The majesty of horse racing at its highest level is electrifying, albeit for an inexplicably short period — like an eclipse — when the public interest and an extraordinary athlete slide toward an overlap that lasts barely two minutes.
Great horses are better cared for than the folks who dote over them. While they do not like change, I’ve found horses to often be more civilized than we are. They are herd animals who obey the social order, they love to fairly compete, and do not cheat. We, of course, come up a bit short in all three categories.
Race horses are born to run. They love to run together and racing is inbred in the Thoroughbred breed.
But then the people get in the way. In the horse business, it’s always the people that gum things up.
The Triple Crown soon looms, June 9th on the calendar, and America has a horse to root for. Not necessarily a trainer to root for, but certainly a horse.
I’ll Have Another has the Holy Grail intangible that every owner, trainer, and jockey’s dreams of: a courageous will to win. Courage cannot be seen, so it cannot be bought. Courage is invisible. It surfaces in the heat of the fray, and this ordinary looking colt is the grittiest competitor to ascend to this stage since Affirmed, the last to win the Triple Crown, way back in 1978.
I saw Affirmed win the Preakness that year in Baltimore and watched I’ll Have Another win the Derby this year at Churchill Downs. I had my money on Affirmed but not on I’ll Have Another. As so often happens, my wagering dollars went home with a stranger.
I’ll Have Another has a modest pedigree compared to those he’s kicking dirt into the faces of, but he doesn’t know that. He was purchased for less than it cost to breed and care for his mare for the year it took to foal him. He doesn’t know that, either. Once the horses load in the gate, regally bred or raised in somebody’s back yard, all horses are created equal.
This colt, of course, is the galloping essence of the horseman’s reason for dreaming: A great horse can come from anywhere. I’ll Have Another has proved the dream can come true. Around 30,000 foals are registered each year in America. Few have careers that will transcend their peers. Only one stands as champion on the first Saturday in May.
I’ll Have Enough has magic in his hooves and heart but the plot thickens when he returns to his barn. There the humans take over.
Earlier this week I’ll Have Another’s trainer Doug O’Neill was handed a conditional 45-day suspension plus a $15,000 fine from the California Horse Racing Board as the result of a horse in his care racing in 2010 found to have an elevated level of total carbon dioxide. The hearing lasted seven days.
Since O’Neill’s suspension will begin no sooner than July 1, 2012, he is free to train through the Belmont.
The reprimand is relatively short compared to the 180 days he could have received. Should another infraction occur within 18 months following this particular suspension, O’Neill will have to serve the balance of the non-assigned six-month penalty.
The relative leniency of O’Neill’s sentence was due to the board’s conclusion that he was not guilty of giving the horse an illegal “milkshake.” Milkshaking is the prohibited mixing of baking soda bicarbonate and other alkaline substances that is tubed through the horse’s nose to heighten aerobic performance while warding off fatigue.
As the horse’s trainer, O’Neill was accountable because, in racing, the buck stops there: The trainer is the absolute insurer of a race horse’s condition. This is not O’Neill’s first scrum with a racing commission. He is a veteran of parliamentary procedure. O’Neill had three prior findings of excess TCO2 in horses under his care in California and Illinois, so this infraction was his fourth. To frame it properly, very few trainers are ever charged with this even once.
In this particular case, the hearing officer also researched whether or not there were any suspicious betting patterns in the race. There were none, nor was there evidence of intentional acts of deception by O’Neill.
O’Neill, as fate would have it, is the trainer of this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes champion. On June 9 at Belmont Park, I’ll Have Another will attempt to become racing’s first Triple Crown winner since Jimmy Carter was president. If he pulls it off, not only will the horse be famous forever — so will Doug O’Neill.
“I plan on examining and reviewing all of my options following the Belmont Stakes,” he said after the suspension was announced, “but right now I plan on staying focused on preparing for and winning the Triple Crown.”
Like four-time offenders are often wont to do, O’Neill proclaimed innocence from the beginning, pointing out that he’s spent $250,000 defending himself.
“I know I didn’t milkshake a horse,” he said. “None of us around the barn milkshaked any horses.”
To the Associated Press, O’Neill blamed his problems indirectly on lab workers, veterinarians, laws, and regulators.
“You got to have rules and I respect rules,” he said. “But when you get faulty science involved, it costs a lot of money, unfortunately. But you’ve got to fight it and that’s what we’re doing.”
Four times faulty science? In a sport of odds and oddsmakers, I wonder what the odds are of that.
Even more disturbing than this latest here-we-go-again round of doping allegations is the rate at which horses in O’Neill’s care have suffered injuries. A few months ago The New York Times did an exhaustive study of the horse racing industry, zeroing in on the frequency of breakdowns by racetrack and trainer. According to their report, O’Neill’s horses either broke down or suffered injuries at more than twice the national average — 12 per 1,000 starts versus the national average of just over five per 1,000 starts.
As a horseman, a man who’s bred, raised, trained, raced, and retired race horses, I can tell you that particular statistic is not an unfortunate series of accidents — that statistic is tragic. Compounding the situation is that horses in Doug O’Neill’s care are not cheap claimers. He’s busted up vans full of valuable dreams.
Like many modern trainers with big money clients and even bigger aspirations, O’Neill trains aggressively. He puts the hammer down, the motivation behind which is simple: In the business of horse racing, whenever money — especially big money — is involved, humans will get in the way. Nature has rules of order. Some people do not care.
When asked about the horse business I often say, “Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?” All of this “stuff” is the reason why.
O’Neill is not the guy for a kind, benevolent owner. He, like many others, voraciously chase wins and money and enters his horses in very tough races. He runs them hard. Whenever a trainer does this time and again, horses will break down. He does, and his do.
About 90 or so horses are in his stabled care, doted over by a staff of more than 60 employees, two of which are equine chiropractors. This is an unconventional and very expensive way to run a racing operation. But Doug O’Neill is not paying the bills, his owners are.
Added to an owner’s monthly training bills are line items for the farrier and shoeing, often exorbitant sums from the vet (a grand a month or more, with some trainers generating monthly vet bills upwards of $3,000 per horse), and, in the words of the King of Siam in the ageless play The King and I, “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”
According to respected horse racing columnist Ray Paulick, O’Neill’s problems while racing in California, Florida, and Illinois from 2005 to 2011, involved chemistry issues that went way beyond just the repeated milkshake allegations.
Paulick wrote, “He has been sanctioned no fewer than 12 times for overages of therapeutic medication, positive tests for drugs that should not be in a horse’s system on the day it races, or violation of TCO2 threshold levels, which measure the amount of total carbon dioxide in a horse’s blood. An increase in TCO2 can neutralize the lactic acid buildup that causes fatigue in a horse.”
As I said earlier, I am a horseman. I grit my teeth and pay the monthly bills, tithing to the sport because it is multidimensional like no other pursuit and there are worse ways to grow old burning money. I have written two very successful, happily-ever-after novels centered around horses and horse people because I love the cross-section of folks that come into the business across a full spectrum of motivations that start at caring and giving and end up with cheating and stealing.
Trust me: This sport has one of everybody in it.
I do not pretend to have not seen it all, but I have seen a lot. I have raced against cheats and lost by a nostril, head, and neck. But I am a sportsman. My horse comes first. I will not cheat to compete. It’s bitter to lose to a cheat, but it would be more bitter to know you were one.
O’Neill has his fans and supporters, some of whom say he has learned his lessons and changed his methods. The negative talk chatters extra loudly now because of the spotlight the Derby, Preakness, and Belmont put on a man who’s become luckier than the rest of the industry added together. The lights of Triple Crown scrutiny are hot, glaring, and unrelenting.
I have little doubt O’Neill has walked anything but the straight and narrow with I’ll Have Another because he’s had no temptation to do otherwise. I wish the same good fortune for all other 89 horses in his care.
I also hope I’ll Have Another has a safe trip in the Belmont under the able hand of beautifully riding jockey Mario Gutierrez. It will not hurt I’ll Have Another’s chances that O’Neill has hired Hall of Fame rider Jerry Bailey to mentor Gutierrez, on horseback, around Belmont Park’s racing oval to learn its nuances.
The horse and rider may or may not prevail on June 9th, but I do know that despite all the human distractions swirling around him, when I’ll Have Another saddles up in the paddock he will block out everything in the world he cannot control and try his best with courage and determination channeled on everything he can.
There is a lesson in there for all of us.