Troussaud

Toussaud, dam of four Grade 1 winners, dies

Between her and Terlingua, both gone in the last year, it really is like an end of an era.

1936-2008

When I was making the decision to move down here, family was a big motivator. Aside from my grandparents needing help, I have a lot of cousins, aunts and uncles that I really enjoy seeing. Saturday, I stopped by my great-aunt and uncle's farm for a visit. Their farm has been in the family for nine generations, and I love it out there. Some of my earliest memories are of their house, whether it be walking down to a catfish-ridden pond, driving the truck (at age seven!) through the fields while my great-uncle threw hay in the back, or playing with the Mickey Mouse dolls that covered my cousin's room. When they weren't home, I wasn't terribly disappointed since I knew it would be a good month or so before they headed down to warmer climates for the winter. I had plenty of time to see them.
Tuesday morning, I got the news that my uncle David had suffered a massive heart attack during the night. He didn't survive.
This week has been a flood of emotions for me. Regret that I had missed seeing him on Saturday night. Sadness at the loss. Heartbreak for my aunt; they were married 49 years and I have never seen two people who's love was so... sustained. They were affectionate, fun-loving best friends. When I was a little girl, they worked together running a feed mill. Upon retirement, they bought a motor home and spent most of the year on the road together. When they were not on the road, they were still together- playing tennis, riding bikes or entertaining friends and family. For them to lose each other is so sickeningly unfair- how many people ever have a love like that in their lifetime?
And then you have my grandmother, who forgets that she lost her brother several times a day. Each time she remembers, or is reminded by people wishing to offer her some comfort, is is a fresh shock. A fresh grief. The visitation was the worst since everyone was there for hours; after grieving madly, she forgot what everyone was gathered for and believed that she was at a party, until she was reminded again. The cycle of anger/ shock/ sadness followed by the happiness of being at a party with her closest family and friends was sickening. It tore me up. But I am glad that I could be there for her, offer some comfort and hopefully make things a little bit easier. Alzheimer's is a wretched, wretched disease.
This past week has made me think a lot about the unstoppable cycle of life, the inevitability of the end and the unpredictability and unfairness of it all!

Nashoba's Key, remembered.

You might remember my enthusiasm for a mare named Nashoba's Key, who I have mentioned in my blog before, at least twice actually. She was a California turf specialist who ran like she meant it. Her race record dazzled, her only out of the money finish was in the 2007 Breeder's Cup Filly and Mare Turf on a disgustingly wet track. I originally started rooting for her because her trainer was Carla Gaines, a female, and I always root for girls taking on the boys. I continued to root for Nashoba's Key because she was tough, high-spirited and mean. As I ranted in January, she should have been the champion turf female of 2007, instead of being robbed by a European horse who only raced once in America.

From what I remember, the reason she didn't start racing until age four was because of her temper. She required special handling to get her to focus her aggression towards running instead of towards people. And once she discovered running, she never looked back; Nashoba's Key was ranked top turf female in the country last year, and still tops that list today.

Since March, Nashoba's Key has been on a well-deserved vacation, and had just returned to training in the last week or so. She was getting ready to chase the 2008 championship, and I for one was certain that she would get it. Sadly, at 5:30 this morning Nashoba's Key became impatient waiting to go to the track for her morning gallop, threw a temper tantrum and kicked the wall of her pen, breaking her leg. The nature of the break, combined with the nature of this wild, high-spirited mare made it impossible to save her.

Part of loving animals and working with them is heartbreak. It's something that I have learned to deal with, especially working in a veterinary clinic. With horses, I sometimes think it is 10 times worse. These accident-prone creatures can go from perfectly sound and healthy to gravely injured with one bad step, one loose nail or one small hole in the pasture. As much as I love her, this mare was not high-profile enough to generate the national attention that Eight Belles and Barbaro did, but I would like to point out that she was not running or being whipped during her accident; she was just being a spirited, full of herself, hot-blooded thoroughbred mare. What a sad day for her owner, trainer, groom and fans. She was a beautiful mare, and I will not soon forget her.

And so the bagpipes played

It was a beautiful day for racing. The rain cleared, the track dried, and the climactic moment came. The DERBY! Thousands of us pressed against the fence, waiting as the horses loaded into the gate. Oh, the anticipation! Then the sound of bagpipes began to float through the air, and I looked to see a lone man walking the infield playing a mournful song. All crowd noise ceased as we watched, 100,000 people simultaneously moved. Was it for Barbaro? Chelokee? Commemorating Affirmed? Winning Colors? Or just a terrible omen?

I turned my camera over to Jon and, clutching the fence for support, began to cheer as the starting gate opened. My heart surged, adrenaline flowed and I shouted with delight as they came running past. Pyro was far back, trapped. But Eight Belles... Big Brown... oh, they were moving very, very well. And for a moment I dared to hope that maybe Big Brown was going to win by a mile with Eight Belles giving him a mighty run for his money. My cynical "not enough experience" heart would be treated to it's wildest dream- a superhorse, a superhero, a TRIPLE CROWN WINNER, with a mighty filly as his main rival. When they crossed the finish line 1-2, there was a sharp intake of breath; tears sprung to my eyes and my hands shook. He did it! They did it! The superhorse! THE FILLY! Oh, the screaming, the celebration, the cries of, "30 years we've waited!"

But then there was the wave of panic. Confusion. Something had happened, it rippled across the infield. Then a man behind my said, "What? Eight Belles is dead? Crossed the finish line and died???" It wasn't true, it couldn't be true, there was no way! Less than a minute before she'd run by me, full of life and power. I craned my head as hard as I could down the track, but I was a good 200 yards further from the turn than I usually was and I couldn't see a thing. I reached for my phone to call my close friend watching from home, so that he could tell me that it was just the rantings of some drunken jackass. But the text message was already there. If that didn't convince me, seeing the horse ambulance drive by me with no sign of movement inside made it abundantly clear.

Then I was shaking for a whole other reason. Everyone around me was in tears, even the men. Why had this happened while she was pulling up? The race was over, she was cooling out, the freakiest of all freak accidents- the unfairness of it all stung. Slowly, the crowd dissipated, and still I stood, clinging to the fence and staring at the track willing that moment to undo itself. A cold front brought a chilling wind, scattering papers and other remnants of what had been the most perfect day. As the post parade for race 11 started, I finally let go of the fence and sat in my chair. The wind carried a discarded section of the Daily Racing Form to my feet; it was muddy and trampled upon, but still I picked it up. Staring at me with a wad of grass in her mouth was Eight Belles. I tucked the photo into my program, nestled between the Derby pages. Because I could.

Winning Colors 1985-2008

Photo Credit

Since I was 5 when she won the Kentucky Derby, I didn't meet Winning Colors until about two years after her retirement. I was passing an afternoon at my grandparent’s house, flipping through some old magazines when I saw her. From the bottom corner of an old magazine stared a beautiful, elegant roan filly with intelligence in her look and fire in her eyes. Curious, I flipped to the article, which was a profile of her highly successful trainer, D. Wayne Lucas. But I only had eyes for her. This filly who could not only beat the colts, she could do it in track record time. And then, the Kentucky Derby. The ultimate boy’s game. The Holy Grail of horse racing. The goal for every one of the thousands of thoroughbred foals born every year. 130 boys have won. Only three girls. When Winning Colors became the third filly to win the coveted Derby, she was loose on the lead the whole way. She held off a late charge by the previous year's champion two year old colt. I had never seen anything like her. Sure, I'd heard the fairy tales of Secretariat and Man 'O War, but Winning Colors... she was real.


After that article, I craved more. I read every horse racing news article. I started checking out non-fiction horse racing books on my weekly library trips. I begged and begged to go to the racetrack, until my dad finally took me. I was the only eight year old with a racing form in one hand, and a program in the other, muttering about off track vs. fast track workouts. In second grade, we had to do reports on different kinds of books, including magazine articles. Guess which magazine article I chose?


Was Winning Colors the best filly ever to run? Well, not exactly. I remember guiltily shoving her to the back of my mind during 1994-1996, when I followed Serena's Song's every move. Madcap Escapade, Azeri, Silverbulletday, Excellent Meeting, Rags to Riches.... yes, I have screamed myself hoarse for many a filly. And I have become so familiar with Ruffian, Dahlia, Go for Wand, Personal Ensign, etc. that I often forget that I didn't see them run live. But it all started with Winning Colors, the first "real" racehorse, the first superwoman, I ever knew. And to my seven year old self, she was the best.

Goodbye, Barbaro

Barbaro, my Kentucky Derby hero, crossed the Rainbow Bridge today. It was for the best; he fought long enough and his poor body could no longer keep up with that big heart. I think half the world is in mourning; the UPENN message board was full of messages of love to him and his "family," and I've seen the news of his passing on the front page of every major news outlet's website. I know that most of you don't understand the deep level of mourning for a horse I never even met, but consider this. That horse gave me a gift, probably a gift that is felt very deeply within the horse racing industry. As someone who wants to work within a racing industry that has become unsettlingly more and more about computerized breeding records and speed figures and multi-million dollar corporations running horses they have never even SEEN, Barbaro's entire story proves that not everyone is that way. There ARE owners who love their horses so much that they will go the extra mile, and spend that extra dollar to save the life of an animal that more than likely would have never gone on to collect a $100,000 stud fee, but would have been a yard pet, living a life of leisure on precarious hind legs. There ARE trainers that treat their horses gently, never over-racing them or doping them up, who go on to win all the glory. And there ARE jockeys that will jump off a horse going 35mph and hold him up until help arrives, and then weep on national television over the plight of their mount. And there are veterinarians and veterinary teams that are just as passionate about saving the life of an animal they've never met as they would be for their own animal. And thousands of regular people will care so much about a racing hero that they send carrots and well-wishes months after the accident, never forgetting their equine hero in an ICU stall far, far away. And in the end, all of these people come together and grant the ultimate gift of a peaceful passing from suffering to eternity.
So, in my mind, Barbaro got to heaven today and was thrilled to find himself on four sturdy legs. And after a few kicks and twists, he challenged Seattle Slew to a match race "We'll see who's the better undefeated Derby winner! You may have the Triple Crown down there on Earth, but let's run another one in heaven!" And Go for Wand and Ruffian and even little Pine Island came up, commending him on his courage and telling him that they were so proud so see how he handled his injuries, injuries they didn't survive. Then, with a wink, Ruffian turns tail and flies across the lush grass, asking him how he'll feel when he's beaten by a girl! And when all the horses (from old pony to champion racehorses) have run to their heart's content, they find a patch a lush grass to graze upon, and sloppy mud to roll in, then fall into a peaceful sleep, knowing they are still loved on Earth, and that their memories are worth more than their weight in gold.