Book by Joe Drape
Review by T.D. Thornton
Anyone reading this edition of TDN is all too familiar with the 37-year drought between Triple Crown winners in United Sates racing that existed until American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) mesmerized the nation with his scintillating sweep of the spring classics in 2015. What might only be apparent to media members who cover the sport though, is that the 13 near-misses by horses who won the GI Kentucky Derby and GI Preakness S. but failed to win the GI Belmont S. during that same time frame also caused a hefty number of potential book deals to go down in flames.
Journalists who cover the Triple Crown have been known to craft and pitch book proposals by the time the second leg of the series is official. Considering that major publishing houses require six months minimum to turn a manuscript into a fully finished book, it's not jumping the gun to attempt to wow acquisitions editors in the small window of time between the Preakness and the Belmont, when the general public's interest in the sport is at its zenith if a Triple Crown is on the line.
In the introduction to his fine new book, American Pharoah: The Untold Story of the Triple Crown Winner's Legendary Rise (Hachette Books), author Joe Drape admits that during his two-decade tenure covering racing for The New York Times, he spent many a Saturday in early June “hoping that by day's end I would be writing the first draft of history (as they call journalism) about America's twelfth Triple Crown champion.”
Now, after following Team Pharoah through a whirlwind championship season that culminated with a win in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, Drape has had a chance to fine-tune his writing that appeared in the pages of the Times while solidifying the behind-the-scenes backstory of the entire captivating campaign. The resulting book, which went on sale Apr. 26, is a deep dive that manages to impart all the heartwarming aspects of American Pharoah's magnetism without glossing over the more prickly aspects of the industry that produced–and will benefit from–this once-in-a-lifetime racehorse.
Drape faces two obvious difficulties in telling American Pharoah's tale. The first is that anyone who buys his book already knows how the story ends. But considering that the racing public couldn't get enough of Pharoah in 2015, this should not be an obstacle to selling his story in 2016.
It takes a literary craftsman to overcome the second difficulty though, which is that any narrative about an animal–racehorse or otherwise–inherently has to be a story about people's experiences of interacting with that animal. And this is where Drape ends up being most successful–he takes a familiar tale and pumps it with new life by capably fleshing out what Pharoah was like before he blossomed into an equine for the ages; shaping the story of a special horse by detailing how American Pharoah touched the lives of the people around him.
The main players–owner Ahmed Zayat, trainer Bob Baffert, and jockey Victor Espinoza–are all subjected to fairly detailed character studies, and the complex juxtapositions of each of their personalities end up being more fascinating than any of their traits that stand alone.
Take Zayat, for instance. Before Pharoah came along, the passionate, emotional Zayat, according to Drape, both embraced the sport and walked the highly leveraged financial tightrope that a number of elite-level Thoroughbred owners do (without the public being aware of it) while coming oh-so-close to winning the Kentucky Derby. He hired, fired, then sometimes rehired big-name trainers, yet, as one horseman who dealt with Zayat attested, his mercurial behavior was tolerated because, “He plays the game hard. He buys good horses to give himself every opportunity. It's fun to be a part of.”
When Zayat finally wins the Triple Crown with Pharoah, he is resolute in his vow to share such a “gift” horse with the American public. Later in the book, it is difficult not to empathize with Zayat's jumble of emotions once he realizes Pharoah has crossed the finish line for the final time, with Drape describing him as “relieved, ecstatic, and sad all at once.”
Baffert is capably rendered as a split personality whose public and private sides are both mellowing thanks to two life-altering experiences. The first was a 2012 heart attack that nearly killed him; the second is American Pharoah.
The most humanizing moments of the book involve Baffert's realizations that he had made career choices early on as a trainer that cost him precious parts of his private life, and one of the true ironies involves how he finally hit the Triple Crown jackpot only after making conscious attempts to scale back his “always-on” racetrack lifestyle and spend more time with his family and young son. “Baffert wanted people to know that he was a contented man,” Drape writes, “one who had tried humility on and found that it fit him.”
Espinoza's zen-like equanimity in both the heat of battle and everyday life earns him the spot as the book's most likable human character. After losing the 2002 Belmont S. and Triple Crown aboard War Emblem (Our Emblem), Drape explains how Espinoza lost his heart for riding. He only regained it after deciding that horse racing is only, well, horse racing, and not anywhere on the same scale of importance as giving of himself to help children with cancer, which Espinoza does faithfully but with zero fanfare.
Then, of course, there are the character juxtapositions of the horse himself: American Pharoah was widely regarded by those who raised and cared for him as a weanling and yearling as extremely physically gifted and intelligent. Yet his pedigree was considered too unproven and chancy to be worth the high reserve Zayat felt he warranted at a Saratoga 2-year-old auction. Shortly before the sale, when Pharoah scraped an ankle and developed a superficial swelling, it appeared to tank his chances of bringing a high price. When a sales advisor insisted to Zayat that “This is the kind of horse we try to buy, so why are we selling it?” the deal to keep him was sealed.
It can be difficult to capture the poetic motion of a horse in full flight with written words, but Drape does so admirably. As a young foal, Pharoah is described as “exuding joy,” with his “head high, folding and unfolding himself with exquisite balance.” His first open gallop is recounted by his rider as “at once breathtaking and terrifying.”
Of his pre-Derby workout, a clocker says, “he stays in the air longer than any horse, and you get the feeling that there's not one gear left, but he may have two, three or four gears.”
In the Preakness he “rolled down the lane with the force of a waterfall.”
The Belmont? Pharoah “glided into the first turn like a marble circling a roulette wheel” and hit the finish wire “as if he were walking on clouds.”
The Triple Crown aftermath doesn't play as large a role in Drape's book as it might have seemed to race fans who experienced it last summer. Still, there are some nice touches in this concluding section, particularly when Drape captures a quietly candid side of Baffert. The trainer was so awed by the turnout at Pharoah's pre-Travers public gallop that he confessed that “this was the greatest moment in his career as a horse trainer, to see how a knowledgeable crowd had appreciated the work of art before them.”
You know how the tale ends at Keeneland. But Drape's words about the BC Classic are worth repeating as we consider how his book about American Pharoah might whet the appetite as hope springs eternal for the 2016 Triple Crown season.
“Nothing much was at stake–except the legacy of a horse and the definition of greatness.”
@thorntontd
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