The ‘horse racing is like riding a roller coaster’ analogy
is overused. Heck, I’ve overused it
myself on this blog over the years (I can’t believe it has been years by the
way). However, it is a very apt analogy
for the place we found ourselves over the course of the past few weeks for a whole
new reason. It isn’t the ups, the downs,
the twists, the turns, it’s more like what these people went through:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/09/travel/universal-orlando-roller-coaster/
(in case you didn’t
read the link, it was about some folks who got stuck on a roller coaster at
Universal Studios for about 2 hours…)
When someone asks me “why haven’t you written anything in
the blog for so long” my answer is that we’ve been stuck on the dang roller
coaster and have been waiting for help! Luckily that help came last Saturday night.
You might be wondering what constitutes being ‘stuck’ in
racing. To answer that, take a look at
these numbers:
4, 5, 6, 6
Those were Mo’s four finishes after starting the season with
a win and a second. Each race has its
own story as to why he didn’t go well.
There are plenty of legitimate excuses.
Some soreness one race, getting locked in and getting impeded down the
stretch in a race he certainly would have finished no worse than third. In that second 6th place finish,
he didn’t have a great excuse. He just
didn’t race very well. This was rather
concerning because it was very ‘un-Mo like”.
Over the course of his entire career, I can’t really think of a time he
just was flat for no reason. It opened
an unforeseen way to get “un-stuck”…and not
in the way we had hoped.
As we all know, In Over My Head is a hell of a racehorse. He’s proven it many times. However, even the best athletes will
eventually lose their edge. When that
happens, retirement is not too far down the road. Think of Michael Jordan with the
Wizards. 16 points, 5 rebounds and 4
assists is a solid line…but not for the greatest ball player to ever live. His skills were fading due to the unyielding
pursuit of father time. You can’t escape
it. After that set of finishes, especially
that no excuse 6th place finish, we were beginning to fear that time
was maybe starting to catch up with Mo.
Back to the being stuck analogy. When you are a very good older horse and you
begin to sit in middle-of-the-pack land, you have two ways to go. Start getting into the top 3 again or fall to
the bottom 3. Being in the middle is
what I mean by being stuck. You aren’t
making much money, but aren’t doing washing out either. While we originally just assumed Mo would pop
for a big win during one of those four races, the other option was becoming
more real. As we had talked about after
his last start, while you can always have an excuse, eventually you have to
come to the realization that excuse upon excuse upon excuse is something
totally different. It means that things
just aren’t the way they used to be.
That was our fear going into last Saturday’s race. Mo had faced races like this a few times in
his past. It was really becoming kind
situation where he had to SHOW us he could still do it…or we just had to assume
that he couldn’t anymore.
Despite that fear, we were really pretty optimistic. We put Mo on Lasix, thus losing the crown of
“Only race horse in America over the age of 7 who is not on Lasix” (that’s a
joke for horse people, the rest will have no idea what I’m talking about) and
Casey decided to sharpen up Mo’s training regimen a little bit. He thought he could handle it at this point
because his leg is really in great shape (all things considered) and the extra
work would hopefully help him.
So there we were. On
one side, you have the sad fade into retirement staring us straight in the face
(which was magnified by the fact we were dropping down in class…a class Mo
really has to be able to handle or there isn’t’ much sense racing him). On the other side you have some new ideas and
some legitimate hope that the old boy can turn things around yet again. Either way, we were about to be “unstuck”.
And how did Mo respond to this situation that became almost
unmanageably tense as the horses were going to the gate?
He said, “Do you have rocks in your head? How many times do I have to tell you to
never, and I mean NEVER doubt me!”
Enjoy because we sure as hell did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjzoxrjieGA
That right there is what Danny and I like to refer to as
“Old Mo”. Our enthusiasm has to be
tempered a little bit. Like I said
before, he had to be able to handle this class to even be racing so there isn’t
huge cause for celebration, but it felt dang good to see him win. And he earned that win. That little Texican was a heck of a lot
tougher than I thought and the rest of the field was a full nine iron
behind. He ended up with the fastest
time of the night as well as the fastest last quarter (26.1). He got us “unstuck” and gave us some great
hope for the near future.
This whole exercise did force us to think about something
interesting: Mo’s retirement. You might say, ‘he’s suffered 2 major
injuries, how have you not thought about retirement?’ and you’d be making a
good point. This, however, is a little
different. I’m taking about the kind of
retirement where his abilities start to fade and he just can’t do what he used
to do. In some ways, that is even harder
to watch than an injury. It poses a lot
of questions. How far do you let him
drop in class? At what point do you pop
off the shoes and just stop? Those are
tough questions, and ones that we luckily don’t have to think about coming off
an impressive win. One thing we all
agreed on was this. He is living a great
life right now. He gets great care. He gets to get turned out during the week and
races on the weekends. Life is
good. When it’s over, it’s over. We’d have to find a home for him
somewhere. As much as we want him to be
a stallion, I’m just not sure it is going to be feasible. We’ll try, no doubt, but he’s really in a
good place right now. Let’s just hope he
can keep racing well and enjoying life….and we can keep enjoying it right along
with him.
Thanks (again) Mo for teaching us to never give up
hope. Your inspiration is more important
than you’ll ever know.
Look for the next race on Saturday the 26th. Let’s go Mo!
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