Excellent Did a crippled horse win The Kentucky Derby? Seeing Something by NightHawK~ Thank you for your time!

Category:  General Fiction   Posted:  September 20, 2004      Views: 378

ABOUT NIGHTHAWK~  NightHawK~ searches for Le Mot Juste and never comes to the blank page lightly. FFSA The Seal of Quality committee has rewarded him with 2 seals. Portfolio | Become A Fan "He got a chance, don' he?" a rough voice questioned from the crowd. Everyone knew which horse he meant. Canonero the Second, the so-called Caracas Cannonball, born in Kentucky and sold for only twelve-hundred dollars to be raised and trained in Venezuela because of a crooked foreleg. The Cannonball was part of a six-horse pool. The odds on all of them together were still 9-1. That meant a bet on any of those six horses counted as a bet on all of them. They had to lump them together because only a fool would bet on any one of them. The Wit answered first. Why? Because The Wit always has an answer and an angle, that's why. He delivers his response in that condescending, sarcastic tone his ilk have honed to perfection. You don't need to know his name to know him. He is the frontrunner, the know-it-all, the guy whose team either just won the championship or is about to. He goes with the favorites without exception, and specializes in ridiculing the foolishness of those who - against all logic - grin ruefully and plunk their money down on the long shots. "He got a chance. Don' he?" mimicked our Wit, aka Thomas, in a high childish voice that delighted many. Thomas is quite talented, making him all the more dangerous. "Let's see," Thomas continued, scrunching his face into the caricature of a man deep in thought, "a runt with a birth defect that's won nothing. Ridden by a jockey who's won nothing. Trained by a trainer who's won nothing. Owned by an owner who's won nothing. Raised on a continent that's won nothing, and only entered because his owner's dead mother told him to in a dream." He dragged out the word dream and raised his voice in mockery. Back then in Venezuela, as crazy as it seems to us now, people didn't just mouth all the platitudes about their departed loved ones becoming their guardian angel. They actually believed them. Now, of course, we know that's all proven nonsense. We sophisticates know if the owner dreamed of his departed mother, it was just some part of his subconscious guiding him, using the mother image symbolically. It is ludicrous to believe she could reach back across the impossible divide between life and death and place herself in a dream to help grant her son's greatest desire. Hard to believe people were so ignorant back then, isn't it? Anyway, back to our Wit in mid-ridicule, and in fine form I might add. "Why, obviously he's a lock! Empty your life-savings boys, and prepare to spend the rest of your lives in leisure!" However, this time more laughter greeted his comment as people realized how silly they had been to think a crippled horse has a chance in the greatest horse race in the world. "But he still won that race at Derby distance down in South America," another voice declared, still holding onto a thin string of a dream. "True, but I hear half the other horses were scratched and replaced with llamas!" Thomas said, flashing a cold grin. His mood had improved now that he had quashed the foolishness about Canonero having a chance to win The Kentucky Derby, of all races. When they brought the horses out and everyone actually saw Canonero, the muttering began in a shocked, almost personally insulted tone. They knew he had a crooked foreleg, but to know it, and to see it, were two different things entirely. When they looked at Canonero, knowing his foreleg was crooked, they thought they could see him limping. That, combined with his barrel chest, made him appear even more ungainly, when compared to the sleek physiques of the other thoroughbreds. The sight of Canonero's barrel chest prompted Thomas to toss out another sneering comment. "Well, at least they got his nickname right. He sure as hell looks like a cannonball!" His newfound friends among the spectators rewarded him with an embarrassed titter. When he stood next to the other horses, it became clear; on top of all his other deficiencies, he was smaller and lighter than the other horses. With just a glance, even a novice could tell he did not have a chance to win The Derby. There, he would be racing against the best of the best, all striving for racing immortality. That is why they lumped him in with the other five horses. It was some sort of sick joke. A man mumbled angrily, "What the hell they gotta do this to 'im for? They ain't gotta do this to 'im!" A crying woman said, "Oh, that poor horse! They can't do this! They just can't." Canonero did not say anything, of course. He had a different way to communicate, if you paid attention like the oldsters. They looked at the crooked foreleg, sure, but they spent more time looking at a head held high and proud. They noted the extra thickness through the chest, but instead of seeing another liability, they just saw a difference. Some studied their programs and found Canonero was raised in Venezuela. Eyes gazed into the distance while thumbs and forefingers rubbed chins. They were not sure, but they had been around long enough to know when the conditions were right. That day they might, just might, see something. If you had watched and listened to the oldsters, you would have seen a lot more of them than usual shuffling to the betting counter. You might have heard one or two of them muttering something like, 'That one got the look of eagles about 'im,' followed by the nodding of several gray heads in agreement. However, we barely pay any more attention to the old than we do the dead, here and now. By the time the horses were in the gate, a strange thing had started happening, which annoyed our Wit. The undertone of the crowd had again turned hopeful. "He did win that race down there in South America at Derby Distance," a voice spouted. The crowd murmured agreeably. The gate crashed open, and the horses surged out before Thomas could squash this latest flare up. The Caracas Cannonball was a dud. In just moments, he fell back into eighteenth place in a nineteen horse race. "Looks like someone forgot to light the fuse!" Thomas said. That caused shame-filled chuckles in a futile attempt to hide that they had bit once again. They had started to think, maybe, just maybe ... Now, it is very natural for us to have developed a dislike for Thomas by this time. He is always delivering the biting remark, stealing our hope. It has been drummed into us in our world of thirty-year mortgages, layoffs, and scrimping to send the kids off to college that the long shots don't come in. No one we know wins the lottery. The shy, strange boys do not get the popular, beautiful girls and crippled horses do not win the Kentucky Derby. They just don't. We know that, but we love to watch and even though we may not admit it to anyone, we all think, 'c'mon, please, just this once.' When it starts, we cheer like mad, because that is us out there. When the hope starts to fade, we shake our heads wryly because we were taken in, yet again. However, we also say, 'Hey, that son of a gun made a run at it, though, didn't he?' Because when it gets down to it, we know we won't get to the top of the tree, but we can shake the hell out of that son of a bitch and let 'em know we're down here. The Wit's comments try to take even that from us. The longer the shot, the more we build up for it, and the more Thomas just has to tear it down. The way he acts, you'd think it hurt him for people to believe in beating the odds. Almost as if he had a personal stake. Meanwhile, the jockeys were doing their jockey thing. They skillfully shifted back and forth, creating spaces and sliding in and out of them, trying to get that all-important 'inside position' without making a fatal mistake and getting boxed in. So just about everyone went back to watching this beautiful equine dance, played out for the ninety-seventh time. Everyone except for the oldsters, that is. You see, the oldsters' experience showed them what to watch. Because they were looking in the right place, they were the first to see Canonero's jockey do the exact opposite of what he should have been doing. Instead of shifting and shouldering his way to the inside, he started to hobble-step to the outside, about the worst thing you can do. Since running on the inside is the shortest distance around the track, you pretty much knock yourself right out of the race by running on the outside. When he went to the outside, even the diehards realized it was a desperate move by the jockey. During a race, no one knows that horse better than the jockey; if he's giving up, you'd be a fool not to. Unless, once that horse got to the outside he started to go faster - like Canonero did. At which point our doubting Thomas snorted loudly and said, "The crazy bastard's still trying to win! Doesn't he know it's over?" However, instead of derision, the tone was closer to confusion tinged with a sort of grudging admiration. And it would have been over, because he was just too far back to catch up, except right then the Caracas Cannonball really started to go. When he did, man, that crowd exploded! Still, the experienced eyes could tell this hobble-stepping upstart didn't present a real threat. To be a threat he would have to go even faster. Canonero went even faster. Right at that moment, people began to recognize they were seeing something. A raucous cheer burst from their lips. A roar so loud the front running jockeys thought a horse must have fallen. In the crowd one man kept chanting, "Would you look at that? Would you look at that?" As if anyone could have looked anywhere else when this incredible thing was happening. As the frenzy reached its peak, the crowd realized one heart-wrenching fact; even at his spectacular pace, there was no way he could win. There just wasn't enough track left to catch the leaders before they broke into their sprint for the finish. Yet, it didn't seem to matter. How often are we given that one shining moment in a life otherwise all too predictable? Everyone there knew they had just seen something special and forever were a part of something unique. People started saying things like, "By God, he gave him a run, didn't he?" and strangers hugged. Tears flowed. Followed by many "That littul horse, he didn't 'ave no quit in 'im," because how often do we see something? They understood not quitting no matter how high the odds stacked against you. In order to believe what happened then, you need to hear what those oldsters could've told everyone, if anyone had bothered to ask. You see, the oldsters had learned to study a thing from more than one angle. They understood the difference between a winner and a champion. Any good horse can be a winner, if the weather conditions are just right, and the pace is just right, and the horse is in just the right position. However, to be a champion, a horse needs to win when everything is wrong. To do that, a horse needs an edge, like being raised and trained in Caracas, Venezuela and then brought straight to Churchill Downs, Kentucky fast enough that the horse's lungs and heart were still used to laboring for air at thirty-one hundred feet above sea level instead of wallowing in it at a paltry four-hundred fifty feet. That is where his strange little barrel chest came from. A horse needs to breathe if he's going to race. This meant lungs used to struggling to suck in thin Caracas mountain air were gulping down oxygen in low-lying Churchill Downs. All this added up to a simple one-word truth - edge. As hard and fast as the Caracas Cannonball had run to circle the entire eighteen-horse field, he still couldn't break to the inside and shorten the race. However, he could still do two things to win, and he did them. He ran harder and faster. Thomas saw what they were going to do first and he groaned aloud. An old woman in the crowd saw next and she fiercely whispered, "Oh, you bastards! You bastards!" And then they boxed him. They trapped him against the rail, one horse in front and the other to the right of Canonero lagging a little. Generally, the only way to escape this maneuver is to break stride and swing outside to go around both horses. However, breaking stride would slow Canonero down, causing him to lose valuable ground on the leaders. Maybe at the middle of the race he would have time to make that distance up, but not here in the final stretch. It is not fair to be angry with the jockeys who boxed him. What they did was perfectly legal. Besides, winning the Kentucky Derby was their lifelong dream, too. If they did not give their all to win, that would have been just as wrong as cheating to win. There is no mercy horseracing. That is what made what happened next so amazing. Canonero had grown up in Venezuela and raced on hardscrabble tracks. Afterwards, he had to shoulder his way in to get to the grain. That is what made him different. It is what made him a breed apart from your regular high-strung, prancing, skittish thoroughbred that had everything easy. Perhaps it had been drilled into his mind if you wanted something valuable, it was supposed to be hard. You just had to try harder. You see, even boxed in, Canonero and his jockey refused to accept it. Heedless of flying hooves and flailing riding crops, Canonero lowered his head and wedged his muzzle in the little gap between the two front-runners. He pushed with each stride, driving his body in between them until the horse on his right broke stride and bounced a little to the outside. Since they had not given him a hole, he made one. The space probably was not big enough for a regular-sized thoroughbred, but it certainly provided enough room for a pugnacious little cannonball. So he powered through it. It seemed the Caracas Cannonball did not know or care what he should do; all he knew was what he was going to do - run faster. He ran faster than any horse had run the Derby in the past thirty years. Fast enough to win. You have to believe a Venezuelan raised and trained horse with a crooked leg, named Canonero II came from second-to-last to first to win the Kentucky Derby in nineteen seventy-one, because he did. You also must accept that his owner entered him in the race because the man's departed mother told him to in a dream, because that happened, too. You do not have to believe anything else in this story because I was not there. Still, I will tell you I believe every word of this story is true, even if it didn't happen that way. Recognized Share your own writing! - Information on our membership for writers. Author Notes Yes,this is based on actual 1971Kentucky Derby which Canonero II won. As always, I THANK YOU in advance for your grammatical assistance, suggestions, and comments. Pays one point and 2 member cents.

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