I’m trying to remember when I first saw Chantal Sutherland, or even heard of her for that matter.
Just about everyone else can remember where they were when other strikingly beautiful blonde women athletes were tacked to the walls of every teenage boy’s bedrooms (OK, ceilings) in America. Maria Sharapova winning Wimbledon in 2004. Anna Kournikova and her yard-long braid down the center of her back, Craig Kilborn making hilarious, though strangely perverse comments about her during tennis highlights. Brandi Chastain tearing off her jersey after winning the 1996 World Cup. Natalie Gublis in golf. Nala in the Lion King (don’t hate).
Sutherland is every bit as athletic (maybe more so) than the above women. Damn, I follow horse racing and I can’t remember when Sutherland blew up onto the scene. Maybe that will be the case for others as well. I will, if nothing else, remember her leaving the sport that gave her a platform and 12,531 Twitter followers (make that 12,532).
*
It must have been Jockeys. Yeah, it probably was Jockeys. This show, which aired on Animal Planet, aimed to illustrate the world of being a jockey heading toward the Kentucky Derby. Racetrack insiders saw jockeys Garret Gomez, Joe Talamo, Mike Smith and knew who they were. Then there was Mike Smith’s girlfriend. A woman, 11 years his junior, also a jockey, who played the token role of lover for the “Love Under 5-feet-3-inches.”
And.
Whoa.
That’s Chantal Sutherland. Her hair under a jockey helmet, or under a ball cap, or tied up in pigtails, she made your head spin. Those cheekbones. That smile. And she could ride.
In 2008 she was the regular rider of Mine That Bird, a runtish gelding who would go on to win the 2009 Kentucky Derby at 50-1. Except Sutherland was not aboard. She rode this horse closer to the lead and it wasn’t until Calvin Borel took him way back and literary skimmed the rail coming down the homestretch that Mine That Bird realized his potential. Sutherland flipped her gourd on Jockeys, saying that was her Derby horse, that she could have won the Derby. Sorry, Chantal, no. Only Calvin Borel is dumb (I mean that in the most affectionate way possibly) and fearless enough to guide a horse through a slit of daylight no wider than a textbook. Only him. Sorry.
But, if nothing else, seeing those perfect teeth and chiseled cheekbones and long, silken hair on the air waves of Jockeys made Sutherland the poster girl of horse racing.
Her website gives shows that she’s not just a jockey. With a mug like hers and body to boot, you better believe it says jockey/actress/model—in descending order of ability, I presume. But what will she be without the title of jockey? She’ll just be another pretty face in an ocean of Barbie dolls. Horse racing made her special.
There she was plastered to the side of a billboard, toes in the irons atop a thoroughbred and her river of hair undulate in the wind. She says, “Follow me to Santa Anita Park!”
And when her relationship to Mike Smith devolved, Del Mar saw fit to use it.
She got swept up in a “Battle of the Exes”: a match race between her and Smith aboard a couple nags at Del Mar. “We’re both very competitive,” said Sutherland. “Everything’s a competition.”
So on August 7, 2011, Sutherland entered the gate aboard Parable in the 2-hole while her Hall of Fame jockey and ex-boyfriend entered Post 1 with Joker Face. Smith made easy work of this race, gunning for the lead, keeping Sutherland and Parable to his outside the entire way around the oval. He kicked clear, and in an otherwise inconsequential trip around the track, Smith pumped his fist a couple times under the shadow of the wire.
A TVG announcer said, “No dinner and wine for Chantal.”
By this time, the racing world had bit of an edge when it came to Sutherland. After all it’s always been a male-dominated sport. Julie Krone cut her teeth and won some big races as a jockey. She’s considered the greatest female rider of them all. But she didn’t possess the million-dollar sex appeal of Sutherland. Or. If she did. She kept it under wraps.
Unlike Sutherland.
*
But that would come a bit later. After Sutherland got the Big Horse.
Ah, the Big Horse. They call him Game On Dude and he was a front-running beast. Sutherland broke from the far outside post in the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap, or the Big Cap, famously won by Seabiscuit all those years ago.
Turning for home, three horses were across the track. Sutherland went to the stick and bumped a horse hard to her right. She then went head-to-head with a fast charging competitor. Bob, bob, bob, and the nose went to Game On Dude and Chantal Sutherland, the first female jockey ever to win the Big Cap. There was a long inquiry. Did she come over on that horse? Did she impede his chance to win? Maybe so, but were the stewards going to pull down the first female jockey ever to win the Big Cap? Nope. They didn’t. And there she was, her arms spread out to her side with a smile wider than the Pacific Ocean.
Eight months later she was aboard Game On Dude again for the 1 ¼ mile Breeders’ Cup Classic, America’s richest horse race at $5 million. Sutherland broke Game On Dude on top, seamlessly and without worry. She took him to the front with a fluidity belied by the thunderous traffic of 48 hooves turning dirt into dust.
She led for a mile and then a mile and an eighth. She went to the left-handed stick and Game On Dude bore in. The wire loomed just 100 yards away at this point. Then. Down the center of the track. Came an old friend. Mike Smith. Aboard Drosselmeyer. Blitzed from out of the clouds, the fastest moving horse of 12 when it mattered. He pulled up along side Game On Dude and locomotived past to win by a length.
“You got to be kidding me — Mike Smith, aaaaaah,” Sutherland said in good-humored frustration in the New York Times. “I never saw them coming.”
And we never saw how quickly the end was coming. Within 11 months, she’d be done with racing. Swear it off and move on to whatever it is beautiful people do.
But first she needed to get naked.
*
Bo Derek wanted to shoot Suthlerland. She wanted to frame Sutherland up and capture the allure that is Sutherland’s wonderful body. For a Vanity Fair shoot, people brought in a big, bay horse and put Sutherland up on his back with the same Number 8 saddle cloth that Game On Dude had worn in the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Sutherland, nude, stands with her toes in the irons, in a bent-over crouch, hood-ornament still, with her blonde hair falling in ribbons past her shoulders. The horse looks positively uninterested which is a bold-faced insult to every man in America.
Derek writes, “There’s something special about the way jockey Chantal Sutherland rides a Thoroughbred racehorse. You notice it right away: you can always pick her out of a tightly packed field of 15 riders and horses. Her position in the saddle is positively feline, very sensual, and when she makes her move to take the lead, she gets impossibly low on her horse’s back.”
And she saved her kindest words for last and what makes it all the more poignant now that Sutherland has given up the game, or given up on the game. It’s hard to tell which.
“Jockeys are considered, pound for pound, among the strongest athletes in the world. But if a woman is generally 30 percent weaker than a man, just how strong must Chantal be to compete equally in arguably the most dangerous sport? She’ll tell you the strongest part of her sculpted body is her big toe. Yes, that’s the first point of contact that creates the leverage that controls a horse running at 40 miles per hour. The reins are a mere suggestion.”
*
If jockeys ride horses, then fear rides jockeys.
Jockeys are never more than snap of a horse’s cannon bone from death. Yes, jockeys get mangled, thrashed, gashed, broken, battered, paralyzed, and even killed. The horse goes down and the rider is at the mercy of physics. Air tangents. Equal and opposite reactions.
A 1,200-pound mammal leaves a nasty imprint on a 100-pound mammal. No matter how slick and jock is, he or she is a busted collar bone from losing his or her mounts. The horses train and they need a rider and there’s always one coming up the pipeline. Always another born from the belly of Peru or Mexico or Puerto Rico.
On July 18 at Del Mar Sutherland took a spill coming out of the gate. Her horse veered to the left and she aborted. She hit the ground hard and soon sat up. She was fine and rode again later that day. It wasn’t a spill that broke a bone, but maybe it was enough to have her think that as long as my body remains in tact, I have a life.
Running backs in the NFL have been known to quit while they still had tread on their tires. Jim Brown. Robert Smith. Barry Sanders. I doubt they’re walking with as much of a limp had they remained armored and in the league. Maybe Chantal’s back was breaking and all it took was one more straw to break it.
*
The favorite. Again. Chantal Sutherland took Game On Dude wide into the first turn in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar. She pressed the pace down the backstretch and took the lead under the urging of her horse. She opened up a length around the turn and straightened out with plenty of horse. Did she move too early? Was she going to lose anyway to an artificial-track phenom in Dullahan (third in this year’s Kentucky Derby)? She was second by just a length. That’s all it took, however.
Trainer Bob Baffert found another rider for his Big Horse.
"Rafael [Bejarano] is our main rider and we wanted to have our No. 1 rider on our No. 1 horses," Baffert said. "With the big fall races coming up, we just felt comfortable having Rafael on Game On Dude. It was difficult for me when I told Chantal about the decision. It's been a fun ride and we made history together, but we just felt it was time to make the change."
That was September 12. Just a few weeks later on October 6, Sutherland failed a breathalyzer test at Woodbine, was removed from her mounts for the day, handed a $300 fine and a five-day suspension.
Then on October 21, she announced she was done. Just like that. Up in smoke. Her body intact. Ready for the bounties of 40 or 50 more years of fear-less endeavors. Her smile still casting the shine of a thousand diamonds. Amazingly, balanced, she retires with 931 wins, 930 seconds, and 987 thirds from 7,350 mounts, putting her in the money 39 percent of the time.
So I don’t remember her entry, but I’m left with an image greater than any of her magazine covers, billboards, or pinups. Maybe even greater than her 100-yard dash of a career that started in O’ Canada.
“Maybe I’ll cut loose and have a cheeseburger or some pizza,” Sutherland said on her website.
Deservedly so. Amen.
To contact Brendan O'Meara, visit his website. Follow him on Twitter.
29 Oct 2012 at 01:03 pm | #
My first notice of Chantal came when Mark Cramer, astute handicapper living in Paris, asked who is this C. Sutherland who has brought in two 70-1 shots at Saratoga! It was her first venture down from Canada, i believe.
29 Oct 2012 at 01:56 pm | #
I oogled her for the first time in that little bar Joe Zito used to run on the 2nd floor of the clubhouse at Belmont, where I was getting ossified. If there was a contest for best looking jockey, she would win 2nd place, after Mike Smith of course.
TTT
29 Oct 2012 at 04:41 pm | #
Hot Horse,
70-1! Hot dog!
Triple T,
Lost to Mike Smith again. She can’t win, can she?
29 Oct 2012 at 05:32 pm | #
Nice article, too bad no one managed to edit all the typos and mistakes out of it. Terribly unprofessional and makes for disjointed reading. I find it disappointing a writer worth his salt would let a piece as badly put together as this out for publication.
29 Oct 2012 at 05:38 pm | #
Hey, Pixforu, show me the typos and I’ll fix ‘em. No matter how many times I read these things, I can’t catch them all. And it’s a long piece. I’ll fix ‘em and it will be like they were never there ...
29 Oct 2012 at 05:50 pm | #
All right (alright?), Pixforu, I fixed “wine” “Dullahan” and tightened some other things. I don’t expect you to read it again, but that should make it look a touch better!
29 Oct 2012 at 09:13 pm | #
Pix, don’t lay the editing on Brendan, that would be my bad. I always read the pieces our posters submit and, trust me, two sets of eyes are much better.
As Brendan said, no matter how many times you ready these things… SOmetimes I don’t catch my own until after I read it on site.
Finding myself on LI and with B Cup deadlines and Sandy looming everywhere, I didn’t read B’s piece until now. What I find amazing is that the piece was the most comprehensive I’ve seen on Chantal; you found the typos and missed the point.
That would be bad editing on your part, and mine. We’ll try to get it perfect next time but I doubt that could ever happen.
As Hyman Roth once said about Frankie Five Angels, in relation to your choice of topics to critique: “small potatoes.”
John Pricci, executive editor
29 Oct 2012 at 09:26 pm | #
Thanks, Preach!
I could’ve written another 1,000 words, I think. I don’t think anyone has taken stopped to take a breath with Chantal. She was an easy target with “Jockeys”, “The Battle of the Exes”, “Vanity Fair”, but if you look at the video that accompanies the “VF” shoot, she looks uncomfortable. Her record speaks for itself. So too does Anna Kournikova’s.
29 Oct 2012 at 11:19 pm | #
Hold the phone there boys! First, Preach, I seriously resent your inference that I ‘missed the point’! Sorry that I called you on your ineptitude and second rate editing. I not only know Chantal, but I like and respect her and second only to the ridiculously terrible state of that article, I was more than a little put off by the statement “But what will she be without the title of jockey? She’ll just be another pretty face in an ocean of Barbie dolls. Horse racing made her special.”
That is just plain absurd. The degree of excellence she repeatedly exhibited during her career as a jockey is only one small facet of the diamond that she is and will always be. The fact that she climbed one of the most difficult mountains in the sport of racing and planted her flag on the summit, repeatedly, for all to see, then chose to go out on top, intact, speaks not only to her endless list of options, some doors she has likely not even opened yet, but it speaks to her above average intelligence. I left alone the personal observation that I found that paragraph sexist and demeaning, not to mention a totally off-base and discordant comment in an article that, more or less I thought, (ya,mostly less) was speaking to the quality of rider and person she has been and is. If anything, Chantal allowed a better light to shine on the sad state of the sport of racing while she graced us with her presence! Do you STILL think I missed the point? The person that responded to me, “Show me and I’ll fix em.....” is the one who missed the point. Journalism as applied to that article is a contradiction in terms. Also sad that using the Breeders Cup deadlines, and a tropical storm/hurricane as excuses for poor literary presentation brings me to wonder if perhaps driving a cab might be a less stressful and more successful endeavor for you. Wouldn’t the ‘right’ thing to do have been to be grateful to a reader who cared enough to critique in the hopes of improvement, and then FIX the obvious mistakes rather than blathering empty promises, and finally accusing someone who has been a trainer, owner, breeder and supporter of this industry for over 50 years of NOT GETTING IT? YOUR BAD!
29 Oct 2012 at 11:26 pm | #
Oh, and PS: I wrote everything I have sent to you today without benefit of an editor, at the same time editing wedding pictures taken yesterday, burning discs for orders from the last rodeo I shot, and making an omelet from scratch for my husband and a friend who stopped by for lunch........ not quite a Breeders Cup deadline, nor a tropical storm, but I’ll hold the quality of my performance up against yours anytime. I’d suggest you hire me, but I’m aware that would be much to threatening.
29 Oct 2012 at 11:27 pm | #
OMG...................... too
not to
29 Oct 2012 at 11:44 pm | #
Form over substance has never been my motto. Although the use of “phone” was used by this disgruntled person in a “Hold the phone,” these made up words, and the people that use them, have always rubbed me the wrong way. The abbreviation of a person’s name, “Preach,” without prior written consent is presumptious and just plain rude. Your run-on sentences I learned not to do in the 3rd grade. When you used “tropical storm/hurricane, doesn’t that become singular, and should be “an excuse,” not excuses. If you were trying to impress us, you fell far short of the mark, and all you did was detract from what was a wonderful article about Chantal, the spirit of which shines through. Gloria Steinham would approve of your attacking the “sexists” remarks, but I don’t see it at all. There is nothing wrong with calling a beautiful women a beautiful women, or a beautiful man a beautiful man. What is disturbing is your pedantic pen. Luv ya Chantal!
TTT
29 Oct 2012 at 11:50 pm | #
Yeah, Pix! See, typos happen to the best of us! Comb through the New York Times, you’ll find typos there to ... I mean, too.
Ok, your points taken, but let me address the “Barbie doll” comment.
I addressed that because she wants to act and model, which is fine. If you’ve got it, great. But the thing is, there are a LOT of beautiful blonde women with a LOT of talent who have made that their craft. Maybe with the right coaching Chantal can achieve it. In horse racing she’s Giselle and Scarlett Johansson rolled into a jockey body. Treading outside the platform that gave her a name is a big, big risk. If she proves to be as good at modeling and acting as she was a jockey, then she made the right move.
Given what’s been written and said about Chantal, I think I was more than gracious to her and her career.
So, in conclusion, I hope she saved her money.
30 Oct 2012 at 12:01 am | #
B,
Great piece and your race replays are as good as it gets. You seem to have the nack.
The best horses and trainers make the jockeys with the best opportunities and thus the best records. Still, the jocks have got to come through consistently to stay there.
Ms. Sutherland was a competent jockey. IMO her spectacular appearance was a double-edged sword. It attracted opportunites, but it may hace distanced her from people who could have helped her become a better rider, and distracted her from finding those people on her own.
She risked more than life and limb, she risked the loss of her beauty and her other careers as well. I wish her the best of luck and am grateful for her effort on G-O-D in the BC Classic.
Re: Mine That Bird, nothing I’ve ever seen in racing before or since natches the last half-mile of his Derby win. All I could think of at the time was thank goodness nobody got in his way—an accident waiting to happen, but incredibly thrilling to watch. I’ve watched that replay many times since. It’s my own version of Instant Racing.
30 Oct 2012 at 12:44 am | #
Aaaaahhhh Teddy, Wow, certainly I would agree to your first comment. Secondly I apologize for responding to a person by a moniker that was used in an open forum. I had no idea it would cause offense, nor that I should have asked permission to use it. Henceforth I will be sure to use Dear Sir or Madam in an effort to be less offensive.
Arguing the merits of a grammatically correct run-on sentence being better or worse than groupings of words which only resemble a sentence in that they have a capital at the beginning and a period at the end is somewhat lowly semantics. That might have been 4th grade material. But again I will apologize.
I will not allow a retreat from the fact that the paragraph I referenced was terribly sexist. It is so off base to say Chantal would be nothing more than a Barbi if she isn’t a jockey it would be laughable if it were only funny.
Excuses was applied to deadlines and tropical storm/hurricane....two things...I think that is plural, is it not???
Without a doubt it has been many hours ago since this discourse began so perhaps anyone reading this may have missed the first two words of my initial post.
Perhaps you will do me the favor of rereading them.
As to trying to impress you, why would I bother?
I love you too Chantal, and if you don’t mind being equated to the ranks of Barbi since you have gone on to bigger and better things, please let me know and I will happily stand corrected.
Mr O’Meara, I couldn’t agree with you more about the overall tone of your article being virtually treacle compared to many of the vitriolic pieces that have been written about Chantal. Perhaps you are right in saying that the pond she is jumping into with aspirations of modeling and acting is deep with beauty and talent and the strength of her stroke will remain to be seen. Still she deserves my vote until she doesn’t make it because she has done so very much in so many different arenas with marked success it seems foolish to bet against her.
And, oh my, do mistakes/typos ever happen to the best of us. Thanks for an entertaining discourse… and, no, I’m not disgruntled:-) I am simply my Mother’s daughter and I love the English language, both spoken and written.
Sincerely, Kathie Stell
30 Oct 2012 at 01:20 am | #
Brendan O,
as long as we’re nitpicking. How did you come up with “72” hooves in the BC Classic
I’m guessing math wasn’t your strongest subject:).
30 Oct 2012 at 01:28 am | #
DennyM, that made me laugh out loud!!!!!!!!!! Must have been some of the three legged horses our industry is populated with running in that race. Love it
30 Oct 2012 at 02:48 am | #
Denny, did I say 72? I meant 48! Forgot to carry the 1.
I need to work this out:
12 horses in 2011 field x 4 hooves = 4 ... 8. Phew!
Must have had those terrible, terrible ‘72 Dolphins in my head.
Good lord, I think we’re good now!
30 Oct 2012 at 03:37 am | #
Oh, poor Mr. O’Meara....picking on my beloved Dolphies.....lololol. I was raised in Florida and they were always ‘my’ team
How could you have known!
30 Oct 2012 at 04:53 pm | #
Never met a feminist I didn’t like, as long as they stay in the kitchen where they belong, and speak when spoken to, and never claim to know it all about the English language. Those who really do know about the English language should write cook books, and leave the horse racing to real men like me, a real sexist pig.
TTT
30 Oct 2012 at 05:21 pm | #
TTT...may I call you that? Nice that at least you know what you are even if you don’t have a clue about much else!
30 Oct 2012 at 06:35 pm | #
Sure, I is lyking you better wit evree word u right. By the way, proofreaders are a dime a dozen, especially hypocrtical feminist ones. Try harder babe.
TTT
13 Nov 2012 at 12:00 pm | #
I agree with the comments you have made Cung mua