THE OSTERMAN FILES – A LOOK AT THE PAST

By Tim Osterman

Call me old-fashioned but I prefer my movies in black and white. I’d rather watch Leave it to Beaver reruns than any phony “reality” show, including “Jockeys”. They certainly don’t make them like they used to whether it’s a house, a car, a marriage or a racehorse.

I was thumbing through my battered copy of “Champions” the other day and came across a filly called Imp. She started her career in 1896 and finished it 171 races later in 1901. People make such a big deal about a filly like Rachel Alexandra beating colts three times this year and, in modern-day racing, it is an accomplishment. Imp won 62 races during her career and she beat males in all of them. When Rachel beats the boys 59 more times, she’ll just be even with Imp.

Of course, that was then and this is now. Then was better.

Anyone seeking further evidence in that regard should check out a book called, “The Great Match Race” which has the extended title of “When North Met South in America’s First Sports Spectacle”. I thought it would be a rather boring tome but, as penned by John Eisenberg, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, it turned out to be a real page turner about a match race between aging nine-year-old star Eclipse from the North and three-year-old phenom Henry from the South.

The race wasn’t run at a eight furlongs, 10 furlongs or, even, 12 furlongs. It was contested over what, at the time, was called the “heroic” distance. Four miles, best of three heats to be run over approximately sixty minutes. That’s right, they ran four miles, took a 30 minute break and did it again. If the first two contests were split, they’d do it yet again. In this case that’s what happened, which means both Eclipse and Henry ran a total of 96 furlongs on that historic day. Many so-called champions of today don’t run 96 furlongs during their entire career.

In this thoroughly researched work, Eisenberg not only details how horses were trained back in 1823 but also offers fascinating details of how racing and breeding evolved in this country during the time of the Missouri Compromise when the derisive split between the free North and the slave South was ever-widening. For a brief time, the two bickering areas found relief in a horse race.

Racing among Southern gentry was time-honored and beloved. Racing in the working-class North was frowned upon and illegal in many states. Yet the North found a hero in Eclipse, a horse that successfully defended their honor in a number of match races against supposedly classier animals from the South. The way Eisenberg objectively tells the tale, it’s easy for readers to become immersed in the history, the horses, the people and the race itself.

After finishing “The Great Match”, I looked at the racing of today and laughed.

Where’s the challenge? Where’s the passion?

Nowadays, it’s all about finding the easiest possible spot. Top horses are rarely challenged. They are fed with chemicals unheard of nearly two centuries ago and most are so brittle that they need help to get out of their stall in the morning. Trainers are anointed as “great” even though they may require unscrupulous vets to even get their horses to the track.

Zenyatta strikes me as a throw back. A real horse that can do heroic things, if given the chance. She’s never been beaten and has won all 13 starts but she’s never really been challenged, not recently anyway, while beating essentially the same horses over and over on her home ground.

Her people passed on the challenge of taking on males in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, a race she probably would have won. This year, they’re considering taking up the challenge after being forced into a corner by the flashy, but absent, three-year-old Rachel Alexandra. If she does go, Zenyatta will be no sure thing in the Classic over what figures to be a formidable group of invaders from overseas but she is this country’s best hope. She seems to have a bottom that has never been reached, or even tested. I, for one, want to see what she can really do. I think the racing world does as well. If she gets beat, she gets beat. There is no shame in accepting a challenge and failing. The shame comes when they aren’t given the chance to excel.

(Editor’s note: “The Great Match Race” was published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Press.)

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