The Love of a Horse:
by Hank Nuwer
Two
butchers, a used-car salesman, and a stallion
named Timely Writer. The Triple Crown seemed within their grasps
– until the dream was shattered.
Colic. Nonhorsemen erroneously think of
burping
babies when they hear the word. But to a horseman it is highly charged,
conveying the image of an animal laid low, its hair
“dying”
on the skin, its insides twisted impossibly like old fish line. A
better comparison would be to think of “crib death”
if you
are a new parent, to know how terrified the owners and trainer of
Timely Writer felt when their once-in-a-lifetime colt was stricken with
colic.
The ailment is particularly a hazard for
racehorses
who must travel to compete. A change of feed or a few mouthfuls of
improperly cured hay is all it takes to generate deadly gas and
blockage of the delicate Thoroughbred digestive system. So it was with
Timely Writer. One day he breezed through his paces, demonstrating the
furious stride that had won $518,311 – with the promise of
millions more to come. The next day he was down in his stall, helpless
as a stroke victim, while frantic calls were made to owners Francis and
Peter Martin in Boston to tell them that a six-inch surgical slit
through Timely’s belly might be the only chance the horse had
to
live, let alone race again.
What a far cry from six weeks earlier,
March 6, when
scores of startled flamingos, their feathers the hue of a Guaguin
sunset, packed up landing gear to flee as the stampeding Timely Writer
circled their soggy infield enclosure for the second time. The animal
had accomplished everything jockey Jeffrey Fell’s crop and
high
voice had requested. Timely Writer, Nitram Stables’ prize
three
year old, had just won Hialeah’s $250,000 Flamingo Stakes,
the
richest race in Florida, with a time of one minute, forty-nine and
three-fifths seconds. That race had clearly established him as the
favorite for the Kentucky Derby.
It was a day of triumph.
Timely’s powerful
hooves, the shoes shaved on the inside a quarter-inch to prevent him
from nicking his own flying flesh, had sandblasted the jockeys aboard
15 colts trailing him. The number-two finisher, New Discovery, was
three and a half lengths behind when Timely boomed past the finish line
like an MBTA train overshooting its station.
And jockey Fell had another surprise
awaiting him.
Pandemonium reigned in the winner’s circle. Hialeah, a track
as
sedate and decorous as a papal reception, suddenly looked as
disorganized as a lynching. White-haired Jimmy Raftery, the official
track photographer – bumped and stiff-armed in a swelling
throng
of celebrants while recording for posterity the snorting, plunging
winner and his people – came back to his workroom and slung
his
equipment down. “I’ve never seen such a zoo in 30
years,” he complained.
Equally miffed track execs reproached
Timely
Writer’s owners for inviting the mob. The two men gently
returned
the rebuff. Then knew very few of the celebrants, many of them fans
wearing pink souvenir jackets, who spontaneously poured onto the soupy
turf. “They’re not friends of ours,” the
Martins told
the bigwigs, “they’re friends of the
horse.” The
veteran trainer for the Martins was equally stung by the criticism.
“I thought they were all newsmen,” said Dominic
Imprescia.
Neither friends of the Martins nor newsmen, the crowd that jammed the
winner’s circle were everyday people, many of them New
Englanders
vacationing in south Florida. And they were overjoyed. A dark
horse—a once-in-a-lifetime horse—had triumphed. For
the
same reason that the movie Black Stallion packed in audience after
audience, the crowd at Hialeah was delirious—the little guys
had
won. Fran and Peter Martin, two butchers from Boston, had beaten the
system.
No knowledge of impending disaster
spoiled this
triumph for Fran and Peter. The two men were celebrating with the best
of them down in the circle, even though neither was physically able to
jump for joy. Fifty-five-year-old Fran and his brother, Peter, a
self-described “senior citizen” who refuses to
divulge his
age, have slowed considerably from their younger years when they rode
horses for pleasure and knocked around a baseball on Sundays. Their
limbs are stiff and brittle as seasoned kindling. As co-operators of
Kyes Supplies, a Boston wholesale-meat distributorship that services
hotel restaurants with prime cuts, they are sorely afflicted with the
rheumatoid arthritis that comes with the territory for butchers. Their
upper cheekbones look perpetually frostbitten, and their countenances
are ruddy, although not nearly so crimson as their faces appear in
summer when the two reenter their government-required 35- to 38-degree
cooler after lunching outside. “Your blood thins
out,” says
Fran to explain the phenomenon. Each brother’s hands are
scarred
from slipups with trephine-sharp boning knives. A butcher’s
fingers, no matter how skilled, start to seem a part of the chopping
table after a man bones 10 hours in the blasting cold necessary to keep
meat fresh.
Since their late teens, the brothers
have
put in
60-hour weeks to make the business pay. Kyes Supplies was started by an
aunt’s husband back in the 1890s. The Martins are no less
proud
of the success they have achieved through the fruits of their labor
than they are with their racehorse. “We’re both
devoted to
the business,” says Peter. “The business is the
foundation,
the horse is the glamour.” Fran gets annoyed when asked if
the
business used to be a struggle. “What do you mean,
‘Was it
a struggle?’ That’s all this business still is, is
work!”
Forced to classify the Martins,
you’d have to
call them nice guys who are bucking the odds to finish first these
days. They believe in the Golden Rule, the Puritan Ethic, and the
American Dream.
They also believe in spending their few
leisure
hours at the track. They like the adrenaline rush one gets while
betting, the illusion of getting away from business, and the
companionship of men who know and love good horseflesh. Unlike most
working people, however, the Martins, back in 1954, dared to step down
from the grandstand and into the stables.
Interestingly, the Martins fit right in
at the
track. At Hialeah, dressed in conservative suits, the butchers look as
genuine as any of the millionaires eyeing their lesser steeds. As
active players in the sport of kings, neither brother tries to pose as
royalty, but both do come across as gentlemen rather than bumpkins. The
Martins like to jest that they do not play golf “because the
lines are too long,” but the real reason has more to do with
their station in life. If portly Fran and happy-go-lucky Peter dressed
in golf frippery, they would look as incongruous as David Niven in a
bloody butcher’s smock.
When the pink-jacketed fans charged the
winner’s circle after Timely Writer’s smashing
Hialeah
victory, neither Martin brother minded that ordinary people wanted to
share in the moment of glory. “I’m reading between
the
lines to find that a Boston horse is not supposed to be a big horse;
they [the people] demonstrated that when they all flocked out when he
won the Flamingo,” says Peter a bit defiantly. “All
those
people were little people. They weren’t a Fitch or a
Galbraith or
a Firestone.
“It seems you either have to
live in Kentucky
or Texas to have a racehorse,” he shrugs, “and
we’re
not—we’re Dorchester people, that’s all.
It’s
not supposed to happen, but it has! The part that strikes me to the
quick is that I’m thrilled to think that the average guy from
Boston is behind a horse owned by a bunch of little guys. I’m
all
for the people who are rootin’ for the big horse, because all
those rooters are my rooters.”
The Martins’ involvement with Timely Writer goes back to
years
when a postmidnight phone call shook Fran out of bed. On the line was a
Durante-schnozzed horseman named Tony Everard. He came to America as an
immigrant in 1956, a penniless, 18-year-old who even then possessed an
uncanny knack for recognizing horses blessed with that
runner’s
“look of eagles.” A compact man several inches shy
of six
feet, Everard is the owner of the prosperous Another Episode Farm, in
Ocala, Florida, where he breaks and boards horses. He met many of his
clients, including the Martins, when he worked in Boston during the
sixties as a free-lance trainer. The Martins recognized that Everard is
racing’s equivalent to whatever Hollywood talent scouts pluck
Lana Turners out of tacky drugstores. “This guy has a
tremendous
eye for a horse,” endorses Fran, who comes frequently with
Peter
to Ocala, suitcases in tow filled with fresh ribs for barbecuing.
Realizing that Fran had to roll out of
bed for work
at his customary 4:30 a.m., Everard apologized for the call’s
lateness. As the designated representative of Nitram
(“Martin” spelled backward) Stables, he had
purchased a
yearling named Timely Writer at Kentucky’s annual Keeneland
sale.
An hour earlier he had deposited a check with the sale’s
bookkeeper, and now he was calling from the motel room so that the
Martins could insure the horse.
This Keeneland auction is the equine
equivalent of
an eighteenth-century slave auction. It is an exciting, buyer-beware
affair where several hundred thousand dollars are exchanged for
approximately 800 one-year-old Thoroughbreds. Each baby horse is oh so
pretty, but the great majority are oh so slow. Sellers must only
guarantee that the babies are inoculated against communicable equine
infectious anemia, and that the horses are not known
“cribbers” or “wind suckers,”
animals whose
breathing is too labored to run. Once the gavel bites down, the new
owner is responsible for the purchase. Period.
Fran Martin needed no coaching on
Timely’s
background. He had long studied the Keeneland sales material and knew
this yearling’s lineage by heart. Martin was aware that
Timely
Writer’s grandfather was 1964 Kentucky Derby and Preakness
winner
Northern Dancer. The butcher calls the stud “probably the
best
sire in the country,” throwing off live foals at up to
$150,000
apiece. The dam, going back two generations, is out of the 1968 Hialeah
Handicap winner, Setto Bello. Martin also knew about a problem that
made Timely a questionable purchase. The yearling’s mom and
dad,
Timely Roman and Staff Writer, had crippled themselves before setting
hoof in any organized race—one-stepped on a drainpipe and the
other was kicked. In plain terms, Timely Writer was a long shot, but
successful long shots are what make racing addicts.
“He’s
out of an unraced mare and out of an unraced stud,” is the
way
Fran puts it, “but the parents before him were all
champions.”
Everard did have one pleasant surprise
for the
Martins. Timely in the flesh was an unusually big and solid progeny of
Staff Writer. The stud has had a propensity for throwing pint-sized
offspring.
The trainer told Martin that he was a
bit
disappointed over the price he paid for Timely Writer, however. Since
the yearling was one of the last animals on the auction agenda, many
buyers had already blown their allowances or gone off julep hunting.
Everard hoped to steal Timely for 10 grand. After all, he had bred two
or three mares to the sire, Staff Writer, and had got “fair
horses” at best. “Nothing great,” he
says, “but
I always liked their dispositions.”
Unfortunately for the Martins, one other
serious
bidder vied with Everard for the auctioneer’s attention. The
selling price on the board closed at $13,500. To give some idea what
sort of bargain Timely was, bear in mind that at a recent sale of colts
in Florida several days before Hialeah, a younger brother of the
Martins’ horse went for $255,000.
When Fran Martin finally returned to
bed, he had no
idea that Timely Writer was going to be any different from the
run-of-the-mill plugs Nitram Stables had bought for the past 28 years.
Fran won’t specify exactly how many horses were mistakes.
“Just say we had a lot of losers,” he says. Except
for
Peter and Fran’s supportive wife, Mary Theresa, the remaining
members of the Martin family were united in how they felt about
throwing hard-earned money down on horses. “They thought I
was
cuckoo,” admits Fran.
When it came time to break Timely Writer, it turned out that Everard
had misjudged the animal’s disposition. On the plus side,
according to the Irishman who broke his first horse when only 11, the
yearling “was very smart and very strong and things
didn’t
bother him. A lot of horses get real nervous when they’re
under
pressure; this horse gets better when he is put under
pressure.”
Timely was particularly adept at taking to the starting gate. He has
always slipped quietly into place as if aware that unlimited freedom to
run is but a bell ring away. Many horses break down training for the
start, where the shock and strain on the limbs and nervous system is
tremendous. On the minus side, Everard says, “He was rough to
break. He owns his quarters. He was the same when he was turned out to
pasture with 10 other colts. He was tough. He fought for his stuff, and
he was one of the leaders of the field.”
When it came time to break Timely
Writer, it turned
out that Everard had misjudged the animal’s disposition. On
the
plus side, according to the Irishman who broke his first horse when
only 11, the yearling “was very smart and very strong and
things
didn’t bother him. A lot of horses get real nervous when
they’re under pressure; this horse gets better when he is put
under pressure.” Timely was particularly adept at taking to
the
starting gate. He has always slipped quietly into place as if aware
that unlimited freedom to run is but a bell ring away. Many horses
break down training for the start, where the shock and strain on the
limbs and nervous system is tremendous. On the minus side, Everard
says, “He was rough to break. He owns his quarters. He was
the
same when he was turned out to pasture with 10 other colts. He was
tough. He fought for his stuff, and he was one of the leaders of the
field.”
Fran Martin agrees that Timely is a
feisty rascal.
Even as a yearling, Timely could be dangerous if underestimated.
“There was this time he threw his rider down in
Florida,”
recalls Fran. “Everard told him not to take too much old of
this
horse, and this kid said: ‘I been on a hundred horses
–
don’t worry about it!’ The kid took hold of the
horse, and
he wound up on the infield. Broke the kid’s arm in three
places.
The horse went down the road maybe seven or eight miles between trees
and everything else. He just had a hell of a time for himself that day.
The son of a bitch came back about six hours later.”
An ornery horse does not a champion
make. But, says
Everard, Timely Writer merely had to sow some wild oats before settling
down. “It was in January and February [1981] when we started
to
find out just how much he was developing. He kept getting stronger and
just did everything 100 percent. This is when we knew we had a pretty
good horse. We built him up slowly for about four weeks, when each
Saturday morning he went a little stronger and stronger. Then, as we
began pitting him more, he just began knocking dead everything we had.
We knew we had a really good horse.”
Fran and Peter Martin, coming more and
more often to
Ocala to inspect their find, began to believe Everard’s
glowing
reports. Satisfied that the horse had “good action”
and
handled well, they decided to back the pony all the way. To the
Kentucky Derby, if possible, and then the Preakness and Bellmont. In
cold cash, that commitment meant an outlay of $50,000 for trainer Dom
Imprescia’s $40 per day, ice, traveling expenses, horse feed,
prime hay from New Mexico, vitamins, liniment, tack, fees, pine-oil
wash, muslin bandages, Epsom salts, poultice powder, snaffles, rope
leads, martingales, brushes, blankets, syringes, feed buckets, blinker
hood, and silks. Fifty thousand. Without guarantees.
Rain clouds in the Florida sky hang full
as udders
as stable boy Ambrose Pascucci and Timely’s
“bodyguard,” night watchman Chuckie Lawyer, putter
around a
long barn that houses Timely Writer and a half-dozen additional horses
under trainer Dominic Imprescia’s tutelage. Pascucci, a reedy
athlete with Neapolitan features, is idly pushing a broom, which is the
most common sound around race barns next to hoof beats. Lawyer, a burly
man is hauling manure out of the stalls, piling it upon mounds so fresh
that the three feet of steam hisses like smoke into the air. Timely
Writer is quartered in barn Q, stall 56, today for his battle in the
afternoon for the Flamingo Stakes. “Showtime in eight
hours,” says Ambrose laconically.
Timely is an impressive creature viewed
up close,
except for his ridiculous idiosyncrasy of keeping his tail dipped in
his water bucket. Although not a pretty boy, his profile is noble. The
bay colt’s wide forehead is marked by a falling star that
looks
more like a meteor. Thick veins line his head like tributaries. His
eyes are full and dark, the flared nostrils are wide and hairy
–
signs of intelligence and breathing capacity. The mane and tail are
thick and black. Red bandages, wrapped perpetually around the legs to
prevent injury, cover a white splash of color on the rear left leg. A
little over 16 hands tall, he possesses breadth and conformation that
far surpasses his rivals. He looks a year older than most three year
olds, the kind of “router” that thrives on distance
courses
such as the Belmont Stakes, and can spring like a jackrabbit even on a
muddy course. A definite advantage today, it seems, as the first drops
begin sprinkling. His loins are shockingly muscular –
“close-coupled” as they say in the barns
– and his
chest is solid as a bulwark. The horse is built like a boxer.
Ambrose is as protective of his charge
as a
grandmother – and with good reason. “He gets hurt
in the
stall, and it’s all over. All over,” warns Ambrose.
Ambrose, who admits to losing some skin
to
Timely’s powerful teeth watches each moment in the three year
old’s daily routine. The stable boy and the assistant
trainer,
Dom Imprescia’s son, take the animal out for exercise at 5:30
every morning. It is Ambrose who climbs aboard. Thus far he’s
not
been thrown, although there have been close calls. “Sometimes
you
have to put him strait, but you can’t get mad at him. You
have to
work around him and use common sense. He’s got a lot of
spunk.”
Ambrose has Chuckie the
watch’s full attention
as he tells him about the small pizza parlor he owned in Boston nine
years ago. On sudden impulse, he says, he quit the business and bought
a cheap racehorse with the money. Unable to afford a jockey, or perhaps
needing to prove something, he rode his own pony for five races and was
the very model of consistency. “I lost every one.”
Ambrose
moves all the time while he talks. His hips roll. His hands clutch at a
cigarette, the air, whatever’s in reach.
There is silence for a few minutes.
“I used to
make the best pizza in town.” Ambrose throws out the
statement
challengingly, like a glove across the cheek. Chuckie pulls a long sip
out of his ever-present Colt 45, then takes the bait.
“Then why’d you
quit?”
“Because I seen Secretariat on
TV. I wanted to
ride a horse like Secretariat. There hasn’t been one like him
yet. Won’t be one like him, either.”
“Aw, come on. You just fell in
love with a
horse; I know what happened to you. Secretariat was the first good
horse you ever saw,” Chuckie sounds as if he’s
talking
about a man who married his first youthful crush.
Ambrose’s arms curl and uncurl
and curl. “That’s right.”
“But he ain’t the
best around.”
The battle is on. “What do you
mean?
That’s the best horse—hey! I’ve seen some
good ones
in my time.” Ambrose is 27 but doesn’t look that
old.
“I’ve seen Affirmed run; I’ve seen
Seattle Slew run;
I’ve seen Spectacular Bid run. Ain’t never been a
horse
like Secretariat, and there won’t be.”
Chuckie polishes off his beer. He sets
the dead
soldier on the ground and frees a second Colt 45 from its plastic
binding. It is his turn to drop a bombshell. “There
won’t
be a horse like Citation. Never.”
“But…”
“Never. You know what made him
so great? He
could run short or long, six furlongs or a mile and three-eighths. It
didn’t make no difference.”
“Citation was a great
horse…”
“He was the greatest horse I
ever saw in my
lifetime.” Chuckie is 57 and looks it. His mouth is ruined,
the
teeth caved in on one side like a fallen levee.
“That’s been a long
time, I know.” This is said with respect.
“And Secretariat was a good
horse—don’t let anybody tell you he
wasn’t. He was a
good horse.”
“A great horse!”
“But he wasn’t
consistent enough.”
“This horse could win all of
them,” says
Ambrose, who, despite his youth and late start, has worked with two
Derby contenders. “This horse here. Timely Writer.”
Dominic Imprescia’s hand curls
around his
coffee cup. A busy man, he gives the impression of having all the time
in the world. His hair, thick as squirrel fur, is still full of glossy
black curls, and his distinctive face is easily recognized. He smiles
often, a trait perhaps picked up in his postwar days as a used-car
dealer.
Dominic, who sports a ferocious pink
blazer complete
with matching carnation the day of the race, has come up the hard way.
The son of a Fitchburg, Massachusetts, chicken farmer, he grew up with
the tedium and stench associated with chicken plucking. Before World
War II, his father helped him to escape the fowl business by setting up
Dom with a riding stable. War ended that enterprise, and he went into
the merchant marine. After the war and two boring years peddling
clunkers, Dominic bought a cheap nag named Roman Abbot, and after an
unhappy experience dealing with a professional trainer, decided to take
on the job himself. He won a couple races and, in 1949, bought a second
horse called Monstrance with the earnings. This one managed to clean up
in six races out of six. Dom was now hooked, and he dissolved the car
dealership. A scant 33 years later, in 1982, glory was all his.
“I’ve had to work
with cripples,
bad-legged horses, and stuff like that. You try to pick the easiest
spots you can.”
His philosophy about horses is as
inflexible as that
of the late football coach Vince Lombardi, who believed winning was the
only thing. According to Sports Illustrated, Dominic was once suspended
from racing for allegedly drugging horses at Suffolk Downs, a charge he
has steadfastly denied. “If they can’t win for you,
they’re no good for you,” says Dominic. Interviewed
at a
Gulfstream Park cafeteria two days after Hialeah, Dominic, soft-spoken
and not given to hyperbole, is effusive in his praise of the Nitram
champion. “That’s a smart horse, believe me when I
tell
you. You don’t find too many of them around. He’s
got
everything. He’s got the ability; he’s got the
heart; and
he wants to run. He does everything so easily. That’s what
makes
a racehorse.”
Dominic’s job is to serve as
coach to as many
as 20 horses at a time. Enough winners came home in 35 years to land
him and his wife of four decades, Ethel, a comfortable home and a
Cadillac.
With Timely Writer, Dominic has found
himself for
the first time in his life in the national limelight, and he has
weathered considerable criticism over some controversial decisions he
has made. The trainer’s job was made easier by the fact that
the
Martins gave him total decision-making power. All they asked, and
Dominic agreed, was that they be consulted.
The first controversial decision was to
test Timely
Writer’s mettle the first time out in a claiming race. Had
you,
I, or any one of 10,000 knowledgeable horsemen plunked down $30,000
before the Monmouth Park race began, the Martins would have lost the
horse of the year, going down in ignominy with trainer Max Hirsch, who
lost a million-dollar horse named Stymie in a $1,500 claimer.
“We
just took a shot and that was it,” says Dominic. Fran agrees.
“We just took a shot.” But he adds that it was this
race
“what give me the ulcer.”
The second decision was to offer the
horse up for
sale. Fortunately, Kentucky millionaire Peter Brent brought two finicky
vets to examine Timely. The vets said nay unless there was a throat
operation to improve Timely’s wind. The Martins complied, and
the
vets still nixed the deal. They said he walked too wide. The Martins
then took their horse off the block and instead sold half of their
syndication rights for an estimated $3 million to a New York vet named
William Reed. They now had enough money to bankroll their horse.
The third decision was to enter Timely
in a minimum
of races to save him for Hialeah and this summer’s Big Three.
Miffed over what they apparently thought was chickenheartedness, the
writers and racing secretaries snubbed Timely Writer for the so-called
Oscar of racing, the Eclipse Award, for the year’s best two
year
old. Dominic and the Martins were hurt by the snub. Timely Writer,
after all, had been the leading contender after finishing in the money
in six of seven races, including a resounding win in the Champagne
Stakes over Deputy Minister, the horse awarded the trophy.
Dominic’s explanation why he
brought Timely
along so carefully seems even more ironic in light of the
horse’s
setback due to colic. “A lot of good horses never get to the
[key] races because they’re overworked.” The
trainer gained
sweet vindication when Timely went on to win impressive victories, two
weeks apart, at Hialeah’s Flamingo Stakes and the
Gulfstream’s Florida Derby. Experts picked Timely as the
horse to
beat at a Derby prep in Louisville, and for the most glamorous of
races, the Kentucky Derby. Also, Eclipse Award-winner Deputy Minister
was out of the Triple Crown running. His owners ran him in two
relatively meaningless Florida races before Hialeah. Deputy Minister
wrecked his ankles.
The Hialeah Flamingo is now one hour
dead. The last
bettors are trickling into an awful traffic jam, still jabbering
incredulously about how Timely Writer came from behind at the
three-quarter pole to streak victoriously up the fleshy outside of the
track. Lights are all on in Barn Q, and except for a small crowd of
people there is no indication that America’s horse of the
moment
dwells here. Fran, who likes to do things “very
plainlike,”
has no insignia or foot-high signs with his name on it anywhere in
evidence.
Naked to the waist, wearing a
spanking-new pair of
Jordache jeans rolled way up over the ankle, Ambrose dutifully leads
Timely around and around the barn to cool him off. Already put away is
the bright orange blinker hood that makes Timely look as foreboding as
a hangman in competition. Also shirtless and similarly Jordached is
assistant trainer Dominic Imprescia, Jr. It is his responsibility to
assist Ambrose with workouts, to curry and brush, to supervise dawn
workouts, and to perform the 1,001 tasks that come up in a day. Until
Timely came along, Dominic wanted to become a commercial pilot; now he
is making his dad quite happy by following in the old man’s
hoofprints.
It is a small but vocal party. The lone
bench is
filled with people from the barns. They are enjoying a few beers and
munching on potato chips. A bottle of champagne, the $6.95 tag
attached, is passed from eager mouth to mouth. Dominic, Jr., usually
taciturn, is ebullient tonight. Precisely how angered and hurt the
Imprescias and the Martins were by the Eclipse Award snub is evident
here. Dominic, Jr., holds the champagne aloft as if it is a trophy. His
dark handsome face is wreathed in smiles. “They just messed
with
my mind—the writers did!” he shouts. “If
there’s someone better [than Timely], bring ‘em on!
Bring
‘em on! We’re Number One!”
It is he who held the reins for jockey
fell in the
tumultuous winner’s circle. “There must have been a
hundred
photographers spread out in front of us. Finally I couldn’t
keep
Timely’s head still any more, and I told Fell to get off.
That
track photographer made him get back up again. He kept shouting,
‘Those aren’t the right photographers!’ I
said,
‘How am I supposed to know which are the right ones? They all
got
cameras!’”
Timely Writer, at last looks placid. A
charged but
weary Ambrose leads him into his stall. Young Dom steps in to give the
horse a brushing, and Ambrose steps out. All at once, a young stable
hand from an adjoining barn ducks under the strap, a Budweiser in hand.
Timely instantly snorts a challenge. He whirls into the youth, tearing
his jacket and rolling him under the webbing. The intruder looks
ruefully at his own blood. “He bit me.”
Dominic, Jr., stands ramrod stiff in the comparative safety of
Timely’s withers. “Sure he did,” he
whispers through
clenched teeth. He waits for Timely’s bunched muscles to
relax.
“It ain’t too
bad,” clucks Ambrose. “He was just warning
you.”
The injured youth shuffles off. The
party instantly
becomes subdued lest the guest of honor again become offended. By 7
p.m. it is over, and young Dominic and his fiancée, Ann,
pile
their things into the trunk of their orange clunker. “I just
want
some sleep,” says Dominic, Jr. A brilliant glow of headlights
comes up fast. Dominic, Sr., springs athletically out o his caddy. The
trainer peers into Timely’s stall. The horse’s back
is
turned, and he is asleep. Young Dom assures his dad that the horse is
fine.
Dom, Jr., looks as though he is trying
to say
something profound. “We showed them,” he ends up
saying.
His father kisses him gently on the
face. “We showed them.”
During a horse race, the Martins are a
study in
contrast. Timely Writer’s come-from-behind style is rough on
Type
A owner Fran Martin. Using the King’s English, body English,
and
undeleted expletives, he grunts, swears, prays, cajoles, groans, and
tears his hair. Peter, who always sits beside Fran, is about as calm as
a man can be who hopes to rake in thousands of dollars. “I
take
things as they come,” he says. Peter is a man of few words,
all
of them clichés. “I don’t like to plan
that far
ahead,” he said a few days after Hialeah. “I like
to take
things presently as they happen. I take things in stride. I
don’t
know what’s going to happen next, I just go day by
day.”
Peter, an animal lover who for 14 years
treated his
(now late) dalmation to ice cream cones on walks, thinks of Timely as
the family pet. When he discusses the big horse, it is in the most
anthropomorphic of terms. “When you put on his tack to go to
the
races, if you could see a horse smiling, this horse is smiling. He
loves to get on a track and run.”
While Fran scarfs down milk night caps
and steals a
scant three hours sleep in two nights before the Flamingo, Peter claims
that high-stakes races “don’t make any difference
to
me—it’s not like a death.”
Even with the untimely injury to Timely
Writer,
Nitram Stables is expanding as a result of Timely’s
phenomenal
success. The Martins now have five horses, including a brood mare with
foal. The men plan to have a go at racing in a bigger way, but by no
stretch of the imagination can their operation be compared to those of
old money owners who have computers, planes, veterinarians, and
blacksmiths at their beck and call. Despite gaining overnight fame
after Hialeah, neither Fran nor Peter allows fickle fame to change
their lives. They try to avoid interviews; yet when they submit to one,
they are witty, charming, and helpful. They neglected to show up for a
press conference after winning the Hialeah Flamingo, sending instead
Dominic and the vet who bought his way into future syndication rights.
The Martins may have intended to snub the writers who passed up their
horse for the Eclipse Award, or perhaps they thought the vet would be
more vocal. (He wasn’t.) They simply forgot to attend a
pre-Flamingo “ABC Sports” interview, inadvertently
leaving
TV personality Jim McKay and crew fidgeting in front of
Timely’s
barn. They are, in fact, a lot like Timely Writer. Neither
the
Martins nor their horse try to be difficult; it’s just that
they
leave everyone else the hell alone—and expect the same
courtesy.
On the day that Timely apparently ate a
bit of bad
feed or perhaps his own straw bedding, the evidence was clear that
despite a claim by the trainer that Timely’s success
“charges up your life,” money came too late to
alter his
and the Martins’ daily lives significantly. Dominic still
toils
six days a week, feeling guilty about leaving and hanging by the
telephone when on outings with his wife or on trips to see his
white-haired 93-year-old widowed mother in Fitchburg. The Martins get
up each day at 4:30 a.m., as usual, then put in 12 hard hours. Fran
bristles when retirement is mentioned. “I love my
work,” he
says, making it clear that he’d sooner see Timely Writer
retire
to a Florida Beach with a bikini on than to do so himself.
So if there is any way that Timely
Writer charged up
the lives of Dom and the Martins, it was to put them on a 24-hour-a-day
high that crashed like a derailed train with Timely’s
illness. As
a result of the winnings and of wisely taking the vet’s
advance
on Timely’s reproductive glands, the brothers are now each
millionaires (or quite close after taxes bite down). Despite missing
the Kentucky Derby, they stand to make a nice piece of change from
Timely’s future earnings, but in no way can they expect to
garner
the $24.9 million in winning and syndication fees accorded 1979 Triple
Crown winner Spectacular Bid.
If the true test of a man’s
mettle comes in
adversity, the horse’s trainer and owners did themselves
proud
after Timely’s operation. Red-eyed and visibly shaken,
Dominic
Imprescia told a news conference that the race was unimportant as long
as the horse lived. Interviewed at home, Fran and Peter refused to go
into hiding. Both knew, as Fran often has stated, that
“Horses
are so fragile.”
Rather than despair about all that was
lost, Peter
thanked the Lord for all that was gained. “Timely came out of
his
operation wonderfully,” said Peter.
“Last night it was only a 55 percent chance that he would
live,
and now the doctors put it at 99 percent. He jumped into his feed
bucket like there was no tomorrow. That made me so happy that I almost
cried with joy.”
What’s more, added Peter, he
and his brother
are planning to attend the Kentucky Derby. “I’m
still going
down,” says Peter. “They’re not going to
put no black
crepe on me.” The Martins have but one regret. “I
just feel
sorry for Boston,” says Peter, “Because he was the
Kentucky
Derby winner.” The once-in-a-lifetime horse Timely Writer is
recovering, but it remains to be seen how he will do in competition.
“We’ll be back again,” says Peter.
Thus, two butchers and a used-car dealer were thwarted in their effort
to show the world what they had all along—a winner. But they
showed something else a damn sight more meaningful – true
class.
First published in Boston Magazine. All rights reserved by Henry Nuwer
Postscript from HN: Timely Writer had to be destroyed after breaking a
leg as a three-year-old at Belmont Park in 1982.