My Love Affair with the Sport of Kings

I will say this now - I cannot see features on NBC about horse racing without getting choked up.  The replay of Secretariat's Belmont Stakes win, a race I've watched countless times, always leaves me with tears streaming down my face.  Even now, while writing this, my vision is beginning to get a little blurry.  There's only one emotion I've ever felt comparable to this, and that is love.  Not just infatuation or obsession, but true love for someone or something. 

My life is absolutely tied to this sport.  I live in a college dorm that sits on the graveyard of Ak-Sar-Ben Racetrack, one of the biggest tracks in the country in its heyday.  As you drive out of the complex, an apartment complex with the sign "Pinhook Flats" catches your eye.  And just down 72nd Street, Horsemen's Park and its simulcasting facility is there, beckoning any racing fan into its arms.  The sights, smells and sounds of racing are forever etched into our senses, bringing with them a sense of comfort and familiarity. 

I got into racing at nine years old, completely on my own.  I had no parent or relative to guide me through pedigrees, forms or the records past champions.  I had to launch myself into extensive research regarding the sport and its past.  It consumed me.  In math - a subject I continue to struggle with - I would make up word problems regarding racing.  Instead of writing essays for English, I would craft fictional horse stories instead.  My times tables were far from memorized, but I could name all the Kentucky Derby winners in recent years. 

But as the need to become "popular" overwhelmed myself and my peers, I started to hide away my love of racing.  I was ashamed that it wasn't "cool" to be obsessed with a sport that, frankly, no one around me cared about.  A teacher would ask me about one of my Kentucky Derby shirts; I would duck my head in embarrassment, muttering an excuse on why I owned it in the first place.  A red blush would fill my face as one of my friends questioned me about the random lists I had drawn out on my page, containing the names of Breeders' Cup probables rather than science notes.

Throughout middle school and high school, my future career aspirations seemed to change with the weather.  Singing, writing, business...soon I got to a point where I was willing to settle for something "useful" rather than something I loved.  I would shove aside my knowledge and interests in horses for school activities and social life.  There were years where I had no idea who was running in the Derby until the Wednesday before.  Sure, big televised events would draw my attention back momentarily, but not for long.  My love of racing seemed to be fading with each year.

It wasn't until this past year that I began to see racing for what it truly was - the love of my life.  I knew I wanted to make it into a career, but I didn't know how.  I had been accepted into university as an English major.  All I knew at the time was that I wanted to write.  It was not until I started a blog following this year's Kentucky Derby contenders that it hit me - I could write about horse racing!  The thought of it filled me with glee; it would combine my greatest passion with my greatest strength.  With Orb's victory in this year's Derby, my dreams had also won me over. 

I set my sights on turf journalism.  Racing would never again be something on the side or something to be ashamed of.  Instead of hiding my interest, I would proudly display it to the people around me.  I invited friends to the track and talked freely about the Triple Crown.  I wrote articles for websites and posted the links on my personal Facebook page.  I was no longer embarrassed of my love of this sport.  How can you be embarrassed over true love?  After all, a good husband or wife does not hide their spouse away from the world in fear or shame.  In taking the steps that I have over the last few months, I have all but married myself to the Sport of Kings.

Racing is a game of highs and lows.  Orb's victory was about as high as you could get for me.  The happiness that I felt that day was a perfect opposite of the crushing disappointment of seeing him fade on the turn two weeks later in the Preakness Stakes.  And then, of course, there are the heartbreaks - the injuries, the illnesses and the deaths.  Yesterday's death of Saginaw was incredibly painful to so many industry workers and fans.  That is what makes this sport so vulnerable - the constant scrutiny over medication violations and breakdowns, jockey mishaps and shady gambling.    The people who focus on the negative and do nothing to fix it, however, will never truly have their eyes open to the incredibly beautiful aspects of horse racing.

For what else can replace the sight of these majestic animals, muscles rippling and coats gleaming in the sun?  What other sound makes the heart race more than the sound of hoofbeats thundering down a track at forty miles an hour?  There is no sport with as much pageantry and tradition as horse racing.  Though it has suffered multiple setbacks throughout the years, it lives on.  Horses carry within their blood the legacy of past champions.  Trainers and jockeys pick up where their great predecessors left off.  Tracks host, year after year, spectacular race meetings with new memories to make.  Who can blame me for being head over heels in love with horse racing?

I will leave this with one of my favorite quotes of all time.  It came from the mind of Federico Tesio,  breeder of Thoroughbred legend Nearco and one of the sport's all-time human greats:

"A horse gallops with his lungs,
Perseveres with his heart,
And wins with his character."