Time Bandits

For Bob Kieckhefer’s Thoroughbred Racing Roundup – Preakness Weekend Edition, Click here.

By Jude T. Feld

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Four o’clock comes early the Sunday morning after the Preakness. Saturday’s early post, the excitement of the races, the wonderment of the second jewel of the Triple Crown, way too much Old Granddad at the stakes barn afterwards and now a plane to catch makes you question your sanity.

“The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

Maryland’s favorite son, Jim McKay, said those immortal words Saturday after Saturday when you were a kid. and now you really know what they mean.

Stumbling across the hotel floor like Fred Flintstone on an uneven sidewalk, you make some coffee. At least the Sheraton has in-room Starbucks to help lift the fog.

You fire up the computer while the coffee machine sputters and hisses, mocking you and you pull up drf.com.

The headline reads: “Preakness Stakes winners for D. Wayne Lukas, Gary Stevens, and Calumet Farm”

Where did you park the DeLorean?

What year is it?

Maybe you should give up bourbon.

As the Starbucks kicks in the events of Saturday take shape in your head.

Those black silks with the gold chevrons cruising under the wire for the first time. The debacle down the backside. Orb doing the moonwalk around the turn. The black and gold still in front at the quarter pole. Orb ain’t gonna get there.

The rooting for your old friends in the last sixteenth. “Come on Gary. Come on Gary.”

Gary’s grin past the wire. The thrill of victory.

A hush over the grandstand. The agony of Orb’s defeat.

The Triple Crown has been stolen.

Head clearer, eyes brighter, you still can’t believe what you witnessed yesterday.

Calumet Farm’s Oxbow, a gutty colt, who didn’t train very well going into the Kentucky Derby, turned it around and performed his all-time best at Pimlico in the Preakness.

D. Wayne Lukas, a 77-year-old Hall of Fame trainer, who has been given up for dead so many times, he should be driving in a van marked “Coroner.” They call him “The Coach,” and he throws up a lotta three-point shots. It’s been a long time since one hit the mark, but it was nothing but net Saturday at Old Hilltop.

Fifty-year-old Gary Stevens, a guy who loves to win and hates to lose. A Hall of Fame jockey, who has had his knees tapped more than a $1,500 claimer at Great Barrington Fair, who decided to give up successful acting and broadcasting gigs six months ago, just to get back to the winners’ circle.

“Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

Calumet’s little ol’ Oxbow stole the 138th Preakness in a heist orchestrated by Lukas and executed by Stevens. It was a theft of Hall of Fame proportions by three of racing’s best time bandits.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 20th, 2013 at 4:55 am and is filed under Featured Articles. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.