“Secretariat” Was Not Very Good, But I Loved It

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, September 8, 2010--Got to see an advance screening of the movie “Secretariat” last week and I must admit it was disappointing.

Frankly, I didn’t think it was very good, very much a glossed over story of perhaps America‘s greatest race horse. Not that I was expecting to see a documentary of his exploits, just a more dramatic rendering.

I wanted to be entertained, and was, although it best could best described as mildly so. I always go to the next movie expecting to see the “Citizen Kane” or “Godfather” of racehorse movies. That film is yet to be made.

I suppose the consensus favorite of racetrack movies is “Let It Ride.” I thought it was very good but not as good as everyone says.

Perhaps that’s because I take betting on horses seriously and while I appreciate racetrack characters, a lot of them make me wince. Sophomoric degenerates can be funny but in a sad sort of way.

Maybe that was the idea and I just didn’t get it. But I always felt there was a lot of peer pressure to like that film. The Marx Brothers “A Day at the Races” is my idea of a funny racetrack movie.

While “Casey’s Shadow” was fanciful, it had a lot of racetrack grit. And although it could never equaled of power of Laura Hillenbrand’s chronicle, “Seabiscuit” worked for me. I can’t put “Secretariat” in the same dramatic class as either of the above.

Certainly, Secretariat wasn’t comparable to “Phar Lap,” the saga of the legendary Australian weight carrier of the 1930s, or “Champions,” a triumphant human-spirit story of English steeplechase rider Bob Champion.

But here’s something I can’t fathom: While I didn’t think “Secretariat” was an example of great movie-making, I couldn’t help but love it.

Haskell v Travers: Present, Past and Future

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY, July 21--Any regular reader of this space would know how I feel about Monmouth Park, both as an aesthetic racing experience and this year as a bold business experiment.

Whether the current meeting turns out to be a complete success at the bottom line or not--it only need prove to the state of New Jersey that thoroughbred racing remains a viable and important industry--the track deserves props for not accepting the status quo.

For the racing industry as a whole, their less-is-more model could prove a template for success in the years to come. Virtually all in the sport already agree that some form of contraction is the only way the sport can survive.

I’m rooting for Monmouth Park to live long and prosper. The industry has been, and will be, better for its existence.

I also had no issue with their doing everything possible to attract last year’s Haskell winner and reigning Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra back to the Jersey Shore, which they did.

Saturday’s Lady’s Secret--the only remaining and ungraded version now that Santa Anita has relegated its Lady’s Secret to the scrapheap of quaint antiquities--is unrecognizable from the original condition book version.

No longer to be run on Haskell weekend, the Lady’s Secret will be run the day after tomorrow--in competition with Saratoga’s first Saratoga, a headline equalizer, at least--at a new distance, and for a lot more money. Rachel is already sunning herself at the Shore, having arrived Tuesday without incident, and scheduled for a paddock stroll tomorrow.

Apparently, Rachel’s camp wanted an easy race to underscore what the Fleur de Lis seemed to indicate; that Rachel is Rachel again. That, and to insure a foundation for the tougher challenges to come. Besides, competition among tracks for box office attractions has long been part of racing’s fabric.

Hopefully, however, when general manager Bob Kulina recently referred to the Haskell Invitational as the premier three-year-old race after the Triple Crown, after the Derby, he was only having a little fun.

Under Fair Skies, Saratoga Stays Bullet Proof

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY--

September 7, 2010

Dear Diary,

Not sure I’ve figured out what some the acrimony surrounding the recently concluded Saratoga Thoroughbred meet was all about. All I know is that I enjoyed the races as much as I did in 1964, my first visit to the Spa.

I found an “out bet” in a newly created stakes race for three-year-olds called the Jim Dandy. It was run out of the old Wilson Mile chute, which started virtually from the parking lot where those tacky corporate pill boxes now stand.

Greentree Stables’ Malicious, John L. Rotz up, looked like he would dominate the pace. He had won four of six lifetime starts, narrowly beaten in his last race, the Dwyer Stakes, by Belmont Stakes winning Quadrangle.

And so, getting a weight pull, he lead throughout in the quiet hands of the Hall of Famer who coaxed a wire victory, lasting by a nose, reversing his loss to Quadrangle, who eventually went on to win that year’s Travers.

I didn’t live in Saratoga then. Neither did I rent, or stay overnight. It was a same-day trip, three and a half hours north on the Thruway from NYC.

Besides, I didn’t want to miss my all-time favorite trotter, Speedy Scot, try to win the American Trotting Championship. He set a mile and a quarter world record that weekend at Roosevelt Raceway, beating Su Mac Lac, Duke Rodney and all the rest.

That was a heady time for horse racing of every stripe in America. Much has changed, obviously, but rather than concentrate on some of the meet’s negative aspects, we’ll concentrate on some of the brighter lights.

And how can you pick nits at a race meet that attracted 32 cents of every betting dollar wagered in America during the month of August? I know I can’t, so here goes:

Gotcha!: Jimmy Jerkens was still over the moon when I saw him a week after he won a Travers thriller with Afleet Express, a race that truly didn’t deserve a loser.

I asked him if it was a little sweeter for having beaten, among others, early line favorite A Little Warm, owned by Edward P. Evans, who replaced Jerkens with Todd Pletcher as the trainer of Quality Road in late spring of 2009.

Jerkens had too much class to gloat, but he did permit a tiny smile.

Vindication for Quality Road; Here Comes Ben Gets His Stripes

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY

September 4, 2010

Dear Diary,

Forget the Whitney, this was more like it.

In the Whitney a month ago, the sensationally fast Quality Road set a dawdling pace, letting his competition into the fray, including the eventual winner, Blame.

The narrow defeat cost him the protem lead among this country’s older horses, which may be his again after his comprehensive 4-¾ length victory in the Woodward at weight for age.

“I certainly think we can make a strong argument,” said winning trainer Todd Pletcher. “He’s accomplished a lot this year with the Donn, the Met Mile, and this race. He’s certainly put himself in a position, if he wins the next one.”

The next one is the Breeders Cup Classic, where he is expected to meet recent conqueror Blame at equal weights. Blame, who was getting from five pounds from Quality Road while beating him by a head in the Whitney, will race next in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park, October 2.

“The plan all along has been to go from here to the Breeders’ Cup Classic,” Pletcher explained. “We’ll have his next-to-last work at Belmont Park and his final work at Churchill. So we’ll probably go to Churchill Downs 12 or 13 days out.”

That’s Plan A, just like the one he mapped out for winning the Woodward. “[Arcodoro] showed enough pace that we were able to maneuver outside him and get the trip we wanted. It went exactly like we talked about it in the paddock.”

The Hangover

The few unsettling days after the Saratoga meet ends reminds me of my janitorial job on Sunday mornings at U Mass, Amherst. I’d open the bathroom door and know somebody somewhere had a swell time, but at what cost? How’d that calzone go down? Er, how’d it feel coming up?

And if the movie “The Hangover” taught us anything it’s that we must re-trace our steps to make sense of what happened the night prior. We all have some stubble on our faces. Our teeth feel hairy. Our eyes crack red. Our breath smells like a mixture of cigar ash and motor oil and our tongues feel as if they’d been dragged across a used ashtray. There’s a tiger in the room and a chicken clucking by the king size.

The tiger in the room might just be Quality Road. That was a stellar job of training by Todd Pletcher to get this son of Elusive Quality cranked for yet another Grade 1. Now, somebody bring him back to Mike Tyson’s.

And it would also seem that our lost friend is none other than Rachel Alexandra. She went out with us, went atop the roof, and took a shot. When we woke up, she was gone. Panicked by her capricious result in the Personal Ensign the myopic of world of horse racing had a collective seizure. Where did she go? I think she disappeared somewhere in that final furlong, but we’ll keep looking elsewhere; perhaps she and Forever Together are getting a civil union at the House of “Once Upon a Time.”

Rocky VII

I recall a story of a recent defeat that was more disheartening and sickening than a Lady Gaga display — caught at the wire with thousands of fans hanging like icicles on every stride.

I watched the race from atop a chair in the restaurant at which I worked. I told my tables that, to loosely reference “Good Will Hunting,” ‘I had to see about a colt.”

It was the 2004 Belmont Stakes. That’s right. Smarty Jones. This guy had no problem getting 10 furlongs. In all honesty, he had no problem getting 12 furlongs.

Right now he’s having a hard time getting laid.

Once upon a time his stud fee was $100,000. When Birdstone, the horse who beat him in the Belmont Stakes, went to stud he sold his swimmers for $10,000. Paul Krugman take note: don’t follow the Dow, follow Smarty’s stud fee.

Informal Secretariat Movie Review

This letter was written to a "Secretariat" film publicist who wanted to know what I thought of the movie. I'm posting it here because several Facebook friends were curious.

Hey, (publicist): Thanks for inviting me to the pre-screening of "Secretariat" and for asking me to share an opinion of the film. I'm not certain of what value my opinion would serve. I'm far from being someone that's in the film's target market. In any case, here's a few observations.

It's not easy making a film about a professional sport, even when that sport isn't known in detail by the public. I understand that. But Disney didn't get its money's worth from the consultants it hired. The amount of mud splattered on jockeys' faces makes them look like Al Jolsons. A valet would have taken the saddle from the Ron Turcotte character long before he went beneath the grandstand to sulk. The substitution of Keeneland for Belmont Park is sacrilegious - Secretariat's 31-length Belmont Stakes victory is epochal, too vivid in people's minds to believe that this scene didn't need to observe history.

I had no problem with the way the plot unfolded or how Penny Tweedy's personal challenges were portrayed. But there was little depth to the script and thus the actors came off as people you didn't really care about. The way Kevin Connolly played Bill Nack would be bad even if Bill Nack was anything like the actor's portrayal. John Malkovich's Lucien Laurin was made up, but did the character have to be such an over-the-top caricature?

There are several scenes that seem to have been added at the final minute for comic relief - and not for the better. The scene where the Secretariat team dances around the horse while he's getting a bath - oh, brother. The music for the finish of the Belmont Stakes when Secretariat delivers on Tweedy's dreams is so heavy-handed, it's laughable. The closing shot of the characters accepting the trophy has no context, looks phony and empty. The whole film seemed long. I couldn't wait for it to end.

(Publicist), the film's biggest critics will be people like me who are deep into the sport, who lived through the age of Secretariat and hold him up on a pedestal. Yet, I believe the film is weak cinematically even for Disney audiences and may not become the commercial and critical success that you'd like it to be. You'll find some horse racing authorities eager to praise what they've seen. The sport is desperate to call attention to itself. But you, as a publicist, have a tough job ahead of you, I think.

Vic Zast

Comment of the Week, Tim’s Comment No. 7

Here's a quick, concise comment by Tim that helps us all understand that the sport is dominated by an aging audience and a non-caring management.

Tim says:
23 Aug 2010 at 11:41 pm | #

Read an article in the Daily News on Sunday about the number of OTB parlors closing throughout the city. There was a paragraph that really said it all mentioned the fact that most racing fans are fifty years of age or older. That got me thinking that this horse racing thing is like the vinyl record. We still have a few laying around somewhere put they are never played. All we have is a memory of a bygone era. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve tried suggesting things to improve the game but in reality this game is for the wealthy who don’t give a rats ass what the common fan thinks.