The Legend of Zippy Chippy (13 page)
Read The Legend of Zippy Chippy Online
Authors: William Thomas
“He double-barreled that thing!” said Marisa. “
Bang
. The noise scared everybody, and nobody said anything right away.” Then Felix started laughing, and the farrier, well, he became livid. Mad? Let's just say Felix was lucky that the next time he had an X-ray it didn't show a horseshoe hooked around his prostate.
Somehow, the forceful backward buck did not shatter the windows, but Zippy's hooves left two deep dents in the truck, one on the driver's-side door. The horse may not yet have won a race, but
in the ongoing battle with his farrier, the final score in this match was Zippy Chippy 1, Chris Roncone 0.
Zippy wasn't the only member of the Monserrate family who gave the farrier fits. When they were based out of Emily's tack room, Marisa and her cousin Keri, the five-year-old misfits, were constantly playing tricks on the overworked shoeman.
“The worst was when Keri fixed my hand up with a clip-on two-inch nail that came out both sides, with fake blood dripping down my arm,” said Marisa.
When the bleeding child approached him, crying and falling to her knees, Chris started screaming for help. The kids panicked and quickly gave up the joke, believing he might pass out from the sight of blood. While Zippy took care of the farrier's red truck, the kids helped turn the man's hair gray. In fairness, Chris never quit on the horse, and he continued to care for Zippy's feet as long as the horse ran at Finger Lakes.
Prancing and shifting from side to side, Zippy was wearing a new pair of shoes on June 23, 1998, for the third race on a fast track at Finger Lakes. It had been twenty-four days since the collision of his back feet with a new truck and his eighty-first loss, in which Last Shallbe First came in third and the last-place finisher, by the name of Saw Your Act, seemed to be taunting Zippy from behind. It had been exactly ten days since his eighty-second loss, when Bangâzoomâtoâtheâmoon bumped him at the start and Hilary's Kid (no, not Chelsea) beat him to the finish line by sixteen and three-quarter lengths.
The trainer, wearing his “Zippy Chippy” hat a little off kilter, looked downright jaunty. High-stepping his way onto the track, Zippy was in fine form, uncharâacterâisticâally jolly. He didn't give Felix a hard time when he put the saddle on him, he hadn't glared at anybody all morning, he didn't nip the exercise pony who
trotted beside him during the track warm-up, and he even went into the padded starting gate willingly, not rearing up in defiance or lashing out at one of the crew whose job it was to muscle him in there. Typically it took four men to get Zippy into the gate, and one of them usually sought alternative employment after the experience. But not today. There was something in the air.
On this balmy afternoon, Zippy was looking at six short furlongs to dispatch six other maidens, and if you looked closely at the smiling trainer and his eager sprinter, the scene dripped with surprise and possibility.
As the starting bell rang, a field of six horses verily flew onto the track in a flourish of spraying dirt and booming hooves. They headed for the first turn fast and stormed down the backstretch as one. The crowd had a great view of this streaking posse hammering down the track in a riot of colorful silks, with little men crouched on their backs.
They had almost as good a view as Zippy, the seventh horse, who could see the race unfolding right in front of him as he stood perfectly still in the starting gate long after the others had left. When the RINGGGGGGGG! had gone off for all to hear, Zippy Chippy had decided he wasn't coming out to play today. The horse, like many a bloodied and addled heavyweight boxer, had failed to answer the bell. He just stood there as an embarrassed jockey whacked him on the ass with his riding crop and gestured helplessly toward the handlers standing behind the gate.
It's fair to say that a rider who is not in motion is not so much a jockey as a hood ornament. Benny Afanador was not amused. He'd had bad trips on Zippy Chippy before, but not one in which the entire field of horses was closing in on the first turn before he could get his unpredictable mount to move. This time Zippy had committed the cardinal sin of horse racing. He had “dwelt.”
Dwelling
is the term for a horse that breaks very, very slowly from the starting gate, giving himself almost no chance of winning. Zippy had added a couple of words to that definition: “slowly or not at all.” Giving your rivals a thirty-length head start is a real bad idea for any horse, particularly one who is not noted for his late speed â¦Â or early speed â¦Â or, okay, speed. Generally speaking, dwelling is a terrible tactic to employ in sport. It would be like Denver Bronco Peyton Manning taking the snap from a center, then signing the ball for a charity auction before actually putting it in play. Imagine Dale Earnhardt Jr. stepping out of his National Guard Chevrolet Impala SS to personally thank the man waving the green flag at the start of the race.
Out of the gate, Zippy had delayed before, he had dawdled before, and he had even dilly-dallied before, but he had never dwelt. Racetrack officials take dwelling very seriously. They know their salaries come from the money being pushed under the betting windows, not just at Finger Lakes but at other tracks and off-track shops all over North America. When bettors get nervous about the legitimacy of the races, track stewards get the shakes and the ticket sellers start bringing paperbacks to read at work.
Oddly, Felix didn't seem all that upset at his horse's decision to sit this one out. “He don't break so good,” he explained. “That's all.” Perhaps he was just a little bit impressed that Zippy had found a new way to lose. Felix had never before seen his horse not going forward in a race. Even the faithful who followed this horse religiously were disappointed. Zippy could lose, of course, but not this way.
Having given away an insurmountable lead to six fellow maidens, Zippy lost the race by twenty-six lengths, and Felix had no choice but to enthusiastically follow the instruction of the track stewards: school the horse in the basics of breaking from the gate.
But that wasn't the worst of it. Now with eighty-three career losses, Zippy was just two defeats away from what was believed to be the all-time record for the most losses by an American thoroughbred. Two horses had already hit this infamous mark of eighty-five losses in a row. The smart money was betting that Zippy Chippy would make it a three-way tie at the top of that heap â¦Â which, when you think about it, is really the bottom of the barrel.
That “something in the air” on that day when Zippy came in last for the umpteenth time? Surprise had disappeared around the first turn with the rest of the pack, and optimism was overcome by the strong smell of horse manure. There's an awful lot of that at the track. You have to wonder if there wasn't a little shed row sabotage involved here. I mean, the farrier wasn't happy driving a brand-new dented truck, and he was the last man to work on Zippy's shoes, and we all know how that goes â¦
For the want of a nail the shoe was lost
.
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost
.
For the want of a horse the rider was lost
.
For the want of a rider the battle was lost
.
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost
.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail
.
Benjamin Franklin
WHO ALWAYS ANSWERED THE BELL
I once interviewed Canadian George Chuvalo, one of the toughest stand-up boxers in the history of the sport. Inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame in Los Angeles, Chuvalo fought the legends â Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Floyd Patterson, and Muhammad Ali (twice) â without ever getting knocked off his feet.
Built like a brick outhouse, bloodied but never addled, Chuvalo could take a ton of punishment before launching his own damaging blows. In front of a live audience, I opened with the following question: “Your critics have described you as more of a defensive fighter than ⦔ I didn't get to finish.
“My critics should talk to those seventy-four guys I put in the hospital,” replied Chuvalo rather calmly, which got an admiring laugh from the crowd. After ninety-three grueling professional fights over a twenty-year career, the man was not exaggerating.
“The night I fought Muhammad Ali in Toronto, he went to the hospital and I went dancing with my wife.”
Unlike many punch-drunk boxers who slur their words, Chuvalo is not only mentally sharp, but he can also remember every detail of every one of his bouts. Not exactly the Artful Dodger, he figures he took 9,000 hits to the head in his career. I asked him how he could possibly have not received a concussion?
“No neck,” he said. “I don't have a neck.” Just a hunch, but he's probably right. In order to concuss, the brain needs to swing like a pendulum and bang off the walls of the cranium. Having a short
neck means there is not much of a swinging motion and therefore no damage done when you get hit.
I couldn't wait to ask him about Henry Cooper. Way back in the seventies, I found myself in the Henry Cooper Pub in London, England, staring at a wall of photos of every great fighter who ever lived, including Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, and the original Sugar Ray, Sugar Ray Robinson.
Cooper was a small heavyweight but a quick puncher with a deadly left hook, a pugilist who outboxed and outfoxed his opponents instead of steadily pummeling them into a purple pulp, as Chuvalo did. Cooper, who once knocked down a young Muhammad Ali, was the British, European, and Commonwealth heavyweight champion. Canada being part of the Commonwealth meant that Chuvalo, the longest-reigning Canadian champion, had a legitimate chance to challenge Cooper for that coveted crown. Except Cooper knew what every fan of boxing at the time could tell you: trying to dance around George Chuvalo would have been like throwing himself in front of a big red double-decker London bus. So Cooper artfully dodged Chuvalo, wisely fighting less dangerous opponents.
One day, Chuvalo was training in a London gym when he spotted Cooper's manager, Jim Wicks. “Boom Boom,” as George was known, ambled over to Wicks and, after a bit of small talk, put it to the manager bluntly.
“So when are me and your boy going to meet in the ring?” asked Chuvalo.
At this point in the telling, Chuvalo invokes a very good, very clipped English accent.
“Mr. Chuvalo,” replied Cooper's manager, clearing his throat, “he doesn't even want to meet you socially!”
A high compliment, that â when one of the best in the business avoids you in order to preserve his record as well as the shape
of his head. Hardly Zippy Chippy's problem, given that every horse that had a saddle wanted to race against him. And yet, both stalwarts of their sports, with all those opponents in all those battles, neither Chuvalo nor Zippy ever got knocked off his feet.
I have nothing against underdogs personally.
It's just that I wouldn't want one to bury my sister
.
Anonymous
Oh, sorry â that should have read “undertakers.”
Two weeks later, on July 6, 1998, it was the same place, same track, same thing. The bell rang, the gates clanged open, and the pack burst forth without Zippy Chippy. With six horses in front of him enjoying a fifteen-length lead, Benny Afanador, using a lot of guts and guile, managed to move his horse up briskly into the stretch, taking him from seventh to fifth in a rush to the wire. Rallying rather well, Zippy surprisingly came in fifth by passing two exhausted horses in the stretch and finishing eleven lengths behind Bangzoomtothemoon. Although somebody swears they heard Felix turn to his horse and say, “One of these days, Alice,” nothing can be confirmed.
While not last, he still finished twenty-one lengths behind the winner, Can't Stop Now, proving yet again that he, Zippy Chippy, could stop anywhere and anytime he wanted. But in the starting gate? This dwelling was a horrible habit that, if not broken, would be a certain career-crusher. The claiming price to purchase Zippy was $13,000 â which, when you think about it,
should have come with a mental health background check for any prospective buyer.
