Starting Gate

Horse racing is a writer’s game rather than a broadcaster’s game because, as wonderful as a great race is to see, it is even more wonderful to visualize. Everything horses do is arcane; most things they do are subtle. In the course of a two-minute race, the eye can’t pick up any but the grossest details; retrospective interpretation is always illuminating.

In this year’s Kentucky Derby, it looked on the tape as though the winner, War Emblem, had cut in front of the third horse, Perfect Drift. When asked after the race why he didn’t register a foul, Eddie Delahoussaye, Perfect Drift’s jockey, said simply that he might have if he had lost by a neck, but it was clear to him that Victor Espinoza, War Emblem’s jockey, had so much horse left that it wasn’t worth the protest. The fact is, horses require elegant interpretation in the same way all unpredictable quantities do--metaphors like “came from the clouds” and “nipped at the wire” try to give the feel of something ineffable, something that feels like it has meaning but may not.

Kevin Conley and Elizabeth Mitchell are writers first and horse lovers second. Conley wrote a piece for the New Yorker about Storm Cat, the most expensive thoroughbred sire in the world, and then decided a book about horse breeding might be fun. Mitchell, who used to work for George magazine and has written a book about George W. Bush and his family, happened to go to the 1999 Kentucky Derby and, as a result of a dream, won a bundle on longshot Charismatic. Their books, though quite different, attempt to bridge normal life and life with horses; both succeed, one comically and one tragically.

Mitchell’s story is a strange one and almost bursts the bounds of her form. She found herself at the Derby as a celebration and maybe as a ritual exorcism. Her new boyfriend, Chuck Fulgham, was recovering from the effects of chemotherapy to treat leukemia. Neither he nor Mitchell was a longtime horse-racing fan, but they resonated strongly with Charismatic and his jockey, Chris Antley.

After the Derby, Charismatic went on to win the Preakness and would probably have won the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown if he hadn’t snapped his sesamoids on the long Belmont homestretch. As soon as he could stop the horse, Antley leaped from the saddle and stood beside the animal, holding the horse’s injured foot up, tears streaming down his face.

Synchronicity is at the core of every horse racing story. Somehow, the ever-changing pattern of RNA, intention, accident and luck produces one dramatic story after another, and a horse race is its own best emblem of such happenstance--18 brightly colored silks making a randomly beautiful pattern on a brown track between two white rails until the finish line determines the winner and installs a narrative in the history books. This synchronicity seems to have inspired Mitchell to write this book.

The good times didn’t last long for either Antley or Fulgham. In spite of two more bouts of increasingly arduous treatment, Fulgham died at the end of 1999. Antley died, possibly was slain, at the end of 2000. Fulgham was 31; Antley was 34. One of the few nice things Fulgham experienced toward the end of his life was a visit by Antley to his hospital room, where Antley was kind and encouraging, though it was obvious to everyone that the end for Fulgham was near.

In form, Mitchell takes Laura Hillenbrand’s best-selling “Seabiscuit: An American Legend” as her model. She profiles the owners (Bob and Beverly Lewis), the jockey, the horse, the breeders and the trainer (though judging from the notes, she didn’t actually get to talk to D. Wayne Lukas, Charismatic’s trainer, which is fine because Lukas has said plenty on the record over the years and doesn’t like reporters). As with “Seabiscuit,” the jock’s story is the most interesting and dramatic, though Mitchell does what she can with the much-loved Lewises and the not-so-loved but always interesting Lukas. She also fills in, gracefully I think, her own heartbreak.

Often the story is sordid or fearsome. Upon investigation, Mitchell discovered that Antley had been one of racing’s lost souls: a man of unusual talent, accomplishment and charm who destroyed his life and his career with drugs, alcohol and bad companions. His is also one of racing’s lost stories: The Pasadena police--Antley lived and died in Pasadena--have closed the book on his demise, even though the coroner’s explanation--an overdose of methamphetamine and a weight-loss drug--seems unlikely on its face. Mitchell suggests that drugs are an easy answer to what might be a hard question. Antley often told friends that someone was going to get him. Mitchell hints that that someone was not necessarily a drug dealer but possibly someone closer to racing and race fixing.

Perhaps Mitchell’s years writing about politics prepared her to see the dark side of horse racing, and certainly there is a dark side. But because racing is a world of secrets and rumor, it is impossible to know what we may not be seeing, and every writer sees what he or she is prepared to see. No one knows how many trainers or jockeys cheat, how many horses run sore or injured, how many accidents are the result of pure danger and chance, how many the result of chicanery.

Mitchell is a practiced and assiduous delver. “Three Strides Before the Wire” is the result of hard work, but Mitchell, though always full of feeling, manages to avoid Hillenbrand’s overheated style. She also has a less glamorous and more immediate story to tell. My only objection, and it is a small one, is that perhaps her stories were told too soon. Antley’s story is unfinished and no longer news, and Mitchell’s own story, too, is almost too fresh to assimilate.

For the scenic tour, we have “Stud” by Conley. He looks at the real heart of the horse business, which is breeding. Horse farms in Kentucky are where the big money is made: A successful stallion’s breeding income dwarfs anything he might earn on the racetrack.

Thoroughbreds breed by what is called “live cover,” rather than artificial insemination, and the act is loud, imposing and repetitive. Lots of writers, myself included, have wrung whatever bits of pawky salaciousness there are to be had from it but, unlike horse racing, it is better seen than reported.

Conley is a stylish and witty writer. He is observant and takes good notes, but he is a tourist in this world, and what he sees is what the farms, big and little, are willing to show him.

Books about horse racing, and horses in general, always have an audience problem. The books must be pitched to a general audience and must not only explain finer points for the average reader but also put everything in context. Thus a newcomer gets a good sense of what outsiders need to know. But such a book may not appeal to insiders, who are quick to pick up on any incorrect detail and toss the book aside. For example, Conley refers to a common equine sedative as “demosedan,” rather than “dormosedan.” More humorous, Mitchell refers to the Derby contender, Worldly Manner, as winning his first four starts in Holland and Denmark rather than at Hollywood Park and Del Mar tracks.

But errors aside, the truth is that for all the hoopla surrounding the races, the money and the sex, what really occupies the minds of horsemen and -women are the horses themselves: how to read a horse’s idiosyncrasies, how to mitigate their effects, how to get horses to run and win in spite of them, how to understand horses’ ills and navigate the tricky road to exceptional performance.

Trainers like Lukas and jockeys like Antley and Delahoussaye do much of this work automatically. At the start of this year’s Derby, Lukas’ horse, Proud Citizen, was restive in the saddling stall. Lukas stood with him, jiggling his lead rope and settling him with an expertise and force of personality that was evident even on TV.

When authors can’t communicate the characters and the idiosyncrasies of the horses, they are forced to leave out the most interesting and important figures in the picture.

For most of “Stud,” Conley seems to be a stranger at the wedding. He sees what he can and pays attention to what he’s told, but the real story, which is in the rumors and suspicions, the secrets and clues, is hardly hinted at, so Conley’s book just skims the surface.

Mitchell is more investigative and managed to get her informants to talk more openly. She went to Antley’s funeral, made friends with some members of his family, got to talk with fellow jockeys and associates who had real opinions. She is not shy about relating unpleasantness: for example, that Lukas criticized Antley after his death for rushing from New York to California to ride in another race the day after the Belmont, even though the horse Antley rode (and won with) was one of Lukas’ own.

Most telling: Toward the end of his book, Conley visits a herd of feral ponies in Pennsylvania and for several days observes them on his own without intermediaries. He begins to detect their ways of doing things and of being with one another. He begins to be fascinated with the equines themselves, which goes a long way to giving his book a certain charm.

Writing about horse racing is like writing about church: Something mysterious--often wonderful and sometimes terrifying--takes place within the ritualized and repetitive structure of these worlds. Participants are often hard put to communicate what they get out of the experience, but they keep going back for more.

With “Three Strides Before the Wire” and “Stud,” Mitchell and Conley have detailed their conversions. With luck they’ll stick around long enough to learn, and impart, the knowledge that comes later.