Waiting...

As the days drag on with no contract between the Illinois horsemen and track management, I’ll keep this very short because there isn’t a whole lot to report.  Mo did head down to Balmoral this week for a training mile.  It was originally going to be a qualifying mile, but they were cancelled due to some track issues.  Regardless, he needed the training mile and will need a qualifier anyway to get closer to race ready.

Assuming that an agreement is worked out in the next week or so, Mo should qualify next week and then be entered to race the following Saturday, March 8^th. 

Stay tuned and Let’s Go Mo!

Mo's Surprise Trip

Everyone tends to take time off over the holidays and while we have all been at work for the past couple weeks, I’ve decided to take a little extended vacation from the In Over My Head blog. The primary reason was that Mo himself is on break, so we didn’t have a whole lot to talk about. One idea I had was to get another interview with Mo (a feature in this blog that has been rather popular). In the past, local newspaper reports have done the interviewing, but I thought that I’d go ahead and interview Mo myself for once. So I bought a ticket to O’Hare and headed out to Harvard, IL…but Mo wasn’t there.

My plan had been perfect. I was going to go up when the Leonard family was on vacation skiing out West and thought that Mo would just be bored. However, I got talking to the other horses and it turns out that Mo had somehow snuck out of his stall (he never reveals his secrets) and hitchhiked his way down to St. Louis to hang out with the Budweiser Clydesdales. Just my luck, I thought.

On the way back to Atlanta, I sent Mo a text message and asked about his trip. He said something about connecting to the Clydesdales on some horse version of Linkedin, they became friends and he went down to see them. When I asked how it was to hang around such huge horses, he said they “made me feel small…but also made me feel fast.” Sounds about right.

We will attempt to facilitate a Mo interview for the next blog entry, which will be good timing because we are actually only about 3 weeks away from racing. The plan is to have him ready to go in early February. Assuming that Illinois starts racing again (the goings on of the Illinois legislature are harder to handicap than a 10 mile rabbit race) that’s where he will be. If for some reason they don’t race, we’ll have to decide what to do next. One step at a time.

Until then…let’s to Mo!

Superstition

I admit, I’ve been hiding for the past week or so.

Early last week, I couldn’t find time to put together an entry after Mo finished a respectable 4^th in the Invite.  I was going to talk about how he had a good showing off of a two week break and how he just missed 2^nd place.  I was going to talk about how Al’s Hammered made everyone look slow, but that I was confident that Mo could return the favor.  I also had an interesting story to tell (which I’ve included in this entry).

Then the week got away from me.  I had some time on Friday, but there was a problem.  I couldn’t put a blog post up on a Friday before a race for one simple reason.  Superstition. 

I can distinctly remember putting up a post late in the week both times Mo suffered major injuries (in 2010 and 2012).  While I’d be the first to admit that it is just plain coincidence that those events happened, I just wasn’t going to risk it.  Taking that risk, my friend, would just be plain stupid. 

Horse racing, like any other sport people watch, is a potential breeding ground for superstitions.  I don’t think that any of us at Team In Over My Head have any superstitions that stick out.  However, we do look at patterns and follow our gut instincts sometimes when it comes to what might happen in a race or a career arc.  This is kind of an offshoot of superstitious behavior.  Sometimes we prove to be correct…other times we get ourselves all worked up for absolutely nothing. 

This exact situation played out for Mo’s race last Saturday (December 7^th).  What is most interesting is that Danny and I both had the same feelings of potential calamity, but didn’t admit it to each other until after the race.   

The night that Mo finished 4^th was a very cold night.  The temperature at post time was about 11 degrees and I’m assuming the wind chill made it feel closer to zero.  Mo had been off two weeks and he always loses a bit of conditioning during that time because it is just hard to train him this time of year with tracks being less than 100%.  He was stepping up in class and facing some very tough horses including Time To Roll, Al’s Hammered, etc.  Fast competitors means that Mo will try and up his game to beat them.  In the freezing cold.  With less than perfect conditioning.  If you put all this together, what you had was two extremely worried people named Danny and Shawn.

As I sat at my computer screen in our living room in Atlanta, I watched the horses turn and go to the gate.  The knot in my stomach was so tight it was as if each end of the rope was tied to an elephant walking in opposite directions.  Something bad was going to happen.  I just knew it. 

When anyone asks me why I’m involved in horse racing, the first two answers that come out of my mouth are that (i) my family has been involved since the 1950s and (ii) it is an absolute blast.  I say that if you take the excitement generated by being a fan of any team (pro, college, whatever) put a multiple of 100 on it and you have horse ownership.  People refer to ‘my’ team all the time, but it isn’t really ‘yours’ (Packer fans may disagree), but if you own horses it is ‘yours’.  You are Jerry Jones, Mark Cuban, or Mark Attanasio!  This is why you apply a multiple to being a fan…and it can be so fun.  However, at that moment when In Over My Head’s nose got to the gate, it wasn’t fun.  It was a million miles from fun.  The only word I can use to describe it was agonizing. 

“Why do I do this to myself?”

“I don’t even want to watch this.  Should I just turn it off?  I can’t control what happens anyway.”

And then the haymaker

“I think I’m going to stop owning horses.”

I’m not kidding.  That thought ACTUALLY when through my head.  I was beside myself.  And for the record, I really hadn’t had that feeling in a long time.  This whole Mo comeback version 2.0 has really been much more fun for us.  We are in ‘we have nothing to lose’ territory.  Don’t get me wrong, the butterflies are always going crazy in my stomach before races, but that is the precise reason why I own horses.  That’s the fun part!  This was something else.  It wasn’t fun at all.

Now take what I just talked about and double it (or triple it).  That’s what Danny was dealing with at Balmoral Park.  It is so much more fun to be at the track.  Everything is just amped up…but when something is amiss, that gets ratcheted up too. 

Regardless of how we were feeling, the show must go on and at about the half mile marker everything that we worried about was still in play.  Mo wasn’t looking all that good.  He was gapping quite a bit.  My eyes were telling me that he might be a bit off.  Luckily a horse race only lasts about 2 minutes because about 30 seconds later, the horses turned for home and good old Mo came charging down the lane to finish a respectable 4^th, just missing 2^nd by about a half-length.  He came out of the race fine and all was well.  We were all worried for nothing.  Well, kind of.

When Danny got a chance to talk to Casey after the race, Casey said that Mo was feeling a little bit off.  He was struggling a bit on the backstretch, like he just couldn’t shift gears for some reason.  It was because of that Casey kept him on the rail and waited until the homestretch to let Mo open up and even then he didn’t have the rocket fuel finish that he usually has.  It was, in my opinion, a very professional drive.  He put In Over My Head in the best position to finish as close to 1^st as possible, but also didn’t do anything overreaching that, quite frankly, could have led to injury.  So am I saying that Casey saved Mo from injury that night?  No, I can’t say that with any certainty, but something felt off that night and it was kind of confirmed that we were not totally crazy to be worried.  For whatever reason we came out of it just fine.  Sometimes it’s best to not ask too many questions why. 

Once the whole thing was over, I let out a big exhale and basked in the satisfaction of a solid 4^th place finish for our old boy.  This was followed by an hour + conversation with Danny as he drove back to Madison where we rehashed all of it over and over again.

I’m so glad that I own race horses.

Onto Mo’s race this past Saturday.

Much like the week before, we were in tough.  Al’s Hammered was back and ready to hammer everyone again.  Time To Roll was replaced by Fort Silky, the current king of the city.  We were once again picked for 3^rd, which made a lot of sense considering those top two.  Because Casey is Fort Silky’s regular driver, we were in a strange position:  we needed a driver for Mo.  Luckily, Casey’s brother Ross is back in Illinois (he usually drives down at Hoosier, but they are closed for the year).  While you never like to have to switch drivers, picking up a brother is about the best you can do.

Unlike the race before where I was mired in feelings of impending doom, this was a fun one.  It was a race where the competitive juices were flowing.  We had escaped the race before without anything bad happening so this was different.  Mo would be sharper with just a week off instead of two.  It wasn’t bitterly cold.  It was a week that I thought Mo might be able to surprise.  After seeing Al’s Hammered blow by in a sick mile the prior week, I had another thought on my mind.

It was time to be the hammer instead of the nail.

There was some chatter before the race about it being an Al’s Hammered vs. Fort Silky duel.  No one was talking about Mo, which was exactly where we like to be.

Here is a piece that talked about the showdown:

http://www.harnessillinois.com/node/1394

The way the race shook out, Mo was in prime position second over with Al’s Hammered on his back.  For the record, the last time this happened was in the summer of 2012.  Really the exact same situation.  The result was that Mo won the race and the speedy Al’s Hammered never got any closer.  This time, however, Al was just too sharp.  He went by to win by a length + and Mo came up just short of 2^nd to a gutty Kanaris.

This is where I can give you a little more insight into the mind of a horse owner.  Where you finish is relative to your expectations going into the race.  I was listening to this interesting podcast this week and one of the speakers was talking about the key to happiness.  His suggestion:  set low expectations.  It made me laugh when I heard it partially because it is 100% true.  To apply that lesson to this race, if I had expected Mo to finish 5^th, I would have been thrilled with 3^rd.  For a horse like Mo, that’s just setting the bar too low.

When the race was over, my 100% honest reaction was that I was ticked off.  Not because of anything anyone did or did not do.  His trip was perfect and he raced hard.  I wasn’t mad at Mo.  I was mad because Al’s Hammered just buzzed by In Over My Head for the second week in a row.  I was watching the race with Laura and I told her that “yeah, 3^rd place is good…Mo raced well..” but I didn’t mean it.  The competitor in me couldn’t’ accept it.  As I sit here 3 days later, I still feel the same way.  I know that Mo is just as fast as Al’s Hammered. 

The fact of the matter is that we may not get a chance to prove that until 2014.  There is a chance that we may race Mo next week (we usually don’t go 3 in a row), but if we don’t, he’ll be done until February.  Mo may just need a little break to sharpen up.  Heck, he’s gone 13 races.  He hasn’t gone more than 7 since he was 3 years old!  He might just need a little time to work out some soreness in his muscles and joints.  Regardless of any competitive fire burning, we will do what is right for him.  I’m pretty sure he’ll come back his blazing fast self next year.  So unless we line up next week, enjoy it Mr. Al, because we’ll be gunning for you in February.

One other little tidbit.

Mo now sits right on the cusp of $300,000 in career earnings, which is quite an accomplishment and something that certainly makes his owners happy.  Not only has he been a source of excitement, fun and inspiration, he has been the economic engine to our little stable for over four years now.  The old boy just keeps on going.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  We are so lucky to have him.

Look for a recap of a race (if we race this weekend) or a year in review coming soon.

Let’s go Mo!

Happy Thanksgiving

I'll start by answering a simple question:  What are we thankful for this year?

In Over My Head of course.

We are thankful he has been able to make 11 starts so far this year.  We are thankful he is still healthy and going strong.  We are thankful for the great care he is getting from the Leonard family.  We are thankful Mo and Casey have really hit their stride as a driver/ horse combo.  We are also thankful for the surprise drive we got from Marcus Miller.

Since I am on location for Thanksgiving festivities, I have to keep this short, but just a quick comment on the race from last week.

That marks 3 wins in Mo's last 5 starts.  He proved (yet again) that he is as fast as about any horse in a short sprint and that he really likes to beat other horses in photo finishes.  I'll circle back and post the video link here next week, but I'll summarize the race very quickly.

He got off 4th.  Stayed 4th until deep stretch.  Casey found a seam and shot him to the center of the racetrack, got him straighten out and he powered by 3 other horses to win at the wire.  It was another one of those races where we thought at about the 3/4 pole, "well, we aren't going to win tonight".  We were wrong.  Again.  We love how Mo keeps surprising us.

The other really cool thing about this race was that it was the first race our son Jordan ever watched live.  Since Mo was in an early race (the 2nd) and we were in the central time zone, the race went off before his bedtime.  Even though he can't talk yet, I'm sure he was saying "Let's Go Mo" in his head.

Danny also had a fun experience as he watched the race on his phone at a wedding with a group of 8, some of which had never seen a race before.  That's always a risky thing to do since you never know how a race will go, but when he won, it was a blast for Danny and his table.

It is always fun to go into a 2 week break off a win and we have enjoyed this one.  The next stop for Mo is the Invitational and the plan is to enter him next week.  He's sharp.  Those top horses better watch out.

Let's go Mo!

A Little of This and a Little of That

Quest Achieved

In Over My Head accomplished something special on Saturday night.  It wasn’t his game effort first over into a headwind on a sloppy track.  It wasn’t his ‘never give up’ attitude that propelled him to a third place finish when it appeared that he would be 5^th or 6^th.  It was simply the fact that he finished the race.

Why is that important?

He completed his quest.  A quest he has only completed one other time in his six year racing career.  It was a quest I laid out for him a couple months ago…the quest for double digits.

http://inovermyheadracehorse.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-quest-for-double-digits.html

Saturday’s race was Mo’s tenth start of the season.  While that may not seem like a lot to some of the horses he races against (hats off to Major Monet and Old Man River with 36 and 35 starts this year respectively), ten is a lot for Mo.  And he’s still going strong.  By all accounts, he came out of the race well and should be in next week.

Tougher Competition

Mo has no climbed to a level where he simply cannot swoop everyone in the final stretch….and that’s just fine by me (even though he can still swoop most).  It means he’s at a level where he is racing against the best Chicago has to offer.  It’s where he belongs.  While Saturday’s race was technically a non-winners of $12,000 last five races, it was in reality an Invitational field. 

Best Man Hanover beat us again, but I still think Mo is a better horse.  Best Man was well placed and had the jump on us at the ¾ pole.  Mo closed 3 lengths on him, but it wasn’t quite enough.  Best Man was drafting behind Time To Roll, who is a legit monster of a horse.  He could race anywhere in my opinion and if the connections just happen to be reading this, I think you should give him a shot at the new Meadowlands! 

Looking Back

This year marks the 4^th anniversary of In Over My Head’s improbable win in the Windy City Pace at odds of 55-1.  I’ve covered that topic many times (probably too many) in this blog over the years, but in thinking back I came up with an interesting question.  Do other owners/ connections remember a big win like we do?  If you think about it, dozens of races each year offer a purse of as much or more than the Windy City did ($225,000), so in theory there are hundreds of people that have had a part of that ‘Big Win’ experience.  Do they reflect back every year and remember how incredible that feeling was like we do? 

I’m guessing that we take it to more of an extreme for a number of reasons.  It was so improbable (sometime if you win as a favorite, you almost feel as much relief as pure excitement).  He was our only horse and we’ve never come close to repeating that victory in the 4 years since.  The next biggest race he was in (from a pure purse perspective) was the final of the Exit 16W series at the Meadowlands that went for $88,000.  He finished 7^th and shredded his leg that night.  That is probably another reason why we hang on so tightly to our one big time win.  There is nothing else to get in its way.

The only personal comparison I can make was from my time as a coach at Madison Memorial High School.   Over 8 years we won three state titles and were runner up four times.  That’s a lot of success and lots of memorable games.  I can say that I often do think back to the biggest wins and love talking about them with other people who were involved.  I can’t say that they are any less special just because we had more of them (as opposed to the one major win with Mo).  Certain wins will always mean more for any number of reasons and I think if I coached another 50 years, nothing would ever top this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03XyAMaSZRU

Regardless of the reasons why, we will probably relive that for many more years.  Thanks to Danny, it was captured beautifully with the 3^rd portion of his 3 year old highlight video.  Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hT5_wn3-pI 

Looking Ahead

Look for Mo to race again next week either in the same class or in the Invitational.  It just depends on who enters and how Balmoral shakes out the fields. 

It’s been a great run so far in 2013 and we hope to keep it going.  Let’s Go Mo!

New Fans and a 2012 Flashback

Over the past five years, we’ve covered a lot of ground in the story of In Over My Head.  We’ve been with him for 49 races and in some way I’ve covered them all right here on this blog.  Soemtimes the focus is just about the race itself.  Other times, more focus has been placed on the ancillarily factors surrounding the race.  It could be a background story of some sort or memorable scenario that ends in me telling someone, “I have to go watch my horse race.”  Here is one of my favorites from 2009 (http://inovermyheadracehorse.blogspot.com/2009/09/exciting-end-to-interesting-day.html).  This weekend we added another one of those stories…and much, much more.

Laura and I were finishing up at a neighborhood party on Saturday night when I got a text from Danny who was in Mineral Point watching the races with Greg, “Ya ready?” it asked.  It was about 20 minutes to post and my answer at that point was, no, I wasn’t close to ready!  We still had to pack up the car and get back home.  As Laura could attest, my personality immediately changed from relaxed to semi-frantic as the minutes ticked away and post time crept closer.  In the excitement, our friends asked us why we were leaving so abruptly.

“We have to get home so we can watch our horse race.”

“What?”

It is a common exchange that I haven’t experienced in quite awhile, but one I always find funny.  The cool part about the exchange this time was that everyone there was really interested in the whole thing.  “How did you get into horse racing?”  “Where does he race?”  “Is he any good?”  “That sounds like fun.”  I love talking to people about horse racing and really wanted to answer every question that everyone had, but there was only one problem.  At that point we were only 12 minutes to post…we had to move!

In retrospect, we should have just stayed in the Mill Glenn community pool parking lot and watched with everyone on our Iphones.  To be honest though, I’m not sure the impression I would have made on our new friends if I started screaming into the phone as Mo was charging down the stretch…which is pretty much exactly what would have happened.  And what if he went another bad race?  He had finished 1^st and 2^nd his previous two starts, but had struggled before that.  Should we have been worried?

In typical In Over My Head style, his response was “Don’t worry and don’t be so nervous?  I’ve got this.”

This race was also special for a totally different reason.  It had a very 2012 feel to it.  Tyler Butenschon and Penny Perrin were both in attendance.  Tyler had one of John’s horses racing the American National elimination and Penny came along…well I think she came along just to see In Over My Head.  The other part of the flashback was that Marcus Miller, who happened to be in Chicago for the same American National elim, was available to drive.  Our normal driver, Casey Leonard, had another horse in the race and decided to let Marcus drive Mo given their history together.  The only thing missing was Danny, Kacy, Laura, Laura’s grandparents, myself and “Call Me Maybe” playing over the sound system.

Since this was Flashback to 2012 night, Mo also decided to stay in character.

Leaving from post 8, Marcus pushed him off the gate a little bit, but a hole never opened up.  Instead of falling to the back or charging to the front, Marcus did what he has done many times with Mo:  just relax and ride on the outside.  Eventually some cover emerged from the rail and turning for home, Mo was 3^rd over and ready to make a charge.  He was nearly 7 lengths off the lead, but with open race track in front of him (unlike the week before when he was surprisingly knocked off his course by a breaking St. David Hanvoer) it was time to put the pedal to the medal.  The result was shocking.  Just when you think you know everything you could possibly know about In Over My Head, we learn something new.

Mo is even faster than we though.  And that’s saying something.  Check it out for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii8Dcr-Axhk&feature=youtu.be

At 7 years old and after 2 major ligament injuries, In Over My Head did something on Saturday night that he has NEVER done in his entire life.  He came home with a last quarter of under 26 seconds.  25 and 3/5^th seconds to be exact.  That was enough to leave everyone else in his substantial wake as he won by a length and a half. 

Since Laura and I spent some time with folks new to horse racing this weekend they are probably wondering:  just how fast is that?

Often times when someone sees harness racing for the first time, they assume that the horses aren’t going all that fast.  “It just looks like they are speed walking” is a comment I get pretty commonly.  While I can’t comment on what they LOOK LIKE, I can tell you that they are moving at a pretty fast clip.  Let’s work though the math on that one.

His last quarter was 25.6 seconds.  Over a mile that would be 102.4 seconds.  There are 3600 seconds in an hour, which clocks In Over My Head’s last quarter at 35.12 miles per hour.   Fast enough to get pulled over in a school zone.  Good thing we keep him on the track. 

When thinking about how fast that actually is, don’t compare it to sitting in a car.  Being in an enclosed area doesn’t do it justice.  Think about the last time you were on a scooter for example.  When you had that think opened up and you were going downhill, you were probably going about 35 mph.  With the wind in your hair, it is a very different experience.

As a comparison to a thoroughbred horse (which many people are more familiar with), they can cover a quarter mile in maybe 22 seconds, which works out to 40.91 miles per hour.  While it is certainly faster (16.5% faster to be exact), it isn’t as dramatically faster than it appears to many folks are new to the game.

I have to say, it feels great to be back on a roll with In Over My Head.  Saturday’s win was a huge validation for us.  It validated this entire second comeback.  Think about the time and effort that went into it.  He was off from July of 2012 to July of 2013.  While he started hot, he tailed off and tested our patience.  However, everyone involved stayed the course (with a tip of the hat to the Leonards for some well-placed training changes) and on Saturday we witnessed speed from Mo like he has never shown us before.  It is simply amazing.  A horse with that amount of talent BELONGS on the race track.  It would be a waste to take away that opportunity. 

Staying true to our schedule to not over-race him, Mo will get next week off and will then either take one or two steps up in class the following Saturday.  He is so razor sharp right now that I’m not sure there are many horses in Chicago that can beat him with one exception.  A horse in his own barn by the name of Fort Silky who is also trained by the Leonards.  He’s be virtually unbeatable lately and is not only fast but tough as nails.  An In Over My Head and Fort Silky neck and neck stretch run would be a joy to watch.  Could Mo beat him?  Well I think he COULD, but I’m not saying he will.  At this point, who really cares?  Three weeks ago we thought we were looking at a retirement of our old boy.  Now, he writing a whole new chapter to the book of Mo.  As we’ve said many times before, it’s best to just jump on and enjoy the ride.  And each week that goes by, Mo is picking up new fans.  It just makes the whole thing that much more fun.

Let’s Go Mo!

And We're Back

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 6^th 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 6^th 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 26^th.  Let’s go Mo!