Dear
Readers,
“After all, tomorrow is another day,”
declared Scarlett O’hara at the end of Margaret Mitchell’s, Gone with the Wind.
Tomorrow is the day. The day which I
hope, with a good many others, that California Chrome will indeed be gone with
the wind.
Scarlett declared, “I will find a
way to win him back.” It’s been thirty-six years since owners and trainers of
top level Thoroughbreds have been able to find a way to win all three, back to
back races, and go home with the Triple Crown.
I’m not going to handicap the field
looking for another horse, one who might be able to outrun the horse that I want to win. While I know,
as well as any other trainer of Thoroughbreds, that these critters stay up
nights to ruin our days, until California Chrome crosses that wire in front on
Saturday, there are no guarantees.
For me, the best indicator, I’ve
seen from afar, that California Chrome is right and ready for this race, was
the look on Victor Espinoza’s face, as he and the pony rider back-tracked after
last Saturday’s workout over the Belmont strip. You couldn’t have wiped that
grin off his face with battery acid. It wasn’t a smile for the camera’s, it was
a grin that starts somewhere in the middle of your being, and bursts out like the
sun after a hurricane.
Will California Chrome wake up on
the right side of the stall tomorrow? Will he clean up his feed? Will he jog
around the track and get back to the barn without getting hurt. Will he handle
the crush of people? Can he go the distance? Will he get away clean out of the
gate? Will he get in trouble during the race?
In other words…can something go wrong?
Can California Chrome get outrun? I’m
going to channel Scarlett and say, “I can’t think about that right now. If I do
I’ll go crazy, I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
Have fun horse racing fans. This
could be a glorious moment, a bright shiny moment. This could be the moment, where
the beautiful part of horse racing, the animal himself, can bring joy into the
hearts of so many.
Win or lose, this horse has already
brought joy into my heart. I will be cheering along with an estimated eleven
hundred people at the Pleasanton off track betting facility, where I’ve been
invited to sign copies of my memoir.
Take
care,
Shelley
Riley, Author of Casual Lies – A Triple Crown Adventure
www.shelleyriley.com
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