Mediums Evoke The Jockey’s Fight To Ride

What does the most recognizable jockey of the nineteenth century have in common with a young rider from the 1970s-turned-modern-day playwright? This seemingly disparate pair might be divided by over a century along the continuum, but their experiences, told in a fresh biographical treatment of Isaac Murphy by historian Katherine C. Mooney and through Robert Montano's self-penned and deeply-personal play, have much to tell us about the perilously-seated life in the irons.

What they both encountered is particularly instructive for us, especially after the sudden and tragic losses of jockeys Alex Canchari a few weeks ago and Avery Whisman in early January. Their deaths serve as a living reminder about the fragile and destructive nature of inner pain. As mourning for the 29-year-old Canchari and 23-year-old Whisman takes its course, perhaps what's helpful at this point is to try and take a step towards making sense of it all. By no means does that guarantee a panacea, but what we do know is that different mediums can help us digest, reflect, learn and process.

 

Murphy's Weight

First, Mooney's forthcoming monograph entitled, Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey published by Yale University's Black Lives series, covers fresh ground concerning the life of a rider who transcended race in Jim Crow America as he won impressively against white jockeys at racetracks from New York to Kentucky to California in the 1880s and into the 90s. As Mooney so eloquently and sadly described in her excellent Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack (2014), Black horsemen were driven from the sport as new laws were passed affirming the power of white rule. They never returned, but to this day, they have not been forgotten. If you have not read it and you love this sport, you are missing something.

Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey by Katherine C. Mooney | Yale University Press

This time the author focuses her attention on Murphy, a celebrated athlete who as a household name, inspired people from different racial and socio-economic backgrounds to root for him. That was the public form of his persona, the one where his ability to effectively cross the color line was based in what appeared to be a bottomless pit filled with drive and determination as he won. With a come-from-the-clouds riding style, which reserved his mount's strength until the last possible moment, Murphy's final approach thrilled the masses.

Mooney also gives a window into the private person who rarely gave interviews or left much of a record concerning his health. That might be just as instructive because throughout his life aboard some of the best Thoroughbreds in North America, he continually battled “making weight.”

Tenny with jockey Isaac Murphy | Keeneland Library

It took its toll.

Not just a seasonal rider, Murphy traversed the country working as often as he could under contract for a specific owner, supplemented by freelancing. Though he garnered what today would be the equivalent to million-dollar earnings, he continually scrambled throughout his riding days to go from 140 pounds all the way down to a dangerously low 110.

Mooney tells us, despite his successes, the regularly mentioned three Derby wins stat, et cetera, that Murphy was plagued later in his career by innuendo that he rode under the influence of alcohol. Racing in the 1890 running of New Jersey's own Monmouth Handicap aboard the seasoned mare Firenze as the favorite at 6-5, the pair ended up last with the jockey falling off after he crossed the wire. Shock and awe fell over the capacity crowd and in a subsequent hearing, Murphy explained that he had skipped breakfast that morning, drinking a few milk punches, regularly understood to be medicinal during the age. Later that day, with his wife by his side in the grandstand, he got down ginger ale and mineral water, in what was hardly the stuff for a balanced diet.

Author Katherine Mooney | Christopher T. Martin

Despite his impressive horsemanship, just to get into the saddle took a monumental effort to fight time and his own metabolic rate. Murphy had the desire and knew that back home in Lexington, Kentucky, his family was relying on him to provide. In the end, it was heart failure that ended his life at the age of 35-years-old. The demands of the profession exacted a terrible price. As Mooney prophetically explains, “Jockeys were ultimately dependent on the people that employed them.”

Montano's Stage

Like Isaac Murphy, Robert Montano was born for a stage. As a dancer and actor from the playhouse to the screen, he's worked with the likes of Chita Rivera to Mark Wahlberg. Growing up in Hempstead, New York in the 1970s with parents who dared their kids to dream, one afternoon his mother took the 12-year-old to Belmont Park. She told her son they were there to “pick out tiles for the kitchen floor,” code for a hopeful wagering result. Montano was captivated by the pomp and circumstance. Immediately, seeing the reverence held for the jockey colony, he was hooked.

“Working and learning from those professionals had such an impact on me, and their toughness and discipline set me on a path I am still on today,” he said. “Robert Pineda taught me about balance in the saddle and he really took me under his wing as a teenager, giving me a shot to ride.”

Robert Montano working a horse as an exercise rider | Robert Montano

Montano's ticket to the backside was a neighbor and his wife who both worked at nearby Belmont Park. They got him a job cutting carrots, which is where everyone begins. Eventually, he graduated to exercising riding there and at nearby Aqueduct Racetrack, but the life that was running concurrently with his high school days was anything but normal.

Like every budding apprentice, the fresh-faced young man agonized over his weight. His commitment pushed him to do endless laps around his neighborhood, while later he sweated in the local YMCA sauna clothed in jackets and sweaters, as burly guys looked on in astonishment. Still, he dreamed about donning silks that would make him a full-fledged member of the New York racing colony.

Just like the professional dancer he would become, health became an all-encompassing focal point for Montano. He was tempted though by the darker side of losing weight as he sought out the “Doc” who saw patients near the local Argo Theater. Appetite suppressants were downed and when his art professor father found out, he told his son, “No more, this is not how to pursue your dreams.”

With Pineda serving as mentor, he finally got his first mount in an actual race at the ripe age of 16. It was March 2, 1977. But there was a problem. That morning at Belmont he fell off a horse during training and badly bruised his ribs. At the Emergency Room, he begged the attending physician to patch him up, and pleaded his case with his parents who wore worried looks. Put back together and heavily bandaged, he made it in time for the race, finishing last. “Despite some serious pain, that was a huge moment for me and I loved every minute of it,” he said.

Robert Montano heads to the post | Robert Montano

Montano only rode six other times, never in-the-money, and though time and genetics were against him, those experiences put him on another track. At the age of 20, he earned a scholarship at New York's Adelphi University to enter the world of dance and theater, another place where showmanship is held in high-esteem.

As his new career blossomed, he came across a director who asked him about his first love. “The racetrack,” he said, without hesitation. “You should write something about that experience,” the director told him. So, after years of writing and delving into feelings that he had not touched since those early days, he did.

Robert Montano on the stage at Adelphi University | Robert Montano

This week on the campus of Kean University in Hillside, New Jersey, Montano's SMALL, which premiered at the Penguin Rep Theatre in Stony Point, New York last year, will take the stage. Performing 24 different parts, he will morph and change into the characters that surrounded his life as he pointed towards adulthood. As he says, “SMALL is about my duty to give the audience an authenticity and it is the chance to honor those that are associated with this great sport.”

With a title that is purposely capitalized, Montano's play examines his personal struggles to stay small, as he fought addiction and to find his place in the world. Now a performer of a different sort, he lends his own perspective from the saddle in the form a play. Using the visceral experiences of his youth, SMALL has the opportunity to loom large.

The Fight to Ride

Whether jockeys ride seven races or 7,000, they are bound by the pursuit of a profession that demands abject discipline. While the job offered the opportunity to stoke pure unadulterated talent, both Katherine Mooney's biography of Isaac Murphy and Robert Montano's SMALL, suggest how the challenges aboard a horse are balanced by their love of the racetrack. Lest we forget, sadly Alex Canchari and Avery Whisman's lives ended pursuing passions while trying to cope with inner pain. As those in the irons pass into our memories, we would do well to remember that their struggles are real and not the stuff of fiction. Both of these mediums might be just what we need at this juncture, as they suggest that across a swath of time that the names may change, but what Montano so aptly calls, “The fight to ride,” remains.

Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey by Katherine Mooney, Yale University Press, 177 pages, photos, appendix, glossary, May 2023.

SMALL by Robert Montano, co-presented by Premiere Stages and Kean Stage, directed by Jessi D. Hill, Saturday, March 18 at Kean University's Enlow Recital Hall, 215 North Avenue, Hillside, NJ 07205.

The post Mediums Evoke The Jockey’s Fight To Ride appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Mike Repole Joins The TDN Writers’ Room Podcast

Four days after his Forte (Violence) won the GII Fountain of Youth S. in his 3-year-old debut, co-owner Mike Repole was still beaming. At this point, Forte's lead-up to the GI Kentucky Derby has been perfect. There have been no hiccups and his race in the Fountain of Youth checked every conceivable box. So what did Repole, who owns the horse in partnership with Vinnie Viola, think? We had Repole join us on the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland to find out. Repole was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.

“The script you write never works out,” Repole said. “But the way things have turned out with Forte, I couldn't have written that script any better. We just got his Ragozin number, which was a 7 3/4, which was the lowest number of his career off a four-month layoff.  So it's always a promising sign. You don't really know who the competition was in the race. But he hadn't raced in four months and all those horses had starts either four weeks ago or eight weeks ago. So everything really worked out.”

That Repole and Viola have a horse like Forte is no accident. They have spent millions at the sales acquiring dozens of horses. Forte, who cost $110,000, was one of 43 yearlings they bought at the 2021 Keeneland September sale. Over the last two years at Keeneland, they have spent $30 million on 75 horses. Repole acknowledged that their way of attacking the sales only works if you can come up with a couple of stars.

“When you buy 100 horses, if you can get 2% of them to be Grade I winners, you're going to pay for the whole crop,” Repole said. “Now, it sounds easy, but you need to find a Nest and you need a Forte. It is very difficult. But I think I play at all different levels. And listen, I don't want to give away a secret here, but. I'm aggressive.”

Repole made some news during the interview, revealing that his preference is that Forte run as a 4-year-old. He said he would not enter into an agreement for Forte with a stud farm unless they agreed to give him an option to run the horse next year.

“I have to have an option to run him at four, whether we do or not,” he said. “It has to be that I get to choose, and everybody knows that's the plan. Let's be honest, we don't know if he's going to or not. In this sport, we don't even know that he's going to have a next start.  But I have to have that option.”

As for Nest (Curlin), the 3-year-old filly champion of 2022 that Repole owns along with Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Repole said she will make her 4-year-old debut in the GI La Troienne S. on April 5 at Churchill Downs.

“We gave her time off and she's grown up and she's developed,” Repole said. “We all know what happens with Curlin's between three and four. It's hard to think this way, but she might even be better this year.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by Coolmore,https://lanesend.com/  the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Woodford Thoroughbreds, The Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, XBTV, 1/st Racing, WinStar Farm and https://www.threechimneys.com/ West Point Thoroughbreds, Randy Moss, Zoe Cadman and Bill Finley took a look back at a big weekend of racing that included the Fountain of Youth S., the GII San Felipe S. and the GI Santa Anita H. and a look ahead to the GII Tampa Bay Derby. The subject of Alex Canchari's suicide brought about an important discussion of how jockeys best deal with mental health issues. Canchari's death came six week after jockey Avery Whisman also took his own life. Cadman, a former rider, pointed out that both jockeys were not actively riding at the time of their deaths and said that down time can be difficult for any rider. Finley raised the issue of whether or not it's time to allow jockeys to ride at slightly heavier weights, but Cadman and Moss both maintained that would not solve any problems.

The post Mike Repole Joins The TDN Writers’ Room Podcast appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Did Alex Canchari Suffer from CTE?

Still seeking answers as to why Alex Canchari took his own life last week at the age of 29, his family has sent his brain to Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center to ascertain whether or not the jockey was suffering from CTE, the  brain condition linked to repeated head injuries and blows to the head. Several NFL players have committed suicide after suffering from CTE.

“We have sent Alex's brain in to Boston University to see if there was CTE present,” Canchari's sister Ashley told the TDN in an email. “It will take a few weeks, if not months, potentially to get back the results.”

“Personally, I think this is very likely,” Canchari told television station KMSP. “My brother told me multiple times, 'I have hit my head so much and I've fallen so many times off of horses. I think there is something wrong.'”

Studies have shown that CTE can lead to a number of symptoms, including depression, aggressive behavior and suicidal thoughts. It can only be diagnosed posthumously. CTE is most often associated with NFL players. In February, researchers at the Boston University CTE Center reported they had found CTE in 92% of the brains of 376 deceased NFL players they had studied. The list of NFL players that suffered from CTE and committed suicide includes Aaron Hernandez, Dave Duerson, Junior Seau, Andre Watters, Phillip Adams and Jovan Belcher.

According to a 2019 story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, research shows that horse racing has the highest concussion rate of any sport. Concussions can lead to CTE. According to a report from the University of Kentucky's Dr. Carl Mattacola released at the 2015 Jockey Club Welfare and Safety Summit, 8.6% of falls by jockeys during races from 2012 to 2015 resulted in concussions.

A 2017 report posted on a University of Kentucky website concluded: “At this time there is no data to document the incidence of CTE among jockeys, though anecdotal evidence exists; for example, the effects of Gwen Jocson's repeated concussions forced her retirement from racing in 1999.”

A gofundme.com page has been started for Canchari's fiancee Brooke-Lyn Klauser and Canchari's two children, Leon and Penelope. Another unborn child is due in August.

Klauser spoke to KMSP about Canchari's struggles.

“He wasn't really open about it,” she said. “But there were some signs that we could see that he was struggling. He was always very strong around me and the kids.”

The post Did Alex Canchari Suffer from CTE? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Canchari’s Pursuit Of 1,000th Win Will Continue At Oaklawn

Alex Canchari's chase to a career milestone will apparently come at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark.

Canchari said that he plans to ride the entire Oaklawn meet (Dec. 3-May 8) in pursuit of his 1,000th career victory. Canchari has 981 career victories, according to Equibase, racing's official data gathering organization, including 198 at Oaklawn.

“I'm just going to try to work hard and hopefully have a good meet,” Canchari said during training hours Friday morning at Oaklawn. “I'll try to ride a little bit for everybody.”

Canchari, 27, said he arrived Thursday in Hot Springs after riding the past month at Mahoning Valley in Ohio. Despite missing the first month of the 2021 Oaklawn meeting – the jockey was riding at Turfway Park – Canchari amassed $621,716 in purse earnings, the bulk coming from victories aboard Carlos L. in the $150,000 Temperence Hill Stakes for older horses at 1 ½ miles and aboard Sir Wellington in the $150,000 Gazebo Stakes for 3-year-old sprinters. Both victories were for Canchari's longtime client, trainer Mac Robertson.

Canchari has ridden regularly at Oaklawn since 2012 and set a single-season personal best in Hot Springs with 45 victories in 2017, when he tied for third in the standings. Canchari has nine stakes victories and $8,370,423 in purse earnings in his Oaklawn career.

The post Canchari’s Pursuit Of 1,000th Win Will Continue At Oaklawn appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post

Verified by MonsterInsights