If only I could have gotten my own picture that day at Santa Anita. It was a beautiful November afternoon. The sky was a marvelous blue and the crowd was enormous. So big was the crowd in the grandstand that day at Santa Anita that getting a picture of Zenyatta would have been the most difficult of tasks. Certainly more difficult than predicting her victory that day. I left my camera at home. Getting her picture that day she beat all the best males the world could run her way would have been great. I could have added it to the pictures I took of Rachel Alexandra the day she opened her 2010 campaign.
You see, after the BC Classic I wrote as if Zenyatta had already won Horse of the Year honors. Surely she was going to be the chosen one. But it wasn’t to be. No, the ‘conventional’ racing gods felt that Rachel Alexandra was the one worthy to be called 2009 Horse of the Year. Afterall, she did beat the boys herself including ’50 to 1′ Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird and the eventual Belmont winner Summer Bird.
I was at the Fair Grounds the day Rachel opened her 2010 campaign. It was the New Orleans Ladies Stakes — a race that was written for her. And in a twisted tale of fate, Zardana, a horse sent by trainer John Shireff’s as if on a ‘scouting mission for the Queen,’ wore down the reigning Horse of the Year and gave Zenyatta her victory by proxy — as if to prove a point. Surely the outcome wasn’t what Jess Jackson and Steve Asmussen had in mind. But, it just may be the only satisfaction Zenyatta will ever get from the filly who might have been favored more because of where she raced then who she beat.
On Friday, Zenyatta will attempt to win her 16th straight race in the $500,000 Apple Blossom (G1). at Oaklawn on a conventional dirt surface where she had hoped to meet ‘this Horse of the Year’ in a race she’s already won. I’m sure that the connections of Zenyatta knew that a very lucrative meeting with ‘the champ’ would be at risk when they sent Zardana down to New Orleans. It wasn’t about the money.
In my mind, I’ll always have a picture of Zenyatta. You see, it’s the one where she’s rolling home down the middle of the track wearing down Gio Ponti in the final yards of the 2009 Breeder’s Cup Classic to remain undefeated. It’s the picture of her in the winners circle as the first filly or mare to win a race written to bring together the best horses from around the world in a test of stamina. And it’s the one I have of her being crowned Horse of the Year. Oh, if only.
