steeplechase

The still-fresh images of American Pharoah’s victorious jockey Victor Espinoza standing in his irons, fist in the air, cruising past the stands of cheering spectators, legs bobbling to absorb the shock of each footfall, provide a perfect segue into this article by Betsy Parker.

A jockey isn't really an athlete, After all, the horse does all the work, right?  /  David Chapman photo

Overheard railside at the Foxfield Races near Charlottesville: One pastel-clad college kid to the next as they rummage for beer in their cooler before noon on Saturday: “Jockeys aren't really athletes. They just sit in the saddle for a few minutes. I could do that!”

I almost fainted. Here the most provocative lede of the decade just dropped in my lap, and I couldn't get to the jock's room fast enough to dangle the mother of all conversation-starters like a tenderloin in front of a pack of hungry dogs. Hustling up the hill, I tried the assertion on jockeys Gerard Galligan and Brendan Brooks. They laughed.

“Anyone who'd say that has never ridden a race,” Galligan sniffed.

“Anyone who'd say that has never ridden a horse!” Brooks countered. “There's so much more to racing than 'riding.'”

As the Irishmen trailed off to walk the Barracks Road course, I jotted some interview questions. There was more to the story than laughing at a schoolboy's boast. It's not only athletic endeavor that drives competitiveness, as I'd soon find out. It's part will to win, part boldness. Part athletic concentration, part love of sport. It's a certain level of excitement tempered by highly-honed mental agility.

A 1980s University of North Carolina study measured that pound-for-pound, jockeys are the strongest, quickest, most agile and most hardcore athletes on the planet. Had the researchers studied jump jockeys, they'd've doubled it.

Fence 3: (l-r) Imperial Way (Bethany Baumgardner up) about to jump; Raven’s Choice (Mark Beecher up) 1st; Almarmooq (James Slater up); Guts For Garters (Jody Petty up) 2nd; Twill Do (James Stierhoff up) / Douglas Lees photo

Ten minutes after crossing the wire first, a half length in front of Raven’s Choice, Imperial Way was disqualified. His jockey Bethany Baumgardner failed to weigh out with all the weight she carried into the race. Somewhere, during the course of the race, a twenty-pound weight slipped out of her saddle pad—a first in the 119 runnings of the Maryland Hunt Cup.

It was a double disappointment for Imperial Way, who was beat by just a nose in last year’s race by Stewart Strawbridge’s Guts for Garters. The odds-on favorite this year, Guts for Garters was trying for his second consecutive win, but placed second to Raven's Choice by six lengths after the disqualification.

Amateur/Novice Rider Hurdle Race (l-r): Acela (Suzanne Stettinius up) 2nd; Controlled Neglect (Brendan Brooks up) 1st / Douglas Lees photo

The Old Dominion Hounds Point-to-Point Races were run on Saturday, April 4, 2015, at Ben Venue Farm, Ben Venue, Virginia.

Controlled Neglect, owned by Ann Braxton Jones-Lynch and trained by Jimmy Day, nailed down his second win of the Virginia point-to-point season in the Amateur/Novice Rider Hurdle series by two lengths over Acela. The second place Acela, trained by Eva Smithwick, won last week’s Novice Flat Race at Orange County. Acela set the early pace in the four-horse field, with Controlled Neglect keeping in close touch. The pair jumped the last fence together, and Controlled Neglect took over from there. Brendan Brooks was in the irons for both the Old Dominion and the Blue Ridge wins.

Hopefully, before the season ends, we'll see a match-up between two-time winner Controlled Neglect and Greg Ryan’s veteran hurdler, Spy in the Sky, winner of last week’s Amateur/Novice Rider Race at Orange County.

Amateur/Novice Rider Hurdle Race (l-r): Special Guy (Ben Swope up) was second by a length to winner Spy In The Sky and Gregg Ryan, MFH.  /  Douglas Lees photo

The Orange County Hounds Point-to-Point Races were held on Locust Hill Farm, Middleburg, Virginia, on Sunday, March 29, 2015, perhaps the nicest spring day for racegoers yet this season.

Gregg Ryan, MFH of the Piedmont Fox Hounds and the Snickersville Hounds in Virginia, marked his return to the racecourse by winning the Amateur Novice Rider Hurdle Race on his veteran, Spy In The Sky. Ryan allowed Ben Swope on Special Guy to set the pace for much of the race, before pulling away with five furlongs to go. Special Guy, as he did at Warrenton, made a late rush, but not enough.

Spy In The Sky is trained by Eva Smithwick, Gregg’s Joint-Master at Snickersville. Trained in years past by Jimmy Day, Spy in the Sky won the $100,000 A.P. Smithwick Memorial Handicap at Saratoga in 2012, returning long odds of 25-1 to the lucky ticket holders there.