At the Races

I love to read about horse racing in the newspaper. Unfortunately, the New York Times has outsourced their sports department and left us with long form stories with large photos that have nothing to do with anything New York. 

So when I saw that the Wall Street Journal devoted an A-Hed piece to thoroughbred racing's riding family, the Davises, I was pumped.

A-Hed pieces are light reading and land on a wide range of subjects. Consider Friday's piece on sibling jockeys to other recent pieces on Lego villages and professional pumpkin decorating. You never know where an A-Hed piece is going to go.

Astoundingly to me, the Friday A-Hed piece has four photos. You usually don't see that much of a spread.

Dylan and Katie Davis are accurately described as being from the Robbie Davis family of 6 kids, 5 of whom are involved in racing, with only Dylan and Katie identified as jockeys.

The writer, Lettie Teague, left out that there is a third jockey in the family, Jacqueline. She usually rides at New York's upstate track, Finger Lakes. Jacqueline is currently out with an injury. There have been races where all three were riding in the same race. 

Of the three, Dylan gets the better mounts and achieves more wins for more purse money. The article accurately describes that the agent is the most important person in the success of a jockey. The agent lines up the trainers and owners who are the customers who hire the jockeys to ride their horses. Win, and they come to your door.

Female jockeys rarely crack the top tier in a jockey colony. Most of the jockeys are male and are from outside the United States. The New York colony is full of hall-of-fame jockeys and Eclipse award winners. That Katie can even make a living riding against her rivals is a testament to her skills. She may not get the most "live" mounts, but she can make them get there first. And they usually pay well, since they are not the favorites.

The father of the riding Davises, Robbie Davis, was a competent journeyman jockey years ago that I remember seemed to have more success on the turf surfaces than on the dirt. If you liked a horse and Robbie was riding, there was no reason to change your bet.

The Fox network produced a nice piece about the Davis family and their racing siblings that they show occasionally on their America's Best Racing show. Robbie is seen telling the interviewer that when Katie wanted to ride he sent her to someone to evaluate her and figured she wasn't going to cut it. Wrong. The tutor told Robbie, "she can flat out ride." Dad's little girl is going for the saddle and the starting gate.

My friend an I first bet on Dylan at Saratoga years ago. He might have been an apprentice jockey, getting a weight allowance. As such, his mount looked very attractive to bet if he went to the front and put them to sleep in the mile and an eighth race.

A two-turn mile and an eighth race—once around Saratoga's oval—can be won by front runners if they set the right pace and the others don't challenge the front runner at all. By the time they start to pick it up, it's too late. The front runner has plenty in the tank and can easily gallop home first.

Dylan did his job, as hoped for. He got out there first, and the others waited for him to come back to them, which didn't happen. As the race is unfolding and Dylan is establishing a sizeable lead my friend and I just kept muttering t ourselves, "Dylan, don't fall off." He didn't.

Katie has the most effervescent of smiles. When he jumps off in the winner's circle and gets interviewed, she is non-stop smiling. She is a happy child who you just want to hug,

The horse racing circuit is a little bit like the circus: it is a tight knit group of people who are usually married to each other, or are a relative to some close degree. Katie's husband, Trevor McCarthy, is a former jockey, and Trevor is the son of Mike McCarthy, a retired trainer in the Mid-Atlantic states, and himself a former jockey.

A-Hed pieces are pitched to the A-Hed editor from writers who feel they've got a good story. And they always do. Lettie Teague is a wine columnist. I don't know what made her pitch the Davis story about horse racing. It might have been that she wrote a book about Marguerite Henry who wrote children's books that featured horses.

The omission of the third jockey in the family is another example of a writer leaving their lane and writing about horse racing, without I would bet, ever having really been involved in following the sport.

But, I enjoyed the story I already knew a lot about.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com