Build it and they will come...Bugsy had vision while other guys were wearing bifocals. If you're keeping count, I'm 2 for 2 in pilfering Hollywood script lines. Vegas rose out of the Nevada desert like well, the Phoenix. Flying over the city during the day is so uninviting that you wonder if you're on some intergalactic flight. The landscape is bleak; brown on prefabricated brown. In the desert lawns are a luxury. The color green flourishes and resides indoors on thousands of felt tables. On Saturday, sitting in a Vegas sports book, I saw jaded men, hardcore gamblers, applaud and cheer perhaps one of the greatest feats in modern day thoroughbred racing. Zenyatta, a 5 year old mare, won the Breeder's Cup Classic championship at Santa Anita. A physically spectacular specimen at 17 hands, Zenyatta put the colts, Kentucky Derby, Travers, Belmont, and European grass champions, away in deep stretch with her trade mark rally and made history by becoming the first filly/mare to win the Classic. On site at Santa Anita people were verklempt. The crowd of 55,000 roared as Zenyattta made her winning move. And they kept roaring as she walked back to the winner's circle. Her trainer, John Sherriffs, tossed his cap to the crowd. This was, in the quarter century history of the Breeder's Cup, the greatest equine performance to grace modern day racing. Why? Because a mare won her 14th race in a row, and laid a whipping on the colts. Because, underneath this all, submerged but not forgotten is the issue of gender inequity. Beginning with the tired fable that women are too weak in the upper body to be good jockey's...and that colts should race against colts, and fillies and mares should race in their own division. In 2 minutes on thoroughbred racing's biggest stage Zenyatta shattered the glass ceiling and affirmed that the two best equine athletes in 2009 are the brilliant Rachel Alexandra in the East and the undefeated Zenyatta in the West.
No comments:
Post a Comment