Optimists tend to be wrong more often than pessimists. However, optimists tend to be happier than pessimists. It seems it is better to go through life in ignorant bliss, and perhaps just receive a nasty shock right at the end, than to correctly predict the whole world is heading to hell in a hand basket - or whatever the saying is.
I like to think of myself as a realist, but more and more lately it seems hard to separate a realist from a pessimist, just as it is increasingly difficult lately to distinguish the difference between an optimist and a raving lunatic.
I am going to give it a go though. It is a new year. Now, I’m not saying that I got an uncomfortable feeling last New Year’s Eve when everyone was high fiving and whooping about 2020. How this was going to be THE year!!! But I did. Well they were right, it was THE year, just not in the way they expected.
I don’t think 2021 is going to be much to whoop about either, with climate change still there lurking behind the dread fog of Covid. Standing on the cusp of a possible economic black swan. We may find that 2020 was the beginning of a new reality. That this time they really were the good old days, those past decades.
But I am going to be an optimist for once, I am going to ignore all the facts, the data, human nature, all the dinosaur bones, and deliver an upbeat message through the medium of horseracing. Because in 2020 this declining, ever-less-relevant industry (in most people's eyes anyway) delivered us diversion, entertainment, excitement and - perhaps most importantly - days to look forward to. And that is something to really be happy about.
Horseracing people are a tough bunch, the riders especially, but also the grooms, hot walkers, and the trainers who have to take the financial risk entering such a competitive business.
The tough people within the industry carried on, business as usual. The best thing of course. Who wouldn’t want to? So many couldn’t, but they could, and they did and we were treated to Tiz The Law as a starter, Authentic as main course, and Swiss Skydiver for dessert. The Travers, the Derby, the Preakness, the Classic. For a while you forgot about everything else and cheered them home.
It is a dangerous but beautiful sport, horseracing. A bit like life. An analogy to life. Life is exciting, beautiful, but can suddenly without warning turn ugly, turn chaotic. Eventually, though, the sun comes out again.
And so it goes, the world keeps turning, another race is run, Thoroughbred racing has kept going for 400 years now. The great, the humble, the famous, the anonymous, the fabulously wealthy and the equally fabulously poor, bound together by a love of the horse.
They really are the stars of the show, of the industry. Whenever this sport reaches the mainstream (for good reasons), whenever it captures the public's imagination and heart, it is because of the horses. Seabiscuit, Secretariat, American Pharaoh, Arkle, Desert Orchid, Enable.
It is, when you cut everything else away, about beautiful horses, one of the things coveted most by wealthy men for millennia. Wealthy men one day began matching their finest specimens against each other. And then came the masses to watch the first real sport, and then to bet on it. Gentleman betting amounts back then that would make a high roller swoon now. Working men pressing coins into each other's hands, raising the adrenaline, raising the stakes, eyes straining for their silks.
It is a beautiful spectacle, a thrilling spectacle, a wonderful sport, as it is a wonderful life. The race may be run, but the sport continues into the future, as it emerged from the past, fully drawn for our generation.
The history of the sport is so rich, the people, the famous races, the horses, the stories intertwined with the history of nations, of the world, so much of it recorded, captured. Go to the Keeneland Library, when times change, and see the archives, the depth of coverage of the Sport of Kings way back then. No other sport even comes close to the romance of that, to the way it has emerged from history.
Of course, the players of today shall not be the players of tomorrow. They will change, but the sport hopefully will continue. We have a duty to look after it and pass it on, if we can, better than we received it. All we have to do to achieve that is take good care of the brave competitors.
If we look after and love the Thoroughbreds who do our bidding and race for us, then the rest shall take care of itself.
If we polish them and show people we love those shiny Thoroughbreds, and tell their story, then how can some people not fall in love with the whole thing and become fans of the sport themselves.
When people visit Saratoga or Keeneland for the first time, they must find it beautiful. If they encounter the horse farms around Lexington and see the foals playing in the paddocks, how can they not be amazed? If they attend an auction and take in the show and drama, a Thoroughbred yearling sleek under spotlights, the mindboggling sums changing hands against the auctioneers machine-gun patter, how can they not be in awe?
Horseracing represents the beauty of nature. The Thoroughbred is perhaps the most beautiful of a beautiful species, powerful, volatile, steaming, snorting, and fast. So fast.
Horseracing represents life, procreation, the struggle to life, survival of the fittest, sometimes red in claw, sometimes the wild celebration of a tribe’s victory in battle. Again and again, battle after battle, until the champion emerges, the champions, the kings and the queens. And they will be paired and mate, as they would in nature.
So, in a time of uncertainty, of a pandemic, a time of fake media (does anyone even know for sure who the president is yet?), in a time when hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, are finding their jobs, maybe their whole industry sector, under threat, collapsing, dying out, like dinosaurs after the meteorite struck, completely unexpected, out of the blue, from nowhere, in this time it looks as if, fortunately for us, the Thoroughbred industry shall survive. The sport can continue, the betting, the cheering, the anticipation can continue. The breeders, owners, trainers can continue, employment for the horsemen can continue.
We are very lucky, very lucky. Who would have guessed that the sport, no longer in the public eye, would prove so resilient, so robust?
Perhaps all we have to do for the sport of horseracing to survive and thrive, is just take care of the beautiful Thoroughbreds that are at the centre of it all. Perhaps all we have to do is treat them with respect. Maybe all we have to do is show how we love them, for other people to grow to love the sport also. We are very lucky if that is all we have to do to carry on having a good life.
The glass is more than half full, let’s not spill anything.