Saving Baby

by Jo Anne Normile

  Baby’s speed, in the meantime, was going to be clocked for three furlongs, or three-eighths of a mile. He wasn’t going to go as fast as he could. The highest speeds are saved for the race itself. But the pace with timed works is faster than with untimed training, and a rider can let the trainer know how much horse a Thoroughbred has left at the end of the run, setting the pace for further training.

  The timed work informs bettors as well as trainers. The times are published, so serious bettors can get a sense of how well a horse might do during an actual race and base their wagers accordingly.

  Of some forty horses who were timed for three furlongs that day, Baby ran the slowest, about fourteen seconds per furlong. I felt embarrassed, but at the same time, there was no heat or swelling on his legs. He had handled the increase in speed well. And some of the horses were seasoned athletes, having already been running for a few years. Baby was brand new to timed runs.

  A week later, he repeated his three-furlong timed work and came in third to last out of twenty-four—better.

  Two weeks after that, on October 3rd, Baby did a five-furlong timed work—five-eighths of a mile. Coburn had begun training him a little harder in the morning, having him go faster than he had been. That time, he came in the third fastest out of ten, about 12.5 seconds a furlong.

  Based on those results, he could be entered in his first real race, a run of six furlongs to be held on October 10th. I could tell by Baby’s demeanor that he felt ready to do well. I don’t know if a horse can feel proud of himself, but I saw in him a swagger since his second timed run. And he was more anxious to get out there and run each morning, more excited as he would get saddled. After his third timed work, we actually had an exchange of looks, like a telepathy between us. It was as though he was telling me he knew what he was there for.

  The night before the race, I hardly slept, then ran up the road to the mailbox 100 times once dawn broke to see if the Detroit Free Press had come yet. The sports column corroborated what Baby had been transmitting with his attitude, predicting that despite his slow start, he would come in first. “Reel Surprise well tuned for debut,” it said. The Daily Racing Form—kind of like The Wall Street Journal for making predictions about money and investments when it came to Thoroughbreds—picked him to come in third, a “show” in the “Win, Place, or Show” lexicon.

  Pleased as I was, a part of me was still gripped with fear. Horses get injured racing. I’d seen horses break from the gate, then turn around and run the wrong way.

  I also knew horses didn’t usually win their first time out, despite what the paper said about Baby, so my fear was mixed with a kind of competitive dread.

  But Baby had become so focused out there on the track. And though trainers don’t like to make predictions, even Coburn said, “I like to send horses out when they’re ready to win.”

  A lot of the owners keep to the stands just before the race begins, but I stayed with Baby till the last minute, walking with the groom and the trainer from his stall over to the track, then shaking the jockey’s hand and saying to him, “Just have a safe trip.” I meant it. A jockey could endanger his life clipping other horses’ heels as he wove in and out. Or a horse could stumble, throwing a jockey, or the jockey’s feet could slip out of the stirrups. Some time after Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby, his jockey became paralyzed upon being thrown from a horse during a race.

  After speaking to the jockey, I went right next to Baby, rubbed his neck, and kissed him. Be careful, I thought to myself. We love you. I felt bad for him. It was a maiden race for all the horses, meaning they had never won before. But it was Baby’s first start—his first time racing for real. There are no pre-season “games.” Even running furlongs in timed works, the horses go alone or with just one other horse. They are not running side by side with a field of horses while they are being clocked.

  That’s only one of many things that are brand new to a horse making his first start. When Thoroughbreds train, they go out in the morning, then generally like to take a little nap around 11:00 or 12:00. That’s why, so many times when I would come back to Baby’s stall after he finished training for the day, he’d be sleeping, stretched out and snoring adorably. While almost all horses sleep standing up some time after weaning, Baby always lay down in the straw, even at age two. I’d tiptoe away those days, not wanting to wake my sleeping child.

  Races, in contrast to training, take place only in the afternoon, or at least they did in Michigan at that time. So already a horse, very much a creature of habit, knows something is different on race day. He hasn’t been taken out in the morning for his usual training, and here he is being taken out later in the day. And when he gets out to the track, he sees not rows and rows of empty bleachers but a grandstand full of people moving around.

  Horses have not only good distance vision but also much better peripheral vision than we do, and are able to see almost in a full circle. It’s easy to tell that what they see is making them feel unnerved. Many start to prance in agitation, wondering what is going on. Voices booming over the loudspeaker only add to their anxiety. Furthermore, the horses saddle up right in the grandstand area, whereas for training they are saddled in their stall and then ridden out to the track. It’s like after years of putting on your clothes and then going out to your driveway, you now have to go out to your driveway and finish dressing there.

  I could tell that Baby was very concerned with all the commotion in the stands, that it was making him feel disoriented. “Good boy, easy boy,” I kept saying as my hand lingered on his neck, but I’m not sure how aware he was at that point that I was trying to soothe him, so distracted was he. I kept telling myself that it was not any different from a skater or dancer’s nerves before a good performance, that Baby needed to get this experience under his belt and would feel less fearful the next time around, once he saw how well he could do.

  I kept my hand on him as long as I could, until the jockey had to mount him. Then, like all the other horses, Baby was paraded back and forth in front of the grandstand with his jockey on his back, after which he was led into the starting gate, where the metal clanged shut behind him.

  It is an extremely tight fit, which, because horses are prey animals, makes them very nervous. They want to be able to bolt. But they have to wait a few minutes for all the horses to load, adding to the tension. In fact, gate accidents are not uncommon. A horse might rear, catching his leg on the steel bars.

  As soon as the last horse is loaded, the bell goes off. The deafening sound reverberates, piercing all other noise throughout the track. At the same time, the metal bars in front of the horse bang open while the jockey cries out as loud as he can to goad the animal into action. Then the horse is urged to run faster than it ever has, being whipped not only to make him go faster—animal behaviorist Desmond Morris likens it to trying to escape the sting of a biting predator—but also to keep him from bumping into other horses or from running through the gap back to the barn.

  While Baby was being exposed to one new and unsettling sensation after another, I climbed the stands. We had invited more than twenty people to sit with us—my children, their friends, all our own friends, my parents, my sister and her husband, everybody in our inner circle. My heart was in my throat; I could almost feel the adrenalin rush through me as the bell rang. Here was the horse I had helped bring into the world, now ready to give it everything he had and show the world what he could do.

  It felt like a frozen moment. Everything was shut off. It was as if I were waiting for someone to say, “Here’s what happened.” Then, in a flash packed with spikes of emotion that made me feel like I was going to explode, the minute was over and Baby had come in dead last, soundly beaten by fourteen lengths, a length being the length of a horse.

  I felt so mortified that I almost wanted to give back to everybody the money I knew they had bet on him.

  The horses continue to gallop for another half mile or so after the race is over. They can’t stop immediately.
But I was already running down the stands to reach Baby and comfort him. The poor thing was covered in sand and dirt from what was kicked up at him by all the horses running ahead of him. He was breathing heavily, never having run so fast in his life.

  Though I tried to hide it, I cried on the way back to the barn. Coburn, uncharacteristically, was throwing things around, saying, “He did that purposely.” It was so ridiculous I didn’t even call him out on his nonsense but instead just whispered, “Oh, Baby, it’s not your fault.” Even at that stage I hesitated to contradict my trainer openly.

  Baby had calmed down by the time he had been walked back to the barn, as if it were any other day. He was even hungry.

  Afterward, people reassured me. “Don’t worry. A horse rarely wins its first time out.”

  Baby’s next race was eleven days later, October 21st, perfect in that horses do best with ten to fourteen days between races. They need that much time to build up their speed again before their next all-out run. For this race, the newspaper predicted that he would come in third rather than first.

  Baby did come in third—he “showed”—and, better still, he missed first place by only three-quarters of a length. You’d think I was the jockey, the way I was shouting out. It was an excellent display, and we were paid $730 out of the $7,300 purse—very exciting. We could begin to recoup on the $10,000-plus we spent to train him.

  The race itself was a thrill to watch. Baby had come from behind. Things didn’t look so promising as he remained near the back of the pack at the last turn. But the jockey was saving him for the end, when he started “picking up” one horse after the other. Head after head after head, Baby edged forward, until finally coming out almost right at the front of the pack. One more furlong to the race, and he might very well have won.

  The third race appropriate for Baby was slated to take place on November 5th—exactly two weeks away and also a perfect amount of time for him to rest up before giving it his all once again. “You’re sitting on a win,” people said to me.” “Next time out!”

  But when I spoke to Coburn about it, he seemed hesitant. “We’ll see,” he said.

  “Why is it, ‘we’ll see,’” I answered. “Baby came out of this race fine. Is there something wrong, something I should know?”

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Coburn countered. “But when he races is my decision.”

  I soon pulled it together. Coburn had taken on a second client in September, and that man had two horses in training and a third to start soon, meaning that Coburn stood to make two to three times the money off him as he made from training Baby. The man wanted one of his own horses entered into the race, and at that time in Michigan, one trainer couldn’t race two horses at once. There was the chance he’d use one to create a traffic jam for others in the race while creating a clearer path to the finish line for the second horse. Coburn, I believed, no doubt wanted to accommodate the other owner’s wish to race one of his own horses, since that man was paying Coburn more money.

  Coburn’s patient way with Baby notwithstanding, I had already become wary of him because I found out that he had been lying to me. Mike was supposed to ride Baby every day for training; 20 percent of the more than $1,000 I was paying Coburn each month once Baby arrived at the track was supposed to go to pay Mike to take him for a run, and on days I didn’t see him go, Coburn assured me that he had been out before I arrived. But Mike gave some clues inadvertently that that wasn’t always so. Now Coburn was refusing to race Baby when his chances for winning were so high. That was the tipping point.

  After much back and forth, without letting on that I was aware of his subterfuge, I took matters into my own hands. Across the aisle from Baby’s stall was Julian Belker, an older trainer in his sixties who had never asked me outright if he could train Baby instead of Coburn. I liked that. Others had made it clear that they were eager for the money to train such a promising horse. I liked the way Belker teased me, too. “I don’t know about you, Girl,” he’d say. “Don’t you have anything else to do? You’re here all the time.”

  “I’ve decided to fire Lyle Coburn,” I said. “Would you take over?”

  “Sure, I’d be glad to,” Belker answered.

  With the race two days away, the Daily Racing Form predicted that Baby would come in second.

  Once again, however, he came in dead last, this time by 19¾ lengths. In the final drive for the finish line, he bolted straight for the bleachers rather than rounding the turn.

  “What happened?” I asked Belker when I reached Baby’s stall afterward.

  “Let me show you something,” Belker said, and he took his fingers to make an OK sign with his thumb and middle finger, getting ready to flick them against something. He then bent down on one knee and flicked the front of Baby’s left ankle, and Baby pulled his leg right up. He did the same thing to the other leg, and Baby didn’t move.

  The leg that Baby had moved out of the way had a green osselet. He was in too much pain to put pressure on the ankle when turning curves, so he tried to run straight.

  It was time to take Baby home. There were only three more weeks left to racing season, and his ankle wasn’t going to heal in that time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I figured that Coburn knew about the osselet but didn’t tell me because then I would have taken Baby home for the entire month of November, and he would have lost more than $1,000 in training fees. I was angry, but I felt much more guilty than angry. If I had insisted the previous year that Baby come home for the winter despite Coburn’s talk about his stubborn streak, he would have had a chance to rest up, be a horse again, and not be prone to the osselet. I had known better than to let him stay at Coburn’s training facility and not have any break whatsoever before he went to the track, and my remorse was only compounded by the fact that I now knew two-year-olds had no business racing in the first place because of the unique dangers to their legs, not to mention their minds. If I had only just let him come home and finish growing up first.

  But Baby was finally home now after more than a year away, and what a terrific homecoming it was. As soon as his trailer pulled up to the house, Beauty, Pumpkin, Pat, and Scarlett started whinnying, and Baby recognized their calls and whinnied right back in his honking fashion. His mother and sister ran around joyously, and he was so excited that he was pulling to get down to the barn and smell everyone. The five of them together formed a herd, and now they were reunited, like a family unit. Baby and Scarlett, in particular, were wonderful to watch together. They were still young and mischievous enough to play halter tag, a game in which they pulled at each other’s halters teasingly with their teeth in a tug of war that brought them off their front legs, literally standing. Then one would give up and run off, and the other was “it” and had to chase; it was hilarious, and wonderful to watch. They also loved to roll in snow, then walk up to the back door looking like white ghost horses coming around for tasty handouts.

  The best news was that Baby’s ankle was okay. I had my own vet check him out, and all Baby needed was some time to heal plus some bute to ease the pain and reduce swelling. He had no pain walking, only galloping, which flexes the ankle to a greater degree than walking.

  Everything was as it should be again. Everybody was there, and their munching on their hay at night soothed me at last check, before I settled down for the night. I didn’t have to worry.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t feel Baby loved being out on the track. He did. He didn’t know he was racing—a horse has no idea that there’s a white post with the word “Finish” on it—but he clearly enjoyed running with other horses. And despite the fact that he hadn’t won any races yet, he was good at it. And I was proud of that. I wanted him to win, the way I wanted my daughters to win the medal or the dance trophy.

  As for the sinister things I had glimpsed—the overfeeding of one horse, the whipping of another—they were awful, of course, but they were aberrations. Even the so-called trainer who lacked a license seemed a rarity. Thus, by t
hat point, most of what I had been seeing was peeling paint and pockmarked roads. I still believed the track was at its core an upstanding institution. After all, you could at any point have your purse or vehicle searched for drugs that were allowed to be prescribed only by the veterinarians on the grounds. You couldn’t have a syringe in your possession unless you had, say, diabetes and had received clearance. All seemed pretty strictly regulated.

  As for Baby’s osselet, for which I blamed myself, I saw it as a compromise I needed to make for him in order to let him enjoy the freedom to just run. How many times had Jessica split open her chin learning to jump while ice skating? How nervous might Rebecca have been when I started to send her to ballet camps out of state at age twelve, and she had to fly by herself, hail her own cabs, figure out how much to tip the driver?

  The bottom line was that I didn’t at that point have major doubts about Baby’s racing. Besides, I had made that promise to Don Shouse. And in those days, races were listed in the newspaper. It would have been very easy for him to check whether I was sticking to our bargain.

  About two months after Baby arrived home, in January of 1994, I became installed as a director on the board of the Michigan branch of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, M-TOBA. I had been voted in during the fall. It meant that even though Baby was home, I was still very much involved in racing, still going to the track for meetings. I liked the camaraderie and, just as important, it was a good way to meet other owners. I was in the unusual position of being an owner who knew the trainers, since I was at the track all the time, but I didn’t know most of my fellow owners. And getting to know other owners was important because it was my aim to leverage my position on M-TOBA to get myself elected to the Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association, which had a lot more power to effect change. Owners, in addition to trainers, voted for the members of that board.