The Legend of Zippy Chippy (27 page)
Read The Legend of Zippy Chippy Online
Authors: William Thomas
Saturday, September 4, 2004 was a nice day in western Massachusetts, perfect for a long race of six and a half furlongs in order to win a slice of a $3,100 pie. Thousands of fans showed up to see Zippy Chippy make his ninety-ninth career appearance, and his tenth at this now rickety yet rich-in-history track. They came in throngs adorned with clothes bearing his name; they bet in big numbers, knowing the tickets would probably never get cashed. They celebrated the mere sight of him. Here at Northampton Fair, Zippy was not just another horse. Here, he was listed as the fairground's top attraction, followed by the Russian American Kids Circus, an all-day blues festival, and Megatron, “the world's largest mobile roller coaster.” And, given the steel shoes he was wearing, don't think that he couldn't have kicked the crap out of that machine too!
It was also exactly one year since Zippy had missed the first win of his career by a neck, followed by an inquiry denied. Now thirteen years old, Zippy charged around Northampton's paddock, preparing for yet one more race against seven other
members of racing's Never-Won-One Club. A cherry would be broken today; the only question was whose.
The Zippy Chippy story was resonating with audiences everywhere. The media, both local and national, stood five deep around Zippy's stall, peppering Felix with questions he had answered so many times before. They were harder on Felix than usual, claiming that ninety-eight losses in a row was plenty for this horse's career, calling yet again for his retirement. Other trainers, jealous of all the attention Zippy was getting, were also highly critical of Felix. They dropped lines to the press like “mockery of the sport” and “sick of hearing about such a great loser.”
Three County Fair, very pleased with the commotion he created and the money he generated, sided with Zippy Chippy and not his critics. Said steward Russell Derderian, “Fans realize that betting on Zippy Chippy is probably a hopeless pursuit, but that doesn't stop them.”
Zippy, on the other hand â who made it a point never to read his own press clippings or listen to trainers, particularly his own â was bristling to get the bridle on. Hell, he'd almost won his last time out! He had beaten his former jockey Willie Belmonte by two feet at the wire. He had won $500. He had embarrassed Streak Face and Stoker Bill by eleven lengths. Zippy Chippy was on one of his best losing streaks ever!
The real odds of him winning this race were almost incalculably long, but on the scale of sentimentality, a horse all hopped up and ready to roll at two losses shy of a hundred carries a lot of weight. A klutz maybe, but this horse had guts. Zippy's resolve in the face of overwhelming odds and near-certain defeat made for a story that only common folk could relate to. While the handicappers and horsemen laughed at the horse that had never won a race,
lines of little people, real people with hard jobs and soft hearts, gathered on the apron of the track.
Been there too, big guy
, they were saying with thumbs up and fists pumping above their Zippy Chippy hats. They nodded in empathy, they clapped their hands in commiseration, and they shared the unspoken dream of winning someday too. Maybe today?
Think about it. You're a vacuum cleaner salesman who has just had ninety-eight doors in a row slammed in your face. How eager are you to make the walk up the steps to house number ninety-nine and force yourself to knock on that door? They called him hopeless and they described his efforts as lame, but they were wrong. This horse had game. The press could print all the silly headlines they wanted â 98
AND
L
ATE
A
GAIN
â but this was a horse who walked the walk, ran the race, and finished them all. Say what you want about his record; a decade after being gelded, Zippy Chippy still had balls.
Shining from a slight sweat and pulling his handlers along the paddock walk, Zippy neighed and nickered his approval to the gathering of groupies. Taking the lead from Woody Allen, Zippy had come to believe that with this bunch, half the job was just showing up.
As the colorful medley of maidens and their riders gamboled toward the starting gate, a rumble of thunder rolled over the racetrack, spooking some of the horses. But not Zippy. A triple threat today â number one in the program, number one at the pole, and number one in the hearts of the crowd â Zippy was unfazed by the lightning flashing in the distance. Breaking cleanly from the start with an easy gait, Zippy took a good lead, but his early sprint was checked by jockey Joe Riston, who pulled him to the rail at the first turn and steadied him into the middle of the pack. After that, Riston “sat chilly” on the horse, doing nothing but going for
a ride. Perhaps he was saving some of the speed Zippy had shown in his last race for the late stages of this one.
By the first pole, Summer Deposit had assumed the lead, with Zippy in a comfortable third. By the half pole the leader was ahead of the pack by five lengths, and Zippy had dropped back to fifth place. Into the stretch, Summer Deposit held strong to the lead while Zippy slipped back to seventh, fighting his rider all the way down the stretch. Frankly â and he'd had these heated discussions with Felix before â why did he even need a jockey? They were always pushing and shoving him around, holding him back when he was ready to fly, slapping his ass with that whip when it was obvious he was tired or wanted to slow down and maybe have a quick visit with his fans in the grandstand. Plus, he'd be a helluva lot faster without 112 pounds of aggressiveness on his back. Jockeys! They were worse than mothers-in-law and backseat drivers.
It was clear that Zippy's enthusiasm had been curbed. He never recovered his pace. Summer Deposit rolled to an easy victory, and Slim Cat, Father Dooley, and yet again Takin' Up Space all hit the wire ahead of Zippy, who finished thirty-two lengths behind the winner. Officially, Zippy came in last, because Ordvou pulled up lame. One smart-ass in the backside said that by the time Zippy got back to the barn, he tiptoed in so as not to wake the other horses.
As Zippy snorted and kicked, Riston tried to cool him down. He looked like he was mad as hell, like he'd been wronged. Later, in the tack room, the jockey put it all on the horse. “He seems like one of those attitude horses,” said Riston. “It just seems like he couldn't ever settle down and couldn't relax.”
Obviously totally unfamiliar with his mount, the rider could not have been more wrong. He was not an attitude horse. Zippy Chippy was Attitude Horse of the Century.
Felix was unchaâracteâristiâcally furious, and not above throwing the blame across the room. “The jockey wouldn't let him run,” he said. He railed into the microphones, using the harshest words he had ever uttered to one of his riders.
Felix took one last look at Summer Deposit having his picture taken in the winner's circle and being petted by a clutch of well-dressed family members. He was taking this loss bitterly. It wasn't often that he criticized one of his jockeys â mainly because they were usually so mad they didn't hang around long enough for him to talk to them. But the frustration was showing on the man's face when he gave his take on Zippy's performance: “There wasn't any speed in the race, so I told the jockey to go for the lead and stay there as long as he could. But he don't do that for me.”
As if he needed another problem beyond the ones that came naturally to him, Zippy had been shortchanged. Objects in the barn seemed louder than usual today as they collided with Zippy's shoes. “The people love him because he always tries,” said Felix. Still, the sadness lingered in his voice and eyes as he finished, “Zippy has the right to be mad.”
All things considered, this should have been Zippy's best shot at a win. He had been eager, the field had been slow, and a win had been in the rarified air of the impending storm that had started in the sky and spread to the expectant fairgrounds crowd. Today of all days, Zippy needed a bad ride like Dr. Phil needs a haircut. Riston had ruined the race, but Zippy took the rap â ninety-nine losses in a row. To err is human; to go zero for ninety-nine straight is â¦Â horse. To mark Felix's words, Riston had ridden this horse for the last time.
Zippy should have gone off at Ordvou's odds of 84â1, but fan loyalty had put him on the board at 5â1, the favorite of the day. All you gotta do is believe.
Those who watched the race but declined to bet rated their chances of cashing a winning ticket on Zippy Chippy as about the same as seeing a man go to the moon in a lawn chair propelled by a bunch of helium balloons. Hey, it could happen, but â¦
As his people gathered in the barn after the race, rubbing his nose and spoiling him with treats, the press cornered Felix with one question in mind: Would he finally stop the bleeding at ninety-nine losses, or would he go for one hundred even?
“We're just taking everything a day at a time,” he replied. Smart thinking, because if you don't think every day is important in its own right, try missing one once in a while. But as he walked away, clutching Zippy cautiously by his leather lead, Felix shook his head and smiled to himself.
The media
, he thought,
they never ask the right questions
. The correct question was,
What do we have to lose?
GOING TO THE MOON IN A LAWN CHAIR?
A lot better now that Larry Walters of North Hollywood, California, has pushed that envelope up into the jet stream.
Time
magazine's Man of the Year for 1982 was the computer, “Machine of the Year.” Bad choice. Me, I picked Larry Walters, who went where no man had dared to go before, at least not in a lawn chair. Larry accepted the challenge of the human spirit and showed amazing resourcefulness, and although (as any woman could have predicted) he did screw up big time, he also did not die. Far too many men perish after uttering the words “Watch this!”
Larry had experienced a Peter Panâstyle dream in which he hooked himself to a bundle of balloons and floated high past the sprawling Los Angeles metropolis and into the desert beyond. This, I think, is the dream of every man who wears a cap with a red feather on the side and a leotard that is way too tight. So Larry built his dream ship, which consisted of a fold-up aluminum lawn chair attached to forty-five helium-filled weather balloons and a bunch of milk jugs full of water for ballast. Simple by design, Larry's homemade dirigible had going-up power, coming-down weight, and a lawn chair where a cockpit would normally be. His on-board equipment consisted of a two-way radio, an altimeter, a wristwatch, a Coke, a sandwich, and a pellet pistol. Because he lacked a pilot's locker, Larry's aviation tools were selected for their ability to fit in the front pockets of his pants.
I know what you're asking yourself: Why the wristwatch? Well, that was so Larry could make it home in time for supper
after his inaugural flight. The purpose of the pellet gun was to shoot out the weather balloons in the event he had to make an emergency landing.
On the morning of July 2, 1982, Larry strapped himself into his helium-charged contraption, christened
Inspiration 1
, intending to follow his flight plan, which went over Long Beach and then headed three hundred miles east, over the Mojave Desert. Southwest Airlines was a little peeved, because normally that's their route.
Larry was tethered to earth by three ropes tied to his Jeep; his girlfriend cut the first one and the other two snapped unexpectedly, and â WHOAAAAA! â “Lawn Chair Larry” launched prematurely.
Rising faster than a speeding basket, he reached an altitude of fifteen thousand feet in a matter of minutes. Witnesses agreed that anything that leaves the ground that fast is usually taking supplies to the space station. Not one but two commercial airline pilots, from Delta and TWA, reported the sighting of a man in a lawn chair flying through the primary approach corridor of the Long Beach Airport. Drug testing being what it is in the airline industry, it took great courage for the pilots to report Larry to the control tower.
Still rising and getting dizzy in the cold, thin air, Larry began his descent by shooting out the weather balloons, until he accidentally dropped the gun overboard. Lawn Chair Larry came down out of the sky faster than â¦Â well, faster than a guy strapped into a lawn chair and attached to really heavy milk jugs. As he headed for a crash landing on a golf course, the balloons's cables somehow wrapped themselves around a power line. Dangling from the wire like a tangled-up puppet, Larry miraculously failed to die. Eventually he was rescued by some golfers, who were given a Breathalyzer test by police after they reported what they'd seen.
Larry subsequently appeared in magazine ads for Timex, the maker of the wristwatch he was wearing during his flight.
Larry's Timex took a licking and kept on ticking, but for years his face twitched every time he spotted a lawn chair.
Larry was paid $1,000 for the Timex ad and fined $1,500 by the United States Federal Aviation Administration for entering international airspace without an airplane.
Free-falling from three miles out of the sky in a lawn chair â guys like Larry and horses like Zippy Chippy do not fold, no matter what the odds.
