The accident-car analogy might be applicable to racing in general but when it comes to running Rachel against colts on two weeks rest a more precise comparison would be the baby-car seat analogy.
You need a Form, you\'re in a hurry, you\'re only going a couple of blocks, you put Jr. in the car seat but you don\'t strap him in. Probably nothing happens. But if it does, you get rear ended and Jr gets thrown from his seat, injured or killed, do you ever forgive yourself? Or do you live with the anguish that you did not do everything possible to protect your child? Everything possible to protect: the difference between tragic accident and criminal negligence.
Now, I don\'t think there is a high probability that Rachel will be injured running in the Preakness. But I do think running on two weeks rest against colts there is a heightened probability. Maybe no more heightened than an injury occurring to a child who is not strapped into his car seat. But why run that risk?
Horses will always run to satisfy human vanity. But,should they be imprudently endangered to satisfy hubris? And that\'s what paying $10 million dollars for Rachel and running her in the Preakness is all about: not sport, but hubris.
Here\'s a poem by Philip Larkin. One can only hope that such a life awaits Rachel.
At Grass
The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again
Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps
Two dozen distances sufficed
To fable them : faint afternoons
Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,
Whereby their names were artificed
To inlay faded, classic Junes -
Silks at the start : against the sky
Numbers and parasols : outside,
Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,
And littered grass : then the long cry
Hanging unhushed till it subside
To stop-press columns on the street.
Do memories plague their ears like flies?
They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.
Summer by summer all stole away,
The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -
All but the unmolesting meadows.
Almanacked, their names live; they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,
And not a fieldglass sees them home,
Or curious stop-watch prophesies :
Only the grooms, and the groom\'s boy,
With bridles in the evening come.
