Readers Up #22: Above It All

The curse of interesting times! Spring seems to be the season for scandal; as I was writing last March’s edition on Headless Horsemen, Santa Anita’s shattering spate of breakdowns was underway. This year, as I turn to a jockey biography, American racing has been dealt a killer blow in the form of an FBI doping investigation… not to mention the double-edged sword of the global coronavirus pandemic. As tracks across the US either close to the public or cancel meets entirely and even the Kentucky Derby finds itself unmoored in September, it’s unclear whether racing will be able to capitalize on being, literally, the only game in town or if the sport will collapse for good.

Forgive me my comfort food, then. I always want to read about jockeys; that’s doubly true when day-to-day life is as uncertain as it is currently, when I can’t glory in my favorite winter sport (shadow-boxing the wind at Aqueduct), when the livelihoods and continued existence of jocks are so thoroughly at risk. Luis Saez and Tyler Gaffalione are eschewing traveling, while Rajiv Maragh and Irad Ortiz, Jr. have stepped back from racing altogether. The cancellation of spring meets like Keeneland’s, always a plum, spells financial disaster for athletes whose jobs are already built on a shifting foundation of precarity. So it feels odd, even illicit, to read a survey of racing’s second golden age: the era of Jose Santos. Nostalgia is a dangerous weapon at the best of times, and it's difficult to read Above It All without longing for previous years, ones I didn't even experience. Was it only twenty years ago that stars such as Evening Attire, Medaglia d’Oro, War Emblem, and Volponi squared off at Arlington? Santos’ stacked resume--City Zip, Lemon Drop Kid, Fly So Free, Volponi, of course Funny Cide and many more--serves to center him not only in his own time, but in the pages of history. For a fan not raised in the sport, for a reader with my tendencies, the association of horse and rider is necessary for retention. Thunder Gulch, Silverbulletday, and Point Given, for instance, became real through Gary Stevens while I was reading his memoir. Jerry Bailey and Cigar. Shane Sellers and Black Tie Affair. Julie Krone and Colonial Affair. Mike Smith and Holy Bull. 

So it went as I read Above It All, Bill Heller’s biography of Hall of Famer Santos, a diamond-studded volume of hectic highs and heartbreaking lows. The textbook knowledge of Funny Cide’s significance hits differently when described by a jock who loves New York tracks and New York-breds. The reminiscence of Aqueduct and Belmont at the tail-end of their heydays stings in this raw late spring, when Big A’s racing has halted and disease stalks Big Sandy. The idyllic depiction of Saratoga summers should be a balm for anxious minds fearful that the Spa may not open this year. And yet, despite the meticulous recapping of Santos’ most notable races, despite the laundry list of fin-de-siecle equine luminaries, despite the juicy tidbits of youthful excess and turbulent romance--there’s something missing. Heller is an Eclipse winner and veteran turf writer; he’s penned biographies for famous horses and humans alike, from Ron Turcotte to Forego. There’s not much lacking in the text itself. But, as with all but the most god-tier biographies, the subject’s voice is lost. Direct quotes from Santos pepper each page, as the jockey holds forth on his wives and children, favorite horses and least favorite trainers, recollections of injuries and opinions on handicapping. Where is the disconnect? Heller seems to enjoy his topic. He defends the 2003 Kentucky Derby scandal’s main character passionately, bringing journalists to task for their shoddy work in naming Santos a cheater, and relates affairs, winners’ circles, and family relationships with equal affection. What is this gulf between reader and text?

It may be fair to say that no jockey biographies are necessary, that the story of any great rider is written in their finest mounts. Even so, from the gate I’ve been hungry for details of the humans atop those mounts. My first context for Santos was as part of the cohort of jockeys who sued for the right to wear advertising during races in Kentucky, so I admit some bias in my angles of inquiry: never have I not been concerned with rider welfare, on the track and off it, and discrepancies in what purpose jocks serve versus how their sport treats them. Though the book is plentiful in details of Santos' relationship with his various agents, with other jockeys, and especially with trainers, and though it doesn't stint in the more sordid realities of the rider's life, the overall sense is of hagiography. When we know how the story ends--at the Racing Hall of Fame--some feeling of urgency and vitality is lost. This is not singular to Heller's book. The overarching story of jockeys in US sport is, longtime enthusiasts seem to believe, already written. The greatest successes, most tragic losses, and lowest crimes can be applied across the board, to the position rather than the human. Even the title Above It All suggests remoteness, remove, isolation. There’s precious little binding the jocks of North America together; Heller makes much of the fact that success in New York and Florida did not spell success for Santos in California. The circuits that riders traverse are often closed ones, mimicking cloistered jocks’ rooms, comparatively scant and typically slanted media coverage, and limited post-racing options. In the current era, it’s easy to imagine how taking a month or more off from racing will affect even the top tiers of riders like Ortiz, Jr. at Gulfstream, let alone his compatriots in the claiming ranks at Fonner Park.

As the story of Jose Santos shows, every jockey balances on a knife edge, riding high one moment and plummeting to the dirt the next. Ortiz, Jr. and Maragh’s decision to err on the side of caution might spread to more riders (a contagion of responsible decision-making, rather than frightening new illness), perhaps to the point of affecting Gulfstream’s current Championship Meet (note: I left this line, composed Thursday night, as-is; Gulfstream's Friday card is canceled). It’s one of the few gleams of collective action on the part of jockeys that I’ve witnessed in my enjoyment of the sport so far… and it makes me wonder what else they might accomplish if, after the wreckage of viral plague settles, they become more united than ever before. Perhaps their voices will be returned to them. Perhaps they’ll use those voices to swing real, lasting change in the sport. Perhaps, as ever, racing is America in miniature, and the apocalypse surrounding us is an apocalypse in the esctastic sense, a breaking and re-making of the world.

Gloomily, a little doomily,
Diana