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Another attraction on Saturday Breeders' Cup will be filled with excitement
Updated: Friday October 26, 2001 6:25 PM
There are no people in sports quite like horse people. We in the sports journalism business (and you in the sports fan business) are quick to credit those athletes who work tirelessly at their trade -- the quarterback who studies mountains of videotape, the power forward who lifts weights after games, the golfer who hits balls until his hands bleed -- and rightly so. Extra effort deserves applause. Horse peoples' entire lives are extra effort. I am reminded of this after spending the week preparing to cover Saturday's Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships at Belmont Park, outside New York City. Horse racing was once a giant sport in the United States. (If you don't believe this, please read Laura Hillenbrand's bestseller, Seabiscuit, and then you will understand.) Of course it is no longer so. We are an NFL country. Occasionally, we are a baseball country. In certain pockets of the land, we are a college football country or a hockey country. Slowly, we have also become a skateboarding and rollerblading country. Even in the gambling world, horse racing has been overwhelmed by off-track betting. It is now a niche sport, viewed largely by those who care innately. On Saturday afternoon at Belmont, eight spectacular races will crown Breeders' Cup champions. It is annually the most talent-saturated afternoon of racing in the world. America's sporting attention will be distracted by the opening of the World Series later that same night and by the likes of Oklahoma-Nebraska that same afternoon. Late fall is not exactly a dead time. But it is the only practical time to run the Breeders' Cup, at the close of the North American and European seasons. Those who have better shows to watch (or better leaves to rake) will miss some fine drama. Like 60-year-old trainer Bobby Frankel, who will bring an obscenely rich crop of six horses to the gate during the afternoon, each with a shot at winning. (Some, like juvenile fillies' favorite You, with a better shot than others, but all with a chance.) On Friday morning, Frankel was curled up in a plastic lawn chair along the shed row of barn No. 2 on the Belmont backstretch, wrapped in a down jacket. For four days he has denied his nerves, but as fellow trainer Bob Baffert says, "The only time you do get nervous is when you've got a chance to win.'' Frankel is alive in six races because, through the cruel vagaries of the racing game, he has raced and nursed his best horses to the last weekend in October fit enough to run. He takes no credit for this. "Luck, pure luck,'' he says, an exaggeration that underscores racing humility. Secretariat got beat. Point Given got hurt. There is no sure thing. Baffert, who was forced to retire super 3-year-old Point Given after the late August Travers Stakes, has this year's super 2-year-old, Officer, unbeaten and unhurried in five straight victories by nearly 30 lengths. Yet Baffert, not always given to modesty, promises nothing. "He's done everything so far'' is all he will say. Trainers watch beautiful, fragile animals run fast and hope they remain in one piece, day after day. The fields are stuffed with threatening horses from Europe and the Middle East. They could win more races than Frankel and Baffert combined. Most noteworthy among these is the massive Godolphin stable of Dubai, whose principal owner, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, stunned the racing world earlier this week by entering Arc de Troimphe winner Sakhee in the Breeders' Cup Classic on dirt and Fantastic Light on the turf, the reverse of conventional wisdom. Yet Godolphin trainer Saeed bin Suroor counts nothing prematurely. "We would like one win,'' he said Friday morning. As if to make sure the racing gods understood his point, he raised a single finger skyward. Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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