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Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

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from: Philip Weiss

Rounding the Bend

Posted Tuesday, June 8, 1999, at 8:08 PM ET

Dear Z,

'Swounds! You have cut me! I will soon be wormsmeat!

As for your Olde English, my dear, in America we spell "proselytize" with a z and say, Keep your pants on. Too dangerous to say knickers.

Well, I don't see any point in carrying on the religious discussion. We're boring our public, and you might be winning. Let's resume that over a bong someday.

Now to the Belmont Stakes, which was mythic.

Had Charismatic, the favorite, won, he would have been the first Triple Crown winner in 21 years. As it was, Charismatic finished third to two long shots and broke down at the finish line, snapping bones in a front leg. He will never race again. Out to stud.

The manner in which Charismatic came to break down is worthy of a TV movie. The horse was trained by D. Wayne Lukas, who has a reputation for training horses too hard--and who had pushed Charismatic hard. In the days before the Belmont, Lukas' rival, the far more elegant trainer Bob Baffert, entered a filly named Silverbulletday. Silverbulletday is a very fast horse, and had won 11 of the 12 races she'd been in. She instantly became one of the favorites.

The entry appears to have unhinged Lukas. Charismatic had won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness by running with the pack and staging a late surge. This time around, Charismatic ran out front, battling for the lead with Silverbulletday for almost the entire race. Lukas seemed fearful that Silverbulletday would run away with the race, get "loose on the lead," in the words of the writer Bob Barry (whose keen analysis I'm leaning on here). So Lukas set out to bring a race to Silverbulletday, and beat her. This he achieved. Unaccustomed to such a long race--a mile and a half--Silverbulletday faded at the end, finishing seventh, several lengths behind Charismatic. And Charismatic crumpled, overtaken in the stretch by two horses running the kind of race Charismatic usually ran.

The lessons I see here are, first, about identity, the error of Lukas in not letting his horse run his race. "Why didn't Lukas say to [jockey Chris] Antley, We think we have the best horse in the race, let's run the race our way," Barry says. "They ran as if they thought Silverbulletday was the best horse in the race."

The other lesson is something many performers struggle to learn, about competition. Great competitors are really competing with themselves--to mine their talents, overcome their problems, and so forth. I know that sounds New Age. Fine. I first heard it expressed by John le Carré, who told me that writers make the mistake of taking their competition with one another too seriously, and thus fail to grasp that the real race is to unearth their own gifts. Funnily enough, I met le Carré on the same visit to England ten years ago in which I met you.

L,
P

P.S.: Your 900-pounder is very Non-U. And, yes, it's even more Non-U to feed him. Over here, we'd say he must have a pack of enablers.

the breakfast table
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from: Philip Weiss

Rounding the Bend

Posted Tuesday, June 8, 1999, at 8:08 PM ET
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Philip Weiss is a novelist and a columnist for the New York Observer. Zo‰ Heller lives in New York and writes for British papers.
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