The racing world was delivered a real treat last Saturday when the powerful Curlin crushed his opponents by a record setting margin in the $6-million Dubai World Cup. He took on the best horses the world could serve up, and merely toyed with them. He won without being fully extended and as he pulled up jockey Albarado said, “It’s easy when you ride a great horse like (him). He’s not even tired”.
Last year after Curlin’s Breeders’ Cup victory, assistant trainer Scott Blasi said, “He’s already doing things we haven’t seen a horse do in 30 years.” It was 30 years ago when Affirmed and Alydar were battling it out on the turf, but we don’t have to compare Curlin to them or others.
Jackson is taking the road less traveled; Curlin will forge his own status in racing history. The luster brightens just to think about it. We have a powerfully exciting horse taking the hero’s journey!
The drama of all of this is the tonic racing has needed for a very long time. Just like back in the days when Seabiscuit was supplying a much needed diversion to tough times: we need relief now. The election campaign is confusing, gas is nearing $4 a gallon, foreclosures are happening all across the country, we have Guantanamo Bay, we have inflation, and where we could once go to the races and enjoy horses we have one-armed bandits shoving against our paddocks.
Racing needed this horse and though the rest of the world doesn’t recognize it yet, it needed him too.
A great horse touches a lot of lives and it purges them pleasurably and effectively. A great horse is art, a transport to higher things. This is what we need to show young people who have been denied the equine hero. Now we can say “See, this is what it is all about” and the beauty is that now they will get it! This is how racing fans are made, racing is about the HORSE.
We should all be very thankful for this fortuitous opportunity. The only losers here are fillies and mares like Rags to Riches who are looking for rich, strong, handsome studs who have endured.
marilynlane@msn.com
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