Horse Tales - American Classic Pedigrees

Health Check

9/5/2024

Pushing to get a book written can be hard on a writer's health. You tend to stay sedentary for long periods of time; you often let yourself get dehydrated; and the temptation to snack at your desk is pretty high. If you're truly in the throes of creativity---or pushing a tight deadline---you may also be shorting yourself on sleep.

I've fallen prey to all these temptations, and the result has been packing on a lot of pounds I don't need and am having a lot of trouble shedding. If you'd like to avoid the same fate, try these tips:

No matter how busy you think you are, get up from your chair every fifteen or twenty minutes to move around. Set a timer if you need to, but move! Walk around a little, stretch, do a light exercise or two. You'll feel better for it, and I personally find that my brain works better when I get my circulation moving regularly.
Keep a glass of water at your desk and keep sipping on it. This has three benefits. It will help you stay hydrated, which will keep you in a better mood and reduce the likelihood that you'll get a headache or wind up with constipation. As people also have a tendency to mistake thirst for hunger, drinking water will make you less inclined to snack when you're not really hungry. Good hydration will also force you to get up and go to the bathroom regularly, which feeds into the goal of getting out of your chair and moving around frequently.
Do not snack at your desk. This leads to mindless eating, which when combined with inactivity tends to fuel weight gain. The kinds of foods that are convenient for workplace snacking also tend to be highly processed and loaded with fat and sugar, none of which are conducive to good health. If you're hungry, get up, fix yourself something decent to eat, and eat it in the kitchen or dining room. Added bonus: if you reserve your work space for work only, you'll be training your brain to get down to business when you sit down at your desk.
As much as possible, keep a regular wind-down routine and regular sleep hours. Very few people thrive on less than seven hours of sleep per night, and you're not likely to be one of them; most do best somewhere in the range of seven to nine hours per night. Give your mind the benefit of sufficient rest and it will function much better; you'll also be less tempted to snack on calorie bombs to keep propping up your sleep-deprived energy level.
While we're on the subject of sleep, DO NOT take your computer, tablet, or cell phone to bed with you! It's best not to take your work into the bedroom at all. If you're the sort who sometimes has brilliant ideas hit you in the middle of the night, keep a note pad and pen on your nightstand so that you can scribble down those moments of inspiration without tempting yourself to keep going for hours.

If you're young, start proper habits now and you'll never regret them. If you're older, it's never too late to change. Happy writing!

Triple Crown Detour

8/29/2024

This week's journey alongside Holy Bull led me through Jimmy Croll's decisions not to enter him in either the Preakness or the Belmont. Obviously, this annoyed the dickens out of Triple Crown purists, especially when the Bull bypassed the Belmont after demolishing older males (including four Grade 1 winners) in the Metropolitan Handicap.

Whether the Bull could have won the Belmont, I don't know. His entry would certainly have changed the complexion of the race, as Go for Gin and Tabasco Cat went 1-2 around the Belmont oval, exchanging their positions in the final quarter-mile. Would either of them have pressed Holy Bull through the early pace, probably a suicidal task that would have set things up for whoever stayed out of the duel? Precedent had certainly been set that a gifted miler could see out the mile and a half if allowed to cruise unmolested---Conquistador Cielo had done just that in 1982 after blowing away the Met Mile just six days earlier, so it's entirely possible that if no one engaged Holy Bull, he could have run off with the race at a distance that he did not "really" stay.

We'll never know what might have been. Croll chose not to risk "squeezing the lemon dry," to borrow from fellow Hall of Fame trainer Horatio Luro's dictum, and the result was a colt who went undefeated through four more races during the season and was ready to go again at 4 before injury cut his brilliant career short. It's hard to argue with that kind of success, even if it meant traveling a road less taken.

Clipped Wings

8/23/2024

I've just finished writing what may be the most difficult part of Holy Bull's story, at least to me---his unexplained flop in the 1994 Kentucky Derby (USA-G1). Obviously, he did redeem himself spectacularly, but it was very clearly a painful experience for owner-trainer Jimmy Croll, who at age 74 was unlikely ever to have such a horse again (and never did).

Two parts of the tale stand out for being ugly. One was Jimmy Croll's suspicion that Holy Bull had been drugged with a tranquilizer after he (and others) observed that Holy Bull was acting uncharacteristically quiet, even lethargic. Since Churchill Downs stewards did not order the colt to be tested (which they had the authority to do), there was never any proof of this. The other part was the rush to judgment on the part of many journalists, who seemed overly ready and even gleeful to write Holy Bull off as a horse who had "stepped on his pedigree" because of his sprinting bloodlines or who was a faint-heart who couldn't handle a race in which he couldn't grab an easy lead.

Obviously, those familiar with Holy Bull's record know that the Bull thoroughly disproved both of those assertions in the 1994 Travers Stakes, but the "see-I-told-you-so" attitude is one that journalists---and too many of the rest of us---are still all too prone to today, whether we're talking about horses or humans in the public eye. Perhaps if nothing else, Holy Bull's story can serve as a warning against cavalierly writing someone off on the basis of one well-publicized incident combined with personal bias without getting further evidence.

Galloping On

8/15/2024

I'm pretty happy with progress this week for the Holy Bull bio. At this point, I'm getting ready to take a trip into the pressure cooker that surrounds a high-profile colt during the pre-Kentucky Derby runup and examine the Bull's Derby flop. It was a race that was simply too bad to be a true bill on his ability, but what led to his turning in such a horrible performance? That's the question I have to try and answer, or at least to present enough evidence on to allow readers to draw their own conclusions.

Pictures are probably going to be more of a headache than the writing. So far, the Keeneland Library has been able to supply some material, but I'll need more, and at a cost I can afford since I have to pay any licensure fees myself. Those who have read my previous post, "Picture This" (October 26, 2023), know that this isn't exactly a new gripe, but I'll say it again: tracking down photographs for books is a pain, and often an expensive pain. Like most writers, I'm far from rich, which leads to a dilemma; I want photographers to reap a fair return for use of their work, just as I'd like to receive a fair return for mine, but I do have to consider whether my personal budget can handle the required fees, especially given that there's no guarantee that I will ever see a profit from a book no matter how much effort I put into writing the best book I can and then marketing it. Those of you who are already published authors know very well what I am talking about. Those of you who aren't, consider yourselves warned.

Planning for Delays

8/8/2024

Just as I was starting to really get back into the swing of things in writing about Holy Bull, Hurricane Debby walked in. That meant three days of being mostly offline due to power and Internet outages.

If you live in Florida, hurricanes happen. If you live anywhere else, other things happen---weather things, family things, pet things, work things. That's life. The question is, what do you do about it as a writer?

The simplest answer that I can give is this: plan for flexibility. Not planning out writing time and not keeping track of deadlines will take you straight to failure. If you don't make writing a priority---if it's something you get around to when you've gone through the rest of your to-do list---you probably won't do it at all. But creating such a rigid or time-crunched schedule for yourself that you have no room for life's invariable twists and turns may just take you straight to a meltdown. As in most other things, you need balance---enough discipline to make plans and then stick with them on a day-to-day basis, and enough built-in flex time that when life happens (as it inevitably will), you'll still have enough time to pick back up when the other necessity is dealt with.

That being said, a lot depends on your relationship with your editor. Ideally, yours is good enough that when you get absolutely steamrollered by circumstances over which you had little control, you can work something out. (It helps when you don't make a habit of pleading for extra time due to poor planning or procrastination---when your editor starts thinking that maybe the issue isn't unexpected events but poor time management skills or a poor work ethic, you probably won't be with that editor or that publishing house long.) Nevertheless, you can work in more relaxed fashion and head off a lot of crises in advance by building a bit of extra time into your schedule when you can. You'll never be in trouble for submitting a piece or a manuscript early, and if it turns out that you really need the extra time, you'll be glad that you gave yourself some wiggle room.

Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award Finalists

8/1/2024

Three finalists were announced for the 2023 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award on July 26. Alas, Dream Derby: The Myth and Legend of Black Gold didn't make the cut.

I can't say that I'm not a little disappointed. At the same time, it is an honor to have been considered alongside finalists Kim Wickens (Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse), Kathryn C. Mooney (Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey), and Curtis Stock (The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty). I've read the first two with considerable pleasure, and I have no doubt that Stock's work is up to the same high standard. 2023 was simply an outstanding year for horse racing literature in North America, and I am looking forward to more of the same in years to come.

Congratulations to the finalists! Whichever title wins, it will be a worthy addition to any horse lover's bookshelf.

Pieces of a Picture

7/18/2024

Earlier today, I had the privilege of talking to a member of Jimmy Croll's family about Holy Bull. Unfortunately, Croll himself died some years ago, but talking to this relative helped flesh out my grasp of the personalities of Croll, Rachel Carpenter, and Holy Bull. It wasn't so much a matter of gathering factual information as it was gaining a sense of the color and quality of the interactions within the community of people surrounding this wonderful horse, as well as seeing a little more of what Holy Bull was like as an individual within a network of relationships.

I am hoping that when the book on Holy Bull comes out, readers will be able to grasp a picture that I am still putting together from the pieces. Anyone willing to do a little research can put together a recitation of which races Holy Bull won and by how many lengths. What I want is for people to discover for themselves a living, breathing, one-of-a-kind horse and how special he was to the people who loved and cared for him. I hope today's interview will be one more step toward that goal.

You Learn Something New ...

7/11/2024

Having gotten into chapter five of the Holy Bull book (which will focus on his season-ending win in the In Reality Stakes and the transition to his 3-year-old season), I'm finding myself doing some extra research on what was going on in South Florida racing at the time. Turns out there were two scandals in progress. One, at Calder, involved the suspension of any access to Calder for seven jockeys, all of Venezuelan origin, who had falsified their previous riding records in Venezuela to qualify for apprentice status (and the accompanying weight allowance) in North America. It was big news at the time, particularly since 1992 Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey Jesus Bracho was among those accused. (After further investigation showed that he was indeed ineligible for apprentice status in the USA at the time that he was claiming it, he returned the Eclipse Award, which two years later was officially presented to Rosemary Homeister, who had been runner-up in the original voting and who then became the first female jockey to win an Eclipse Award.) The suspensions came through only four days before the Festival of the Sun and the running of the In Reality.

The other scandal didn't involve Thoroughbred racing but was instead centered at the Pompano Park harness track, where several driver-trainers, owners, and veterinarians were either arrested or lost their pari-mutuel licenses in Florida as the result of a year-long investigation into race fixing that made both the culprits and the local officials look woefully incompetent about either concealing or cleaning up the problems. Although there was no evidence that the dirty doings had spilled over to Florida Thoroughbred tracks, the bad publicity for horse racing of any sort, combined with the jockey scandal, left some heavy clouds hanging over South Florida racing in the public eye. No wonder Holy Bull was such a hero in his native state; nothing like having a budding superstar strutting his stuff at your track without the shadow of a doubt as to whether he was for real (everyone knew Jimmy Croll's reputation for integrity, and he was well liked) to take people's minds off the ugly stuff!

The racing scandals were background material for the focus on Holy Bull's career, so given the space limitations I have to work with in this manuscript, I'm not going to be going into huge detail on them. Still, knowing such things helps to explain the horse's great popularity. He was brilliant, he was eye-catching, and he and his connections were totally for real. Sometimes a star shines the brighter for being framed against the darkness.

Grinding Out a Book

7/4/2024

Writing a book usually starts off with a burst of enthusiasm. The problem is that the opening enthusiasm will seldom carry you through a complete writing project. Three and a half chapters into my new Holy Bull manuscript, that's where I am. I still enjoy the work once I sit down and get into it; it's mustering up the discipline to get going that's the issue.

For me, at least, the best solution is to set mini-goals of so much to be completed (or at least drafted) at the end of a work week. I know how much time I have to produce a completed work, so by setting goals for when each chapter is to be completed, I can pat myself on the back a little as I pass each milestone. Other authors work better by word count (so many words per day or week) or by thinking of the book as a series of subtopics or vignettes and completing each chunk. The important thing is to keep moving, because with a deadline in sight, the one thing you can't do is nothing.

Dream Derby in the Running for Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award

6/27/2024

I am thrilled to announce that Dream Derby: The Myth and Legend of Black Gold has been named as a semifinalist for the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for books related to the world of Thoroughbred racing and breeding that were released in 2023. It is a great honor to be included among the six semifinalists, in a year with some extremely tough competition. Some of the other honorees are Kim Wickens's Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse, John Paul Miller's False Riches, and Kathleen C. Mooney's Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey, all of which have been reviewed in previous posts. It is a measure of the depth of this year's field that such excellent works as Jennifer Kelly's The Foxes of Belair and Fred Kray's Broken: The Suspicious Death of Alydar and the End of Horse Racing's Golden Age did not make the cut. While I cannot speak for all the books I haven't read and reviewed, the sterling quality of what I have read suggests that this year's judges had a difficult task indeed. I am glad that my own effort was judged worthy of such consideration.