wonderkind, he set all sorts
of records for stakes wins in New York) and downs (devastating falls that left
him with a broken back among other things).
I spent the next year and a half interviewing people for the
book. Meanwhile Zenyatta continued her assault on the best horses in the game.
That included a breathtaking win in the Breeder’s Cup Classic, which was run
against the best male horses in the world.
I acquired an agent who worried me when he asked me where he should submit the book. (Wasn’t
that his job?) But I didn’t care where it went; I just wanted it published. The fans wanted it out. Everyone but the
Mosses, who were said to be doing something of their own, wanted it out.
Zenyatta’s last race was a big one—it was another shot at
the Breeder’s Cup Classic. All of the outlets I had talked to—and who had refused to do
a story on women and racing—suddenly were covering her. But not her fans. Among them was a Vogue shoot, a 60 Minutes
feature and a piece on NPR. She may
have been the Queen, but she had become the people’s horse.
I went to Kentucky to watch the Queen’s final race and was
greeted by a banner across a street in downtown Louisville welcoming her. There
are two days of Breeder’s Cup races but the Classic was the only one that
people were talking about. A lot of Zenyatta fans had made the trip- about 30
had had gathered for drinks and gossip on Friday night before the race. Churchill
Downs was sold-out and the crowd was pumped.
And then she lost. Only by a neck- if the race had been two
strides longer she’d have caught the winner. You could literally hear a pin
drop in the stands. The wind was sucked out of the place.
I was devastated. I felt like my best friend had just been
defeated. And after two years of living with her daily, I guess she had been.
Zenyatta won Horse of the Year that year, an honor she’d
been denied the previous one. She was bred to a fantastic stallion, and gave
birth to a colt- CoZmic One, who at two has now begun his training.
As for my book? The few publishers who saw it, passed—most
told me that it was because she didn’t win her last race. Really? I think it’s because her fans --she now has
about 100,000 Facebook followers- are faceless. And women.
But I’m as stubborn a competitor as Zenyatta. I’m updating the book with CoZmic One, and will try again with a different agent and hopeful a small publisher
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