BALTIMORE - It was, all in all, the oddest place to find a jewel.
Amid the mud and muck. Surrounded by debauchery and arrests. At a dump of a racetrack. In a poor part of town. Right there Saturday, next to the hundreds of portable toilets, rising up amid the stench of vomit and urine, was the sweetest scent in sports.
That's what the underdog always has, right? Funny Cide is now Rudy and Rocky and, well, can the animal kingdom produce something classified as both horse and underdog? It can, evidently. Just as it has produced a favorite that is actually the longest of long shots.
Funny Cide is the horse-racing equivalent of a runt, a mutt, but the imperfect horse ran the perfect race Saturday. Under a sky that was wet and gray and cold, it gave this sport a bolt of warm light.
To geld a horse, by dictionary definition, is to deprive it of its strength and vigor, but rarely in the history of this sport has a horse shown more strength and vigor in the Preakness than this one did.
They've been running this race since 1873. Only once has a horse won it by more than this much. Almost 10 lengths? The only thing more improbable than the margin of victory was the horse, jockey and trainer producing it.
Never mind that this was as dreadful a Preakness field as anyone can remember. This kind of horse isn't supposed to win this kind of race, ever. A gelding? Bred in New York? Owned by a group of 10 buddies in a sport subsidized by sheiks and oil millionaires? The only way Funny Cide could have more odds stacked against it is if the horse were missing a leg.
This is the ugly girl winning Miss Universe, the motorcycle gang crashing the debutante ball, the peasant being crowned king. And it makes you want to stand up and cheer.
The Preakness gives away the most expensive trophy in American sports. It's supposed to go to a thoroughbred that hasn't been castrated, a blueblood from Kentucky or Florida. But what has happened at the Kentucky Derby and now the Preakness is like some unknown fat guy from North Dakota stealing the Boston and New York Marathons from the Kenyans.
And it gets better, too. Jockey Jose Santos now has won consecutively the two biggest races in this sport after what was being described as "a 10-year slump." And unassuming 66-year-old trainer Barclay Tagg, who has spent his lifetime in the shadows of cartoonishly outsized personalities like Bob Baffert, is the kind of man who sounds about as surprised by his good fortune as the rest of us.
So it wasn't just Santos' delirious son and weeping wife who should have been cheering for this jockey, trainer and horse Saturday. And it shouldn't have been just the 10 buddies who supplied a piddly $5,000 each to buy Funny Cide's stable and arrived Saturday in rented school buses, either. It should have been all of horse racing, too, and anyone who cares about sports.
A New York underdog returning home to the Belmont in search of a Triple Crown no horse has won since Affirmed a quarter-century ago? This dying sport has just gotten a couple of shots from the heart paddles.
The Preakness isn't what it was back when it had the sports world to itself, back when elegant ladies in big hats and rich men in tailored suits populated the premises.
Now it is Horses Gone Wild! The infield is a slurring, staggering frat party with more debauchery per square foot than you'll find anywhere in America outside of Mardis Gras. Local kids steal shopping carts to help patrons cart in more coolers of booze than can even be carried.
But selling liquor at this track was a redundancy Saturday. Because the horse out in front was plenty intoxicating all by itself.
And now what had been considered a weakness might become a strength. A horse this good normally would be retired quickly so it could breed and produce majestic offspring. But geldings can't breed, obviously, so Funny Cide has a chance to stack successes atop each other for years.
To develop a following, in other words, in a sport that doesn't have enough of it.
To build a legacy.
To keep adding chapters to a story that is already perfect and is somehow just one victory from feeling even better.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/5887182.htm
Amid the mud and muck. Surrounded by debauchery and arrests. At a dump of a racetrack. In a poor part of town. Right there Saturday, next to the hundreds of portable toilets, rising up amid the stench of vomit and urine, was the sweetest scent in sports.
That's what the underdog always has, right? Funny Cide is now Rudy and Rocky and, well, can the animal kingdom produce something classified as both horse and underdog? It can, evidently. Just as it has produced a favorite that is actually the longest of long shots.
Funny Cide is the horse-racing equivalent of a runt, a mutt, but the imperfect horse ran the perfect race Saturday. Under a sky that was wet and gray and cold, it gave this sport a bolt of warm light.
To geld a horse, by dictionary definition, is to deprive it of its strength and vigor, but rarely in the history of this sport has a horse shown more strength and vigor in the Preakness than this one did.
They've been running this race since 1873. Only once has a horse won it by more than this much. Almost 10 lengths? The only thing more improbable than the margin of victory was the horse, jockey and trainer producing it.
Never mind that this was as dreadful a Preakness field as anyone can remember. This kind of horse isn't supposed to win this kind of race, ever. A gelding? Bred in New York? Owned by a group of 10 buddies in a sport subsidized by sheiks and oil millionaires? The only way Funny Cide could have more odds stacked against it is if the horse were missing a leg.
This is the ugly girl winning Miss Universe, the motorcycle gang crashing the debutante ball, the peasant being crowned king. And it makes you want to stand up and cheer.
The Preakness gives away the most expensive trophy in American sports. It's supposed to go to a thoroughbred that hasn't been castrated, a blueblood from Kentucky or Florida. But what has happened at the Kentucky Derby and now the Preakness is like some unknown fat guy from North Dakota stealing the Boston and New York Marathons from the Kenyans.
And it gets better, too. Jockey Jose Santos now has won consecutively the two biggest races in this sport after what was being described as "a 10-year slump." And unassuming 66-year-old trainer Barclay Tagg, who has spent his lifetime in the shadows of cartoonishly outsized personalities like Bob Baffert, is the kind of man who sounds about as surprised by his good fortune as the rest of us.
So it wasn't just Santos' delirious son and weeping wife who should have been cheering for this jockey, trainer and horse Saturday. And it shouldn't have been just the 10 buddies who supplied a piddly $5,000 each to buy Funny Cide's stable and arrived Saturday in rented school buses, either. It should have been all of horse racing, too, and anyone who cares about sports.
A New York underdog returning home to the Belmont in search of a Triple Crown no horse has won since Affirmed a quarter-century ago? This dying sport has just gotten a couple of shots from the heart paddles.
The Preakness isn't what it was back when it had the sports world to itself, back when elegant ladies in big hats and rich men in tailored suits populated the premises.
Now it is Horses Gone Wild! The infield is a slurring, staggering frat party with more debauchery per square foot than you'll find anywhere in America outside of Mardis Gras. Local kids steal shopping carts to help patrons cart in more coolers of booze than can even be carried.
But selling liquor at this track was a redundancy Saturday. Because the horse out in front was plenty intoxicating all by itself.
And now what had been considered a weakness might become a strength. A horse this good normally would be retired quickly so it could breed and produce majestic offspring. But geldings can't breed, obviously, so Funny Cide has a chance to stack successes atop each other for years.
To develop a following, in other words, in a sport that doesn't have enough of it.
To build a legacy.
To keep adding chapters to a story that is already perfect and is somehow just one victory from feeling even better.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/5887182.htm
