The Canadian Sportsman
Archive for October, 2009
October 06, 2009
The story:
Trainer Steve Elliott and driver Ron Pierce orchestrated a dominant Little Brown Jug win with Well Said despite the colt being saddled with the eight-hole in the first heat.
What we went with:
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What it could have been:
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October 02, 2009
I hate turtleneck sweaters. They scratch my skin and give me a headache.
My daughter Beckie gave me one for my birthday last month. She said that I needed some colour in my wardrobe so she picked out a red one with a small white snowflake embroidered on the neck. All of which would be good if I was a 45-year-old spinster music teacher.
Why did I need this? She’s got a heart of gold, but she should have saved her money. Times are hard and I need a red-snowflake turtleneck like I need a $1 win ticket on a 1-9 shot.
The stupid sweater has been in my closet since I got it. Bernie convinced me to wear it for the first time the other day when I was going to take Beckie out for supper. I had a headache within minutes. With some time to kill before Beckie got off work, I slipped into Flamboro for a few races.
My racing buddy Carl shook his head. “What’s with the sweater? You look like a fat librarian.” I decided not to mention that Carl’s wife is, in fact, a fat librarian and asked him who he liked in the 5th. We threw in together and took a flyer on a triactor. The favourite broke and we cashed in. The next race I had 10 across on a 5-1 shot that came in.
“Maybe it’s your lucky lady sweater,” said Carl.
God, I hope not.
October 02, 2009
Leave your cares behind... Come with us and find... the pleasure of a journey to the centre of a yearling mind...
Most major farms will have a huge spread set out near their shedrow at Fasig-Tipton in a not-too-subtle attempt to ply potential yearling buyers with the likes of oysters Rockefeller or, better yet, liquor.
Leather couches inside tents fit for a sheik; wide-screen televisions perpetually featuring flawless young equine babes moving seductively across perfect paddocks. It’s enough to make a horse-lover drool. It’s also a heinous example of the kind of human excess and grotesque capitalist consumption that led to climate change.
But what does all this marketing mumbo-jumbo really tell you about the horses you wish to buy, hmmmm?
Will that slice of honey-baked ham really make you choose the yearling from Huge Farm A over the yearling from Huge Farm B?
Wouldn’t you rather get inside a horse’s mind? Measure his heart? Read his soul?
In my humble way, Buddha-willing, I’ll be there to help. I’ll be in Kentucky next week for the Lexington-Selected Yearling Sale conducting my version of a sit-in with my boyfriend True Harmony and my Transcendental Love Cocoon (TLC for short). Look for the horse trailer hitched to my VW bus. It will be parked across the highway from the sales pavilion (Can you believe the capitalist pig dogs wouldn’t let me park it on site?) The TLC may not look like much on the outside, but the interior is designed for your horse’s every mental comfort.
Right around hip #45, I figure most people will need to cleanse from all that grody buying and selling. Stop by the TLC for some delicious wheatgrass juice. In honour of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, I’ll have the soy incense fired up and the album playing all day.
Better yet, bring your potential yearling purchase by for a reading. For just $79.95 (cash only), I’ll tell you which horses have the heart of a tiger and which ones have the motivation of a fat kid with an Xbox.
I’ll let you know which yearlings are brilliant and which ones have brains the size of tic tacs.
I’ll get to the heart of which yearlings have the fast-twitch muscles of champion athletes and which ones have the reaction time of True Harmony after a couple of bong hits.
I think Ted Nugent’s old band, the Amboy Dukes, said it best:
Leave your cares behind
Come with us and find
The pleasure of a journey to the centre of a yearling’s mind
How happy life could be
If all of mankind
Would take the time to journey to the centre of a yearling’s mind.
True Harmony’s kind of a poet, too. He is fond of saying, “This ain’t no horse whispering crap. It’s, like, a coming together of souls. One woman and one horse becoming a single sentient life form; one heart beating for two.”
Tell me a free ball cap or a pen-on-a-rope can do that.
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