Chicka BAMP

Today’s porn soundtrack riff goes out to one Mr. Smarty Jones, retired today due to tender footsies. Oh, and also the fact that his owners, stud upkeepers Three Chimneys Farm, and various syndicates stand to make approximately one hillion jillion dollars once Smarty starts to get his groove on. To the breeding shed!

Let us now have a moment of shuddering silence to contemplate what may have happened if Seabiscuit, whose greatest moments came as a seven-year-old, had been bounced off to mare duty as a Jones-aged whippersnapper.

It smarts, (sorry) is all. It also sucks.

It’s long been a gripe of the racing fan that this sport is run by the breeders, that owners can collect far more ching by supporting a stud rather than a racehorse. Why chance a potentially fatal breakdown on those thin little Thoroughbred legs-- not to mention risking a few losses on the track here and there, resulting in a sharp drop in stud value-- when you’ve got a fer-shure valuable stallion in your barn?

Breeding never used to interest me until I discovered how shockingly weird it is. It’s this bizarre parallel equine universe of arranged marriages, planned ovulation, and prom night teasing. People actually sit around and discuss this stuff. While eating.

I had to get very literate very fast about breeding when I started writing ad copy for a stud farm (Note to self: Next time I own controlling interest in a minor league baseball team, it shall be christened “Stud Farm”.) Therefore I recently found myself not only understanding, but actually participating in, the following conversation:

BREEDER: She’ll be a blue hen, this one. She’s in foal to (insert stallion name here)

ME: How’d the cover go?

BREEDER: Good. She caught.

ME: Ah.

BREEDER: Twins, though. Had to pinch one of ‘em.

ME: Really.

TRANSLATION:

BREEDER: This Thoroughbred might produce a great many quality foals. She is currently carrying the baby of (insert stallion name here.)

ME: And how went act of holding down a mare while a horse whose sole job is to eat and have sex jumped on her back as two grown men physcially guided his male part into her female area?

BREEDER: Good. She’s pregnant.

ME: I have run out of breeding lingo.

BREEDER: She conceived twins, and because it may be dangerous for the mare and the two foals to carry both pregnancies to completion, I reached into the mare’s uterus and physically removed one of the fertilized eggs.

ME: I need to go call a priest and take a shower now.


Oh, children, we are now officially a far cry from standing next to a launchpad explaining the role of the solid rocket booster to a family of five from Wisconsin. (Although… no, let’s not go there.)

Some far more knowledgeable about this stuff than I am are howling that this is the type of injury that any basically sound horse can recover from with a good measure of patience and time. Many railbirds are already lifting their binoculars to their faces, straining their eyes down the track at the yearlings and the two-year-olds, conjecturing on who “the next America’s Horse” will be.

You know what I think? I don't think you can, or should, predict who the next "America's Horse" is going to be. The core of the charm of Smarty's story is that he and his knock-about jockey and Norman Rockwell trainer seemed to materialize from the mists cast by the racing gods. The best thing about Smarty is that he came along when we least expected him.

Well, young Mr. Jones has a great deal of fun ahead of him. Bless his heart and his four bruised feet. But as a fellow racing fan wrote today, “The flame of Smarty Jones has been extinguished.” It has indeed. He was very, very talented, something truly special. His potential for greatness stretched without end.

Notice how I’ve slipped into the past tense here.

Aw, screw it. I'm gonna start watching racketball.

Ignore the fact that I ended a post about horse sex with the word "screw" at blondechampange@hotmail.com