The Legend of Zippy Chippy Read Free

wind – that’s what horses were meant to do. He just didn’t want to run in a race with other horses. That was demeaning, and too confrontational. Being saddled in leather and then decorated with silks of bright, tacky colors – good gawd. Was there notrainer in North America who had ever heard of soft tones, like camel or even taupe?
    And these creepy jockeys with frilly, silky outfits who straddled you tightly with both legs, all the while spanking you with a riding crop. What the hell was that about? I mean, that was strange even for Kentucky, where owners of horses wore plaid pants with red blazers, and women, to their credit, refrained from pointing and laughing out loud. Then again, maybe the women couldn’t actually see the men for all that Derby hat.
    And that ghastly starting gate – it was one long line of tiny little jail cells, and once you were locked in there they would scare the crap out of you with that unbearable bell. RINGGGGGGGG!
    Even when you knew it was coming, that thing was frightening, and Zippy Chippy would need a moment or two to compose himself and get his bearings, and, well, in horse racing, where trainers are often seen draped over fences staring at stopwatches, these are known as very valuable seconds.
    Native Dancer and Northern Dancer be damned! They were Zippy’s ancestors and they were great racehorses, but really, where does greatness stop? He may have been just a gangly little foal, but Zippy inherently knew a few things to be true: to compete against those deemed better than you, to challenge for the lead and hold it, to thrive and drive and whirl away and find another gear – those were the dreams of his forebearers, not his. He had smaller dreams that played in slow motion, and these did not include being fawned over by the owner’s family in the winner’s circles of American tracks, having his picture taken by the official photographer, or having blankets of roses draped round his neck. A quick glance at his stats tells you that Zippy may in fact have been allergic to flowers and felt that jockeys who came in first all the time were just showing off.
    No, not everybody dreams in color or yearns to finish first or takes losing to heart. Zippy would go on to have fun and frivolity in his career as a racehorse – something that, if you’ve ever seen the movie
Seabiscuit
, you know that horse never had. All that blood and guts and the lower-body injuries – man, give it a rest! Chill would have been an excellent name for this gamboling, devil-may-care four-footer. His casual gait and wandering mind spelled RELAX in caps and boldface. “Stop and smell the fumes that little filly Heart’s Desire is giving off down the row” – that was Zippy’s motto.
    No, Zippy Chippy would not go on to become what sports writers call a “phenom,” an exceptional athlete who defies the odds by surprising everyone with a series of eye-popping victories. The only thing Zippy Chippy and Secretariat had in common was that they ate from food buckets and randomly soiled the straw in their stalls. Yet Zippy would go on to defy everything and everybody, especially those people who handled him. And in the end, what he accomplished was nothing short of phenomenal. Very few thoroughbred horses ever run one hundred races, and none ever accomplished that feat with the zeal and admiration, the aplomb and the arrogance, the style and the dash of the Zipster. (Okay,
dash
may have been a bad choice of words.) Secretariat may have set the racing world on its ear establishing track records at will, but he never once lunged at his closest competitor and bit him in the ear!
    Oh, Zippy Chippy would run, alright, at a time and place and pace of his choosing, but he would never bide a harness willingly or bear a saddle kindly. Leather straps and blindfolds, time trials and claiming races – that was the stuff of trainers and track masters,