Zenyatta and her trusty groom, Mario Espinosa
Los Angeles’ most famous equine resident, Zenyatta, is hanging up her hooves and retiring, moving to (literally) greener pastures. Last week, the six year-old mare kissed the squalor of Inglewood behind and was taken by private jet to her retirement home – the luxurious Lane’s End Farm in Kentucky – where she’ll get to loll around and eat oats and peppermints and raise baby Zenyattas. I was at Hollywood Park for “Zenyatta Appreciation Day”, where 11,000+ fans bid farewell to the mare so famous she’s been featured on 60 Minutes and on Oprah Magazine’s 2010 Power List: 20 women and one amazing horse”. The chilly, drizzly day didn’t deter her fans from coming out to honor the “Queen”, whose spectacular career and quirky character endeared her to horse fans everywhere.
Zenyatta took her final jog and gallop on Hollywood Park’s backstretch training track in the morning. Then after the day’s sixth race, she was paraded through the saddling paddock by her trusty groom, Mario Espinosa, who looked alternately puffed up with pride and devastated. Also on hand were owners Jerry and Ann Moss, trainer John Shirreffs, and her super hot jockey, Mike Smith, who signed autographs for fans and lunatics in the paddock between races (actually having to keep changing from his day’s racing silks into his more recognizable, official Zenyatta silks). The fans – many of them female and wearing Zennie’s unflattering colors, pink and aqua – lined the paddock and the winner’s circle to bid farewell to the humongous (17.2 hand) mare.
Zenyatta won an astounding 19 of 20 starts in her career, earning more than 7 million dollars. As Zenyatta’s victories mounted and her fans grew to love her sassy personality and unusual rhythms, her popularity soared. When she schooled in the paddock before races, her fans and whenever she glanced their way or pushed her large head against groom Mario and laughed aloud when she yawned and scratched her leg or performed tail swishes and leg extensions. But the fans would save their loudest shrieks of lunacy for when Z would prance triumphantly by the grandstand, after having crushed the field in her characteristic last-to-first fashion. The proud winner would get excited by the adulation and break out her patented “dance moves”, pawing the turf with her hooves, her donkey-tall ears pricked, soaking in the accolades and applause.
When posing with her public, Zenyatta differed from other horses (when I saw the great Lava Man – a stablemate of Zenyatta at Hollywood Park – race at Santa Anita, he also drew crowds who would shout his name “LAVAAAAA”! as he looked worriedly around. Lava’s handlers would have to shush the crowd: “Shhhhh..Lava don’t like crowds”). Zenyatta, however, did like crowds and she had near-limitless patience with the fans and paparazzi, picking up her head over and over again, for snapping cameras (sometimes checking their pockets for treats). She’d strike a perfect pose, those long ears aimed just the right way. If she got impatient, she might paw at the ground and Mario would give her a turn, and she was ready for her closeup again.
Towards the end of her career, Zenyatta – who transcended in her excellence every limiting category including the one of gender, having dominated every field females before crossing over and competing against the males – remained 19 for 19, undefeated. Her wins always tested hearts, lagging far behind the field, then bursting forth at the last minute in exhilarating fashion – effectively conceding the “luck” factor as a variable less important as intelligence, persistence and bravery and for a kind of indomitability. Her heart chills-inducing come-from -waaaay-behind win against racing’s top male horses – including 2009 Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird – in last year’s Breeder’s Cup Classic at Santa Anita sent the hysterical race caller into conniptions. Her last race, a brave and ballsy entry in the 2010 Breeder’s Cup Classic at Churchill Downs, found her edged out by a snout by a 4 year old superstar named Blame. The loss – although ending her “undefeated” status – does nothing to detract from the unalloyed, unqualified excellence of her career, but rather spoke to the fortitude and bravery she displayed til the end.
I am reminded of what someone said in an eulogy to the great Barbaro at his funeral: “He was a great horse, but an ever better person”.
As David Milch wrote in his piece about Zenyatta’s last race lose and her retirement in The Racing Forum:
Of course she didn’t get there, and in the aftermath I was bawling like a baby and had been from the head of the stretch in gratitude for the opportunity to appreciate what she was doing. It seemed to me in the aftermath of the race, the last gift which was given had to do with the separation of that feeling of appreciation from the illusion of invincibility. The final and deepest gift that she had to give was the opportunity to accept all the qualifications of our finitude without having that dilute or alloy the joy she made available to us.
In other experiences, if one is lucky, we get that same last chance to distinguish between what joy comes to us and what I imagine is the laughter of the gods. I forget who it was that said, Every victory leaves something drastic and bitter in the cup. In that sense, it took all of her races and the conclusion of her career to come to the last draught of what was in the cup. And to realize still, that in what one experienced as drastic and bitter for a moment was the final essence of victory. The victory was in the flowering of humility as the last component of the mix of feelings that she had made available, and how absolutely irrelevant her defeat is to the experience that she gave us, for all that period of time.
Through the day, replays of Zenyatta’s past races, including her exhilarating, characteristic come from behind romp at last year’s Breeders Cup Classic, were shown on the closed-circuit television system and the infield televisions. Each time she reached the wire in a replay, cheers rose through the grandstand.
Zenyatta photos courtesy of Mark Douglas