A Fine Place to Daydream

by Bill Barich

  The race card was mixed that afternoon, with three flat races, two hurdles, and a steeplechase. That’s often the case in Ireland in early autumn, when the flat and jumps seasons dovetail. (There are no dirt or all-weather tracks in the country, so flat racing ends in November because the turf’s too sodden.) Jessie trains a handful of flat horses, and she had You Need Luck entered in the second race, a mile handicap for three-year-olds. Though Jessie had won five races with such horses lately, the stats in the Post showed that she was one for thirty-three on the flat at Gowran Park, while she won with her jumpers about twenty percent of the time.

  On our walk to the parade ring, she explained that she’d started training by chance. She and her husband, Johnny, a retired bloodstock agent, had some decent homebreds they couldn’t sell on their farm in County Kildare, so she began working with them and did well enough to catch the eye of some owners. By 1990 she had a public license and an excellent reputation. At present, she has about ninety horses on the farm’s 115 acres—Irish and English trainers operate at such lush private enclaves, generally referred to as “yards,” rather than from the scrappy barns at a public racetrack, an injustice that once had a California trainer I know literally crying in his beer—and she is always among the leaders in terms of prize money earned.

  You Need Luck did not inspire confidence. In his three outings to date, the colt had produced no wins, or any indication that he ever would. After Jessie issued some instructions to Timmy O’Shea, her jockey, she seemed to forget about me and made a beeline for an open stand with a few rows of concrete steps. The stand was so basic I’d have wagered it had been there since 1914. It didn’t offer the best vantage point, being several lengths from the finish, so I guessed Jessie favored it as a lucky spot, and she admitted it. As jittery as I am about such things, still capable of being undone by the sight of a black cat about to cross my path, most jump trainers are far worse.

  The legendary Englishman Martin Pipe provides a stellar example. Admired for his intelligence and his innovative methods, and interested enough in hard science to enroll in an equine studies course at Worcestershire College of Agriculture to further his understanding of horses, Pipe believes the color green is such a terrible omen that he once sent an owner home from the races to change her green dress. Seeing a chimney sweep on a race day is a frightening sign for him, as is the delivery of a load of straw to his yard. (Henrietta Knight shares that superstition, but a load of hay is okay with her.) He would never wear a red shirt or red socks to the track, or drive over a bridge while a train is going by underneath it.

  Jessie visited Pipe’s yard in Nicholashayne once, and she was struck by his attention to detail. He even bothered to make the wood chips for his gallops, the training strips where horses exercise at home, so he’d be certain of the quality. As an outsider, the son of a wealthy bookie rather than a member of the hunt-club set, Pipe had to go it his own way and rewrote the manual for handling jumpers. First and foremost, he insists on relating to horses as if they are human beings, granting them a psychological complexity they’re often denied. He is a close observer and listener, as well, especially after a horse’s workout when he concentrates on its breathing to judge its level of fitness. The faster a horse stops blowing, he says, the closer that horse is to “doing the business.”

  In his autobiography, The Champion Trainer’s Story, Pipe revealed a few of his secrets. He doesn’t let his horses trot at home, because he thinks the gait is unnatural. It puts too much pressure on the joints and can damage the cannon bone. His horses don’t come off the bridle on the gallops, but they do sprint over a short distance. Horses who’ve spent the summer away, fat and lazy after their vacation, walk for six weeks on their return before they exert themselves again. Pipe monitors their feed carefully to be sure they lose weight and shed their lethargy. When he can see a horse’s last two ribs, the horse is ready for a race.

  Unfortunately, You Need Luck lived up to his name and dragged in next to last. Jessie was briefly depressed, but her mood improved when Imazulutoo, her best novice hurdler—novices are in their first season over hurdles or fences—and maybe the best in Ireland, beat a good field later on. It was a sweet race to watch over the green and undulating course. Here was racing at its most organic, without the nuisance of a starting gate, only a tape to restrain the riders. Again I had a sense of traveling back in time. The race caller’s voice was a murmur, comforting rather than full of punch. He even added a nice, writerly touch by saying, “The jumping of the trailing group leaves something to be desired.”

  Under Barry Geraghty, Imazulutoo’s performance was sharp enough for Jessie to imagine her horse might be a candidate for the Cheltenham Festival, yet she didn’t want to count on it. She was aware of how many things could still go wrong before next March. “All I can do at this point is peddle along and keep dreaming,” she sighed. Her only banker was Moscow Flyer, a quirky but supremely talented horse I developed a strange affection for when I was introduced to him at the Harringtons’ yard in Moone a few days later.

  MOONE IS A TINY VILLAGE, just a blip on any map. Tourists do leave the N9 expressway to explore Moone Abbey with its ruined Franciscan friary and ancient high cross, but not very often. I never saw another soul while I wandered around there. Like Gowran Park, the friary belongs to a different century, the fourteenth. Any horse who happened on the ruins would surely spot a ghost. There are crumbly old gravestones I dared not touch and a vaulted chapel open to the sky. Birds own the abbey now—birds and the long grass.

  At its central crossroads, Moone has only a small grocery store that doubles as a post office. A rosy-cheeked gent well into his seventh decade stood by the front counter, dressed for work in a suit and tie, an accepted country tradition. When I asked for directions to Jessie’s, he said, “First farm on the right. I mean, on the left. Anyway, you can’t miss it.” The farm was on the left, and I followed a paved drive lined with beech and lime trees to a sprawling pink house set against a backdrop of the Wicklow Mountains. Cottages were scattered around the property, along with some old stone buildings used as stables.

  I walked past the stables and up a slight incline to open fields divided by fences, where I found Jessie on horseback. She was watching intently as a string of horses, a dozen or so known as a “lot,” galloped around a circular four-furlong strip that cut through the fields and dipped with the hilly terrain. Each time the horses passed by, I heard the thump of their hooves and listened to the sound of them breathing, as Martin Pipe might do—an athletic, chest-expanding sound. The air rippled with animal energy.

  For the riders, this was the best part of the day. They got to pretend that they were jockeys, but most were really only grooms, a job not everyone would covet. Several came from eastern Europe, five from Poland alone. They lived like college students in the farm’s cottages, both men and women, and just as messily, too. Good stable help is difficult to find these days, so trainers often rely on immigrant labor. The local lads who used to beg for a chance to muck out a stall, despite the poor pay and punishing hours, now look for work in Ireland’s booming cities. Jessie’s team didn’t have it easy. They were on duty from eight to five every day and responsible for five horses apiece. I couldn’t imagine what they did for fun. Moone doesn’t even have a pub, and grooms can’t afford a car. You’d have to be devoted to horses, captive to jockey fantasies, or maybe a little desperate to sign on.

  As the horses left the field to cool down, Jessie invited me to her house for a cup of tea. Her stride was brisk and efficient, and we were trailed by a number of dogs. In all my visits, I was never certain how many she has—eight, ten, possibly twelve?—in a variety of breeds. Hers is a peaceable kingdom, where the dogs and horses share equal rights with the human beings. We went through a back door and into an alcove piled high with muddy boots, where silks hung on a rod, ready to be grabbed on the way to the races. The line between work and the rest of life doesn’t seem to exist for Jessie. Work is life, and she lo
ves it. Driven and ambitious, that’s how she comes across.

  She doesn’t stand on ceremony, either. Her kitchen serves as the gathering point for the staff, so Eamonn Leigh, her head groom and assistant trainer, was already at the stove and firing up the kettle. He’s from Dunlavin, another small village nearby, and told me he began with Johnny Harrington more than thirty years ago, when Johnny still had the bloodstock business. (Johnny was golfing in Portugal that day, as the privileged retired are inclined to do.) Eamonn is practically family to the Harringtons, so he’d recently built a house for his own family on the farm. The only horse he cares for is Moscow Flyer, another indication of the trust he inspires.

  At the kitchen table sat Robert Power. He’d been riding with the grooms even though he’s a real jockey, an apprentice with fifteen wins under his belt already that season. Only twenty-two, Power appeared to have a bright future, but he still had a long, hard climb to reach the top. He had no trouble making weight now—jump jockeys are much bigger than their flat counterparts, taller and heavier—but that would change with age as his metabolism slowed down. Older jockeys don’t bounce back as quickly from injuries, either, as Norman Williamson had just demonstrated. Regular riding used to be enough to keep a jockey fit, but the demands are harsher now—no turning up half-smashed, as some did in the old days—and they need more stamina, too, so they jog, hit the gym, and stick to a strict diet, although I did notice Power nibble on a cookie.

  On the kitchen walls, I saw photos of horses, naturally, among them Space Trucker, a homebred and Jessie’s first winner at the Festival in 1999. There were also some framed newspaper clips and pictures of her four children (three daughters and a son), two with her first husband and two with Johnny. They were all grown up except for Kate, the youngest at fourteen, who was at a Dublin boarding school. One jokey sign stood out. DULL WOMEN—HAVE IMMACULATE HOMES, it read, a sentiment that summed up Jessie’s attitude. She could never be content in a traditional role, not when the pull of the horses was so strong.

  While we talked, Jessie sorted through her mail. “Junk, most of it,” she said, casting it aside, but one envelope held a check from an owner. It costs about $1,500 a month to keep a horse in training with her, exclusive of such extras as vets’ bills, transport, and entry fees. In general, she gets on well with her owners (“particularly those who pay on time”), but a few drive her crazy. Just that morning, an owner had called to inquire about his gelding, asking, “How’s she doing?” and glossing over a distinction Jessie felt he ought to be able to make. The dizziest owners blame her for every failure, and they’re all dying to go to Cheltenham and freely offer plans A, B, and C for accomplishing the miracle, even when their horses are still maidens.

  A trainer’s headaches are infinite, I thought, and we soon witnessed an unexpected one when a Polish groom burst into the kitchen in a foul mood. His English was limited, so he had to rack his brain for the right vulgarities to express his outrage. “No money!” he shouted. “No phone! No Katrina money!” It took a few minutes to decipher, but we finally realized he’d been robbed. In Moone, no less. Someone had broken into his cottage and stolen his savings, and also his wife’s savings and both their cell phones. Jessie called the police in Ballintore down the road and reported the crime, but that did little to soothe the overagitated groom, who continued to moan and pace and curse despite our efforts to comfort him.

  AFTER TEA, I MET MOSCOW FLYER for the first time. He was going to the Curragh, which means “racecourse” in ancient Gaelic, for a gallop on a real track to prevent him from getting bored or lazy. He has his own paddock as befits a celebrity, arguably the best two-mile chaser when he concentrates as he did when he won the Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Festival last spring. (The Queen Mother is almost as valuable and prestigious as the Gold Cup.) He’s fond of rolling around in his paddock after a workout, but he’s more inclined to stand by a fence and watch the traffic zipping by on the N9 down below. The flash of distant metal specks entrances him, and he won’t move a muscle for twenty minutes or so. He could be meditating, lost in his own airy thoughts. He’s an intelligent, cerebral horse—maybe too cerebral, because he can go all dreamy during a race and forget his purpose, sliding by on the grease of his talent.

  He whinnied when he saw Eamonn, eager to board the horse van with three of his stablemates. Eamonn drove the van, while I rode with Jessie in a high-end Mercedes that she treats like a Jeep, speeding around the yard over bumps and potholes and ignoring the rattle of the undercarriage.

  On our bracing trip over Kildare’s back roads, she told how she bought Moscow Flyer as a four-year-old at a Tattersalls Ireland sale in June 1998, acting as an agent for Brian Kearney, whose son, a racing-mad attorney, had convinced him he needed a hobby. She had a budget of 20,000 guineas, or roughly $35,000, to spend on a chaser, the preference of most owners. Moscow came up late in the auction, and though his breeding didn’t amount to much—it seldom does with jumpers—she liked the look of him and paid 17,500 guineas, guessing he’d be a nice horse and nothing more.

  When we reached the Curragh, I felt I could see for miles. It’s among the flattest places in Ireland, a broad limestone plain where the Irish have raced horses for centuries. Bold winds whip across it, and one was blowing that afternoon, lending an arctic chill to an otherwise bright day. Eamonn and the other riders were already there, checking their tack. Moscow’s first race, the Fortria Chase at Navan, was three weeks away, so Jessie asked Eamonn not to push the horse. She was concerned about the ground, too, still firm due to the lack of rain.

  “Look at that!” She pointed to some withered clumps of grass that were only marginally green. “That’s dry for Ireland.”

  While the horses hacked up on their way to the track, Jessie began shivering, so we got back into the Mercedes to escape the bitter wind. “Training from a car,” she joked. “What a business!” I’d been wondering if it was easy for her to break into a male-dominated game, and whether her independent character was a help or a hindrance, so I asked her about it. Predictably, the begrudgers resisted the idea of a woman joining their ranks, she said, and assumed she couldn’t be serious. They took her for a dabbler funded by an indulgent husband, someone who’d pack up and quit in a year or two when the strenuous demands of the job became clear.

  “Nobody said anything directly,” she went on, “because that isn’t the Irish way. I could feel it, though.” She spoke calmly at first, not wanting to complain, but her tone grew more heated, and I could see I’d touched a nerve. “It’s still a man’s world, isn’t it? We don’t have any female stewards. Women are rarely on the boards of racecourses, and all the beat writers for the papers are men.” That bias wasn’t confined to racing, Jessie felt. Instead, it reflected Irish society at large. She mentioned how she’d once applied for a bank loan, only to be ordered to bring in Johnny to cosign for it.

  She drove closer to the track, over rocks and turf, and glued a big pair of binoculars to her eyes. Moscow Flyer looked so vital and natural as he began to gallop I could hardly believe he’d been slow to develop, but it was true. He started out in bumpers, or National Hunt flat races designed to test a horse’s stamina and discover if it’s adaptable to the rigors of jumping. There’s a two-mile bumper on every Irish card, usually the last race, and they’re for amateur riders only, who aren’t as skillful as pros and “bump” around in the saddle.

  In his first four bumpers, Moscow Flyer never finished better than third, and when Jessie switched him to hurdles in a training race at Punchestown Racecourse, not far from the Curragh, in 1999, he screwed up completely and dumped Barry Geraghty. “He ran into a dolled-off [out-of-use] hurdle,” she recalled. “He went left, and Barry went right. I was so cross with the horse!” Since jumping is Moscow’s sore point, and Geraghty has the bruises to prove it, I once asked him for his thoughts. “The thing is, Moscow’s very brave,” he said. “He doesn’t worry about it. He’s like, ‘If I get it wrong, fuck it.’ His style isn’t car
eless—it’s carefree.”

  After the Punchestown fiasco, Moscow Flyer won a maiden hurdle at last, in October, defeating the highly regarded Young Buck from Noel Meade’s yard. Jessie dropped him into a more difficult handicap hurdle at Down Royal a week later, where he faced another fancied horse of Meade’s. “I don’t know why we’re odds on,” Meade confided in the parade ring. “This horse isn’t as good as the last one he beat.” Those were prophetic words—Moscow romped home by fifteen lengths. Later that month, he scored another win in a Grade One at Fairyhouse in County Meath and might have gone straight to Cheltenham if he hadn’t suffered a hairline fracture of the pelvis.

  By next autumn, Moscow Flyer was a rising star, the young pretender ready to challenge Istabraq, a beloved though aging Irish immortal, whose record as a hurdler was extraordinary. They knocked heads in three curiously disappointing races at Leopardstown, Dublin’s premier track. Moscow won the first race in late December, but the result was tainted because Istabraq had fallen. In January 2001, Istabraq countered with a win, but this time Moscow fell. Their rubber match provided no resolution, either, because Istabraq fell again. The races left everyone unsatisfied. They were reminiscent of the famous heavyweight title fight in Lewiston, Maine, where Cassius Clay decked Sonny Liston with a phantom blow.

  For Istabraq, the end was near. He ran just twice more, but Moscow Flyer got bigger and stronger, more battle-hardened and mature, so Jessie let him go chasing, Brian Kearney’s wish from the outset. (Chasers are the sport’s home-run hitters. They earn more money and glory, because fences are a more intimidating obstacle—higher, stiffer—than hurdles.) Again Moscow was slow to catch on, falling in his first beginners’ chase in October 2001, but then he won three in a row before he fell at Leopardstown in January. This established the disturbing pattern that has dogged him ever since—a mishap, three wins, and another mishap. As a chaser, he’s never been beaten, except when he beats himself.