Good morning!
They put us on the third floor, in a luxury suite with a wet bar (no booze), wide screen TVs, cushy seats, plush carpeting and a veranda overlooking the infield.
“What, no room in the press box?” I asked.
“There is no press box,” exclaimed Tom Jicha, who was stringing for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. “Nobody writes about horse racing anymore.”
Not unless it’s the Fountain of Youth, which is an important prelude to the Kentucky Derby on May 7, or the Florida Derby on April 2, which will be a showdown between two unbeaten 3-year-olds. On those rare occasions, people do write about horse racing and the need arises for a press box.
I’d frequented Gulfstream during its multi-year makeover from racetrack to “racino” but never wanted press credentials. During the drive I wondered about the press box. It wouldn’t be the large white attic where Saratoga houses its Fourth Estate, a richly historic and perfectly reasonable location for grown men with decent vocabularies to write about horse racing.
Saratoga prides itself for being the same today as it was in 1900, but Gulfstream wanted the glitz. Its Vegas vibe is underscored by a majestic bronze statue of the winged-horse Pegasus, 120 feet high for people to see on the corner of Route 1 and Hallandale Beach Boulevard.
“Lunch is on us,” said communications director David Joseph. He directed me to the third floor and said to follow the hallway down to the last door on the left. I climbed an empty stairwell three flights and opened the door to a dazzling swirl of svelte young women sipping $14 martinis on the arms of men eating $48 steaks.
Wrong floor, I thought, and wrong room.
“Don’t complain,” said Jicha. “The Florida Derby, this’ll go for $15,000.”
I’d asked for a press pass and gotten a luxury box.
In the 1960s, high rollers like Jackie Gleason and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder came to Gulfstream to smoke cigars and bet on horses named Northern Dancer and Eastern Fleet with jockeys named Bill Shoemaker and Eddie Maple in the irons.
Nowadays gamblers spend more in the casino than they do at the parimutuel windows, but not Jicha. “I’m here 75-100 days a year, and the only time I went in the casino was to take a leak.”
John Pricci was outside on the deck smoking a cigarette and enjoying his unobstructed view of the frontstretch. Pricci’s a retired Newsday staffer whose website, horseraceinsider.com, includes power rankings, track conditions, race analysis, stakes recaps and trainer quotes.
He prides himself that the “Race of the Day” picks he’s made five time a week since 2007 have shown a flat bet profit. “That’s not easy, picking the winner of the day’s biggest purse.”
The door swung open and Charlie McCarthy lugged in his computer and a briefcase. He glanced at Pricci and joked, “It must be a big day John, you’re in a coat and tie.”
“Yes,” Pricci agreed, “I usually reserve this attire for Grade 1s.”
McCarthy works for Blood Horse and bloodhorse.com. Two years ago he was part of a reporting crew that won an Eclipse Award for its in-depth coverage of California Chrome’s near miss in the Triple Crown.
The racing cognoscenti kept arriving. Bob Kieckhefer could’ve fit in any prep school classroom with his white wavy hair, turtle-framed glasses, and blue oxford knit shirt. He was pouring a Pepsi when he overheard Pricci and I discussing the nuances of writing. “Prepositional phrases! Does anybody know what a prepositional phrase is anymore?”
His amusement prompted a stab at linguistic humor that only my journalism mentor Denny Wilkins would appreciate. Indeed, salon.com ranked it as one of the 10 nerdiest jokes of all time: “A guy flies into Boston, gets in the cab and says, “Take me to a place where I can get scrod.’ The cabbie turns and says, ‘I heard a lot of people ask for scrod, but it’s the first time I’ve heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive.”
Kieckhefer lives in Chicago and writes for UPI. His first day on the job was Aug. 27, 1968. Two days later he was plunked on the head by a bottle while he was covering the Democratic National Convention. He’s covered thoroughbred racing in Japan, Hong Kong and Dubai, and claims the sport is thriving worldwide.
It was a day to play favorites, and when XY Jet, Cathryn Sophia and Catch a Glimpse won consecutive races on the stakes-filled undercard Jicha crowed, “I had the Pick 3!”
“Free drinks on Tom,” said McCarthy.
“Free drink on Tom,” said Jicha, noting the skimpy $3.40 payoff.
Down near the paddock I bought a $7.50 shrimp cocktail and went looking for Turners Falls’ George Bush. George pesters trainers for inside info, but I couldn’t pick him from the throng of racegoers who were crammed on the apron and sitting in tiki huts. The only familiar face was alpha dog George Sheehan, who’d frequent Hinsdale Race Track when he ran a restaurant in Wilmington, Vt.
George is quick to call himself a handicapping expert, but aren’t we all? His shaggy shoulder length blonde hair had turned a shade gray, but his deep, scratchy voice had the same refrain and he was wearing his usual bright Hawaiian shirt. “My lucky shirt!”
He jovially proclaimed that he’d just won a lucrative Pick 3 and swigged from his Coors. He looked at the can and bitched about the price. “Premium beer, $6.10; the card’s better, they charge more. Lemonade was $8 at Saratoga last summer. That’s the signature gouge of the meet, boys and girls.”
“Did you see Secretariat?” he asked, referring to the movie about the 1973 Triple Crown winner.
“No,” I replied.
“Good for you! Horrible movie. The worst thing they did was turn Pancho Martin into a bad guy. Horrible movie.”
Back upstairs McCarthy emailed me his publicity notes and Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press explained the meaning of the word “mohaymen.”
“It either means, in new Arabic, protector, or in old Arabic as the Sheikh would have you believe, it means Dominator. They’re going with that.”
Mohaymen was the 6-5 morning-line favorite in the six-horse field, purchased for $2.2 million by the Shadwell Stable on behalf of Sheikh Haddam.
Reynolds was tracking the University of Miami’s basketball game against Louisville. “Eight points,” he said, “73-65.” He grew up in the Northeast on Indian Lake near Lake Placid, and has covered college and pro sports in south Florida for 14 years. “I said I’d leave after five,” he shrugged.
When I mentioned that the UMass football coach had been the offensive coordinator at Miami, Reynolds nodded and said, “Mark Whipple. Good guy, smart guy. The smartest guy in the room. Just give him a quarterback, some fast receivers and four big linemen from New Jersey.”
He was unaware that Whipple had recruited former Virginia Tech quarterback Andrew Ford. “Wait … Andrew Ford is at UMass? He’s a good quarterback!”
But he wasn’t nearly as impressed by the high rating that rivals.com and other recruiting sites had given the UMass basketball team. “Rating recruiting classes is the most overrated thing in the history of things. If you work for Rivals and the kid calls you back, he goes up a star.”
As the Fountain of Youth drew near, Reynolds, McCarthy and the others left to watch the race trackside where they could interview the winning jockey and trainer. Kieckhefer and I decided to detach from the din and bedlam below and stayed in the suite to get a better view.
Trained by Kiaren McLaughlin and ridden by Junior Alvarado, Mohaymen was gunning for his fifth straight win. He’d be challenged by undefeated Zulu, trained by Todd Pletcher and ridden by J.R. Velazquez, and an undefeated Florida-bred named Awesome Banner.
Kieckhefer went to the AmTote machine in our suite and bet Mohayem at 2-5 odds, meaning he’d pay $3.40 on a $2 bet. I put $15 and $10 bets on Awesome Banner and Zulu at 7-1 and 4-1, respectively.
“Every time I come to Gulfstream for a race like this I think of when Holy Bull broke down,” said Kieckhefer. “What people forget is that the winner of that race was Cigar.”
Holy Bull was a crowd favorite in the 1990s. He trained at Gulfstream and won the Florida Derby and Travers Stakes. In 1995 he was all-out with Cigar to win the Donn Handicap and was pulled up by jockey Mike Smith. “Holy Bull stopped!” exclaimed track announcer Tom Durkin. “An astonishing development here!”
Holy Bull survived his injury but never raced again. Cigar went on to win 16 straight races under jockey Jerry Bailey.
The Fountain of Youth was at a mile-and-a-sixteenth around two turns. The starting gate opened and track announcer Larry Collmus’s voice wafted in the wind, “They’re off in the Fountain of Youth and away to a perfect start!”
Awesome Banner nosed in front and led down the backstretch but gave way rounding the far turn. Velazquez steered Zulu into the lead and urged his horse up the frontstretch. “It’s always tough when you’re trying to get by Todd Pletcher,” McLaughlin later remarked.
Experience was the deciding factor. Mohaymen had already won twice around two turns while neither Awesome Banner nor Zulu had tried a two-turn distance. Nearing the ¾ pole, Alvarado swung wide and muscled Mohaymen into the lead. Zulo was no match and the favorite pulled off to a convincing 2¼-length win.
Kieckhefer cashed his ticket and I dropped mine in the trash.
“Zulu was a wreck going into the gate,” said Pricci. “This horse Mohaymen is something.”
The Sheikh’s horse has now earned over $800,000 and could skip the Florida Derby and go straight to Churchill Downs. Instead, McLaughlin says he’ll pull a Gary Cooper and put his horse in against unbeaten Nyquist on April 2. The West Coast invader must win the Florida Derby in order to claim a million dollar bonus.
“The Kentucky Derby’s in Florida this year,” cracked Jicha.
That’s horse racing. Jicha and his colleagues might need a bigger suite.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.