Triple Crown

by Felix Francis

  The 100,000-acre ranch was now run by two of George’s cousins, primarily producing beef for the California market, but also raising American Quarter Horses, a strong muscular breed with a compact body, favoured as cowboys’ working horses, and named for their prowess as the fastest equine breed over a quarter of a mile from a standing start.

  George had started his adult life training the young Quarter Horses from the family ranch, racing them at the Lone Star racetrack near Dallas, before graduating to the more lucrative Thoroughbred circuit.

  Initial successes had marked him as a new golden-boy of American racing but his reputation had been tarnished over the years by several cases involving the misuse of medications, especially steroids.

  He was now in his mid-fifties but looked somewhat older, with a head of prematurely white hair and facial skin ravaged both by teenage acne and by too many of his former years having been spent in the harsh Texas sunshine.

  He walked along the line of his staff and stopped in front of me.

  ‘And who are you?’ he asked in a voice that didn’t have as much drawl as I’d been expecting.

  ‘I’m Paddy, sir,’ I replied in my best Cork accent. ‘I has only started today.’

  ‘Well, Paddy,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the most successful training barn in the United States. Did you see the Derby on Saturday?’

  ‘Indeed I did, sir,’ I said, ‘On TV.’ I smiled broadly at him.

  He smiled back and moved on down the line.

  Satisfied by the inspection of his staff, he faced us.

  ‘Well done all,’ he said. ‘Now for the Preakness and then the Triple Crown.’

  George turned and went back into the office.

  Charlie Hern scowled at the line. ‘Go on then, the lot of you, get to work. Paddy, you go with Maria. She’ll show you what’s where. You’ll do four horses to start with until we see how you go. Maria, show him Stalls One to Four.’

  Maria was the only female in the line-up. Slim and young, she was wearing a skimpy, olive-green T-shirt above tight denim jeans with mock-designer holes in the knees. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones under a bronze skin, and she clearly knew how to display her body to maximum advantage, but she didn’t seem too pleased to be asked to look after the new boy.

  ‘I should not be treated like common hot-walker,’ she said with a slight Spanish accent, tossing her thick dark hair from side to side in displeasure. ‘I am not hot-walker, I should be groom.’

  She was certainly hot, at least to my eye.

  15

  I very quickly slipped into the routine of George Raworth’s barn.

  Other than Keith, the barn foreman, there were seven full-time staff, including Maria, plus a yard boy who was clearly the oldest of us all, using his ever-present broom more as a support than for actual sweeping.

  Maria showed me where the stable equipment was stored.

  ‘Have you been here long?’ I asked her, trying to be friendly.

  ‘I came here January as hot-walker,’ she said haughtily, still unhappy, ‘but I should be groom by now. I have done my study.’

  A hot-walker was someone employed simply to lead the horses around as they cooled after exercise. It was the lowest rung on the horse-care ladder.

  ‘But I am still treated by boss as mere hot-walker.’ She sighed and drew herself up to her full height, posing and pouting with obvious irritation. Her facial expression reminded me of a flamenco dancer.

  I berated myself slightly for fantasising about Maria cavorting around a dance floor in high heels. I was not here to chase the female stable staff.

  ‘Is being a hot-walker all that bad?’

  ‘I want better,’ she said. ‘How come you are groom already when I be here much longer?’ She turned and walked off, gyrating her hips in an overly belligerent manner. I found it rather sexy, and she knew it.

  I sighed and went to work.

  I cleared the soiled bedding in stalls one to four and replenished the straw for the equine residents, placing the waste into the huge grey metal skips that were earmarked for the purpose at either end of the barn.

  I was quite surprised to see that straw was in widespread use, the preference in the UK having moved towards wood pellets, shavings or shredded newspaper.

  As Keith had told me earlier, the barn had thirty-two stalls – two blocks of sixteen built back-to-back down the centre – with a wide covered walkway called a shedrow that ran right around the building inside the exterior walls.

  The stalls, like the rest of the building, were constructed from wood and they opened onto the shedrow so that the horses were able to look out over half-doors.

  At each corner of the barn was an exit with a sliding door. During the day the doors were left open with only a single bar across the gap to prevent any loose horses from escaping.

  The doors were slid shut at night but not locked. The wooden structures, together with large quantities of straw and hay, meant that fire was always uppermost in people’s minds and large signs with ‘No Smoking/Prohibido Fumar’ hung from the rafters every twenty feet or so along the shedrow.

  The barns at Belmont were fitted with sprinkler systems but, nevertheless, locked exit doors would hamper the evacuation of the horses if the worst was to happen, as had occurred in 1986 when forty-five top Thoroughbreds, collectively worth several million dollars, had all died one night when fire destroyed barn 48 on the eastern edge of the site.

  George Raworth, accompanied by Charlie Hern, made a tour of his stable, stopping at each stall to inspect the occupant and discuss progress. We grooms had to remove the bandages from the horse’s legs and stand, holding the animal’s head, while both George and Charlie ran a hand down the back of each equine limb, feeling for unwanted heat in the tendon or ligaments.

  Like many others, the Raworth’s horses all wore leg bandages as a matter of course, not because they were injured but to add support and to hold cotton pads that prevented nicks and bruises caused by kicking into themselves. The bandages were also used to hold medications and liniments in place, often used after racing to ease any slight sprains.

  ‘Everything OK, Paddy?’ Charlie asked as he and George came into Stall 1 where I had a firm grip of the headcollar of a four-year-old gelding called Paddleboat.

  ‘Fine, sir, thank you,’ I replied.

  ‘Which part of Ireland are you from?’ George asked.

  ‘From the south, sir,’ I said. ‘County Cork.’

  ‘My mother’s father was Irish.’

  I hadn’t spotted that in any of my research.

  ‘He came from a bit further north. From Thurles in County Tipperary.’

  ‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I went to the racecourse there as a kid.’

  ‘I’ve never been able to get there myself,’ George said. ‘Maybe one day.’

  I breathed a small silent sigh of relief. I hadn’t been there either.

  I stood and listened as the two men turned their attention to Paddleboat.

  ‘He ran Thursday in a seven-eighths-mile, fifteen-grand claimer,’ Charlie said. ‘Finished sixth of eight. Never in with a chance and not claimed.’

  ‘Is he on Clen?’ George asked.

  ‘Has been,’ Charlie replied. ‘Came off it to go to the track.’

  ‘Put him back on it. Up the dose.’

  Charlie wrote something down in a notebook.

  ‘If he shows no improvement soon,’ George went on, ‘we’ll have to get rid of him – maybe in an even lower claimer. Ship him down to Philly Park if necessary.’

  Unlike in the UK, claiming races made up the bulk of contests at US racetracks. Before the start, any horse in the race could be claimed by a new owner for a fixed amount as determined by the race conditions. Title in the horse was transferred as the starting gates opened, although the former owner was entitled to any purse-money earned in that particular race.

  It would clearly not be sensible to run a really good horse in a race in which the claim figure wa
s very low. The horse would be sure to be claimed by a new owner and, even if it won the purse, the original owner would lose a valuable animal for a fraction of its true worth.

  However, if a horse was valued around the claim figure then, if it were claimed, the original owner would recover his initial investment, plus he has the chance of picking up a substantial purse on top if it won the race.

  In this way, racetracks used claiming races to encourage horses of roughly equal value, and hence of a comparable standard, to race against one another. This made the racing more competitive and thus boosted the ‘handle’, the total sum of money wagered by the public. The handle was what ultimately determined the tracks’ income, which was what they really only cared about. Each day’s programme would have claiming races with a range of claim amounts and horses were entered accordingly.

  Claiming races were popular with some owners but usually less so with the trainers, as they had little idea if a horse that was in their care in the morning would be residing in someone else’s barn come evening.

  Not that all horses were entered in claimers. The top-class ones, those that contested the major stakes races, never had their ownership so easily changed, but for the journeyman horses, those that made up the majority of the backside population at Belmont Park, they lived a merry-go-round life in the barns, being repeatedly claimed by new owners and sent to different trainers.

  Paddleboat was clearly not going to remain in Raworth’s barn for much longer. If a new owner didn’t claim him soon, I feared he’d be off to the knacker. However, I was much more interested in what drugs George was planning to give him in the interim.

  Clen was short for clenbuterol, a drug used extensively in certain parts of the world to treat asthma in humans but also as a decongestant to help clear an unwanted build-up of mucus from a horse’s respiratory tract.

  But I could hear Paddleboat’s airways. They were as clear as a bell – not even a hint of a wheeze.

  I’d once done some research on clenbuterol for the BHA. Although not in fact a steroid, it had similar anabolic effects in horses, such that it helped to build muscle. It was rumoured to have been widely used in US training barns for many years almost on a daily basis, like a feed supplement. Only recently had new regulations been introduced requiring that clenbuterol use be suspended at least fourteen days prior to racing.

  ‘See to it he also gets a five-millilitre shot of HA in each hock joint and five hundred milligrams of Adequan into his hindquarters,’ George said to Charlie, who wrote again in his notebook.

  HA is hyaluronic acid, a component of synovial fluid found naturally in healthy joints, while Adequan is an osteoarthritis drug. Both are used for the treatment of degenerative joint disease, something that really shouldn’t affect a horse that was only four years old. Paddleboat’s future prospects were looking worse by the minute.

  George and Charlie moved out into the shedrow.

  I quickly closed the stall door and moved on to my next horse, a five-year-old gelding called Debenture. The trainer and his assistant repeated the process of feeling his legs and discussing his future.

  ‘He’s still getting the vitamin shots,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve given him two already this week and I’ll do one more tomorrow. They should set him up well for the Spring Handicap.’

  ‘Good,’ George said, before moving back out into the shedrow and on to the next horse.

  And so on, down the full line of stalls.

  When the inspections of my four horses were complete, I returned to each one in turn, replacing the protective pads and bandages on their legs and removing their halters.

  George Raworth and Charlie Hern were still on their tour when I’d finished, so I walked round the shedrow towards Stall 17, which was at the other end of the barn, next to the office.

  Stall 17 was the home of the barn star.

  Fire Point had his head out over the half-door and he seemed to be taking a special interest in everything around him. Horsemen often talk about a horse having an intelligent head, by which they mean it is broad with eyes set far apart, a straight profile with ample nostrils. Fire Point’s head was none of those things. It was narrow, slightly dished, and with a small muzzle. However, his eyes were bright and alert.

  ‘Wonderful, isn’t he?’ said a voice behind me. I turned. It was Keith. ‘I love redheads,’ he said. ‘He’s like a reincarnated Secretariat.’

  It was quite a statement. It was true that both Fire Point and Secretariat were chestnuts, but Secretariat was a legend in racing. Big Red, as he had been nicknamed, didn’t just capture the 1973 Triple Crown, he destroyed it, completing his trio of wins with an astonishing 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes, a feat so extraordinary that it reportedly made those watching it cry.

  And now, more than forty years later, Secretariat still held the record times for all three of the Triple Crown legs. He had been quite a horse, maybe the best ever.

  I went over to stroke Fire Point but Keith put a hand out to stop me.

  ‘Mr Raworth doesn’t like anyone going near him. Other than me, that is. I look after him.’

  I remembered that it had been Keith I had seen leading Fire Point over from the barns before the Kentucky Derby. Now he looked at the horse almost in awe. Certainly in adoration.

  When the trainer’s tour of the barn was over, the grooms lined up at the feed store for Charlie Hern to issue the correct amount of concentrated mixed horse nuts for each animal.

  As a general rule, racehorses eat one pound in weight of mixed feed for every hand high they stand at their withers. Most Thoroughbreds are around sixteen to seventeen hands high so they eat sixteen to seventeen pounds a day, plus some hay for fibre.

  ‘Paddleboat,’ I said, getting to the head of the line.

  Charlie scooped two large measures of nuts from the feed bin into a black plastic bucket with a large number ‘1’ painted on the side in white. He then poured some thick syrup onto the food from a stubby brown glass bottle with a white label.

  The syrup contained the clenbuterol – it said so on the label. Next, he measured more feed into the buckets marked 2, 3 and 4, for my other horses.

  ‘Make sure they eat it all up,’ Charlie said.

  I took the buckets back to the appropriate stalls, gave the feed to the horses and waited while they ate it. I then checked they all had fresh water before returning the equipment to the appropriate store. My first evening’s work as a groom was done, and I hadn’t messed up.

  Raworth’s six grooms plus Maria and the yard boy went together to the track kitchen for supper.

  ‘Food good,’ Rafael said to me on the way. ‘Plenty.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ Maria said. ‘It is garbage. Always full of chilli. Mexicans will eat anything.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

  ‘Puerto Rico,’ she said.

  Hell, I thought. I hope I hadn’t turned down the chance to share a room with her.

  ‘Are there many Puerto Ricans here?’ I asked.

  ‘Lots,’ she said. ‘Diego, my cousin.’

  She indicated towards one of the others in our group. I smiled at him but it wasn’t reciprocated. He simply glared back at me with cold black eyes.

  The eight of us did not eat together as a single unit. Having individually swapped a meal token for food with Bert Squab at the service counter, most went off to sit on their own or with grooms from other barns. Maria, however, sat down right opposite me.

  Cousin Diego clearly wasn’t happy.

  He moved to our table, taking the chair right next to Maria. He continued to stare at me, eating his supper without ever looking at it once. I found it rather disconcerting, and Maria wasn’t happy with him either.

  ‘Go away,’ she shouted at him in English.

  He didn’t like that.

  ‘Habla Español,’ he shouted back at her. ‘Mantente alejado de este gringo.’

  ‘Púdrete!’ She stood up and raised her hand as if to strik
e him but stopped short. She sat down again. ‘Por favor vete.’

  Diego reluctantly moved away across the gangway, but still he continued to stare.

  ‘I sorry,’ Maria said, looking down at the table. ‘Diego speak very good English, much better than me, but he still act like he in San Juan. All his friends here from Puerto Rico. They like control of women. He not like me speak to men not from Puerto Rico.’

  ‘Do you speak to men not from Puerto Rico often?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me and smiled broadly. ‘Only every day.’

  I smiled back at her and sensed Diego getting agitated to my left.

  We ate for a while in silence. Maybe the food was a little too hot for Maria’s taste, but I liked things spicy and, as Rafael had said, there was plenty of it.

  Attached to the track kitchen was a recreation hall and Maria and I went through there after eating. Diego followed. In the hall were some casual seating, a jukebox, two pool tables and five computer workstations. There was also a large TV currently showing a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Royals.

  ‘Where’s the bar?’ I asked.

  ‘No here,’ said Maria. ‘Sometime boys go out to bar but drinking not allowed on backside, although some still do.’ She smiled as if implying that she was one of those.

  ‘Is there much else to do?’ I asked.

  ‘We have classes. English most, but also reading and math.’

  ‘Hey, Maria,’ shouted one of the young men watching the baseball, ‘come and give us a kiss and a cuddle.’

  She raised her middle finger to him but she wandered over to join them nevertheless. Maria clearly enjoyed being the centre of attention.

  If possible, Diego looked even less happy.

  I, meanwhile, went over to another group of eight grooms gathered at the far end of the hall.

  ‘May I join you?’ I asked in my best Cork accent.

  None of them said anything but two shifted along a bench to make some room. I sat down.

  ‘I’m new here,’ I said. ‘Name’s Paddy. I’m Irish. I started today, on Raworth’s crew.’