Six Lessons for Six Sons by Joe Massengale & David Clow

Author:Joe Massengale & David Clow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307341877
Publisher: Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2006-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

EVEN A casual racing fan would recognize some of the greatest jockeys ever to ride in the racing photos Joe has at home: Willie Shoemaker, four times the winner of the Kentucky Derby, three times the Preakness winner and five times the winner of the Belmont Stakes, rode Joe’s very first winner, Atom Eyes, at Santa Anita in 1981. (For Shoemaker, Joe broke his own rule: he asked the great jockey for an autograph.) Chris McCarron rode over seven thousand winners and won over a quarter of a billion dollars in purses. He brought Dove In Flight home in first place for Joe here at Hollywood Park in 1985. Kent Desormeaux won on Gourmet Girl for Joe at Hollywood Park in 1997.

Joe’s most treasured win was his biggest, the 1998 Bay Meadows Oaks. Mention the horse’s name and Joe still smiles.

“Gourmet Girl . . . beautiful black filly, long legs . . . I remember the first time I saw her with my partner. I said, ‘That’s the one I want.’ Bay Meadows is up north in San Mateo, in the same area where my brothers and I used to work on those long trips away from home. Imagine how that felt . . . fifty years after I was up there hustling for work so I could pay twenty-five cents to get back over the Bay Bridge, I had a horse at Bay Meadows for the biggest race of my life.

“That track was a beautiful place, and a stakes race like the Oaks is a big event. The track rolled out the red carpet for the owners that day. My horse didn’t get much respect from the newspapers. Most of the horses were local favorites, and the Bay Area papers were all saying that a horse called Nonies Dancer looked like the one to beat at 3–5 odds. One of the sportswriters called Gourmet Girl a ‘shipper,’ meaning a horse shipped in for the race from out of town. They thought she might finish in the money, but never in first place.

“I was up there for the race with my brother Oliver. The night before the Oaks, I was just pacing the hotel room. Couldn’t close my eyes. I kept reading the Racing Form over and over like there was something in there I didn’t know already. And I just got a feeling. I woke my brother up and told him, ‘Oliver, we’re going to win. We’re going to take this by ten lengths.’ He rubbed his eyes and asked me, ‘How do you know?’ I just did—I never felt anything so strongly in my life as that. I just knew it.

“I couldn’t watch the race. I sat in the clubhouse. You see how it is here, people from all over the track come up and talk and I like that, but this time I just wanted to be by myself. I watched it on television. I’ll never forget it—they opened the gate and I heard the announcer say, ‘Gourmet Girl stumbles to her knees!’ I just said a prayer.

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