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By Tom Archdeacon
| Sunday, May 4, 2008, 02:25 AM
LOUISVILLE — Here are some other images and comments from the Eight Belles tragedy at Saturday’s Kentucky Derby:
It was an hour after the big grayish roan filly had been euthanized by injection on the track following what — at least in these early considerations — is being called an unexplainable break down.
Running an impressive race, Eight Belles had finished second — behind Big Brown, but well ahead of the 18 other colts in the race. A quarter mile past the finish line, she suddenly crumpled to the track with both of her front ankles so severely broken — her cannon and sesamoid bones broken — she could not be saved.
The death let a lot of air out of what had been a great racing day and nowhere was it felt more than at Barn 43, where Eight Belles trainer Larry Jones had sobbed uncontrollably as he stood outside her empty stall.
“She was our family,” he finally whispered. “It’s just not supposed to happen like this.”
One of the grooms finally closed the stall door. Another barn worker affixed a green bumper sticker to the door that read: “We Love Kentucky-Bred Eight Belles.”
One by one, some of the trainers and owners of the other Derby horses reached out to Jones and Eight Belles’ crestfallen owner Rick Porter
Before he talked to the press about the victory, Big Brown co-owner Michael Iavarone offered condolences to the Eight Belles’ people
Colonel John trainer Eoin Harty and co-owner Bill Casner came over to Jones’ barn, talked to him at length and finally Casner embraced him.
A woman exercise rider from another barn came up in tears and, unable to say a word, simply squeezed Jones’ hands.
“We convinced (Eight Belles) that half the people were here to see her,” said Jones, trying to force a smile. “We knew all the women came out to see her.”
Souvenir stands had sold out of Eight Belles buttons before the race was run. And stumping in Indiana the other day, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton talked about Eight Belles, “the other filly” making a name for herself.
Eight Belles was the first filly in the Derby in nine years and just the 39th — of 1,710 all-time starters — to run the race. Only three fillies — Regret (1915), Genuine Risk (1980) and Winning Colors (1988) had won the roses here.
Just a day earlier, Jones had won the Kentucky Oaks with Proud Spell. Although Eight Belles certainly would have been the favorite in that fillies-only race, her connections opted for the Derby. After all, she had won all four of her races in 2008 — although they all were against fillies — and she was bigger than many of the colts in the Derby.
There are some horseman who aren’t keen about fillies running against what often are more roughhousing males at the Derby.
Asked if this accident gave new credence to that old claim — that, in fact, it was too dangerous for fillies to go against the boys — track veterinarian Dr. Larry Bramlage discounted that:
“One injury is not an epidemic. As bad as it seems right now, it was one incident. Fillies race against colts on an intermittent basis and it’s not like we see this as routine. In fact, I’ve never seen it before.”
He also said he didn’t think a synthetic Polytrack — rather than Churchill Downs’ dirt — would have prevented this. Neither did Jones:”It’s not the track that did it on her today. They did a great job getting the track sealed (after Friday’s rains). The track was good.”
Jones said an autopsy would be performed, so he might get some understanding as to why this happened when, as he put it, “our horse wasn’t even bumped.”
He said Porter was decimated by the loss:
“He’s taking it pretty rough. We’re going to be criticized and second guessed. Somebody will come up with the idea the filly shouldn’t have been in there, but she never got bumped, She never did anything. She could have done this racing against Shetland Ponies. It wasn’t in the race where it happened.
“Still he’s going to second guess himself from now on. But like I told him, all the things that were going against her — that she’d never raced against the boys, that she had never raced past a mile and a sixteenth — she passed all those with flying colors. She’s ran the race of her life …. and went out a champion. She was…”
Jones began to choke on emotion and finally he just bowed his head in silence. Soon tears were rolling down his cheeks.
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Saturday, May 3, 2008, 02:40 PM
LOUISVILLE — One trainer worries about the “carnage.”
One talks about the 150,000 screaming people and the big, caroming, colliding, kicking bodies.
Another says, “It’s in the hands of The Almighty.”
Many say it will decide the outcome of today’s great 20-horse race.
They’re all talking about the First Turn of the Kentucky Derby.
“With 150,000 screaming fans on both sides and the 20 of you going into that tight turn,” said Colonel John trainer Eoin Harty, “it just doesn’t happen any place else — except maybe Talladega.”
When the starting gates open for today’s race, five front-running colts all relegated to outside posts — including Derby-favorite Big Brown in the farthest 20 gate — will veer to their left and race each other full bore to the rail as the rest of the field comes charging straight up at them.
The Kentucky Derby is 1 1/4 miles long, but the race may be settled in the first couple of hundred yards said jockey Kent Desormeaux, who has won the roses twice — with Real Quiet and Fusaichi Pegasus — and today is on Big Brown:
“Everyone talks about the last quarter-mile of the Derby, but the race is really won in the first quarter-mile. There are dozens of snap decisions to make between the gate and the first turn. If I make a mistake on the run to the turn, my chances of winning end there.”
Breaking from post 10, Harty’s colt won’t be part of the early dash from the outside, but he agreed the fate of every horse is decided by that first turn:
“If (the outside speed horses) break well, it’s obvious they’re going to go one way and cross over in front of the field to make the first turn in front. Hopefully, we can avoid all that carnage.
“If those speed horses don’t break as fast as they like and they are hustled to the lead, there might be a logjam going into the first turn.
“I think the race is going to be dictated by what happens there, about who can get in and out of the first turn in one piece.”
Bob Black Jack, who holds the world record for six furlongs, may get on the rail first because he breaks from the No. 13 hole.
“It’s going to be interesting,” said his trainer, James Kasparoff. “You’d like to think your colt can overcome a little trouble, but in reality, if we’re not quick and relaxed out of the gate, it’s not going to go well for us.”
Michael Matz — who trained the beloved Barbaro to a 6 1/2 length victory in the 2006 Derby and has Visionaire today — felt the same way:
“This horse is going to have to come through some traffic. I’m just hoping we can get around the first turn fine and get in a spot where he can be put in a position to use the stretch. That’s all you can ask for.”
Desormeaux guided Big Brown to a wire-to-wire victory In the Florida Derby after breaking from farthest No. 12 post, but he said that was much different than the Kentucky Derby.
He said he had 50 feet to get to the first turn at Gulfsteam Park, while here at Churchill he has 5/16ths of a mile:
“I’m going to break as quiet as a church mouse and try to reel (Big Brown) in and get him to his maximum cruising speed. If you want me to guess, I might be third or fourth sitting on the outside going into the first turn. That’s my guess. But if Big Brown is just cantering alone, I’ll let him carry me to the lead.”
Although he doesn’t have a horse in the race this year, trainer D. Wayne Lukas — who has had a record 42 Derby starters and has won here four times — said the first turn is a rude education for most horses.
As he told reporters the other day, many horses are getting dirt kicked in their faces for the first time, they’re getting bounced around like never before and there’s that cacophony from the 150,000 roaring fans:
“This is one heck of a place to have to learn those lessons, but you have to if you’re going to be the real deal.”
Desormeaux admits that lightly-raced Big Brown — winner of all three of his career races by a combined 29 lengths — has never had dirt kicked in his face and — while he doesn’t think that will be the case — if it should occur, “I don’t know what will happen.”
As Harty put it: “It’s in the hands of the Almighty when you get there.”
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Thursday, May 1, 2008, 11:33 PM
How crazy is this?
According to the Louisville Courier Journal and Los Angeles Times, Michael Avery, a California eighth grade basketball player who doesn’t know where he’s going to high school next year already has picked his college.
It’s a college he’s never visited. He’ll be playing for a coach he’s supposedly never talked to in his life.
Thursday, he committed to the University of Kentucky.
Howard Avery, a California lawyer, said that his son’s recruitment happened by chance.
He said his son traveled to Culver Academy in Indiana to check out the school and, while there, he was invited to play with the Indiana Elite team at a tournament in Akron.
Gillespie was at the Akron event, told someone he liked the 6-foot-4 kid and Howard Avery heard about it. Although the tale seems a little far fetched to me, Avery supposedly called Gillespie and the coach offered the scholarship for the boy who’s still not sure if he’ll start ninth grade in California or Indiana next year.
“We were not interested in 200 different scholarship offers,” Avery told the Courier-Journal’s Jody Demling. “We just wanted one good one and a good coach and that came through, so we made the decision. We thought about it a lot.”
I’ll tell you one thing, I’m glad I’m not a college hoops coach these days. The pressure to get the jump on young talent has reached the absurd.
The only thing more extreme might be the Democratic presidential candidates trying to woo super delegates.
Hillary Clinton made the scene in Louisville Thursday and told the race-crazed masses here to do her a favor Saturday and “bet on the filly for me.”
She was talking about Eight Belles, the filly three year old, who, as it turns out, is about old enough to draw interest from guys like Gillespie.
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Friday, April 4, 2008, 09:56 AM
Leatherheads, the screwball comedy about a 1925 football team that was directed by and stars George Clooney, opens today.
I’m planning to see it for several reasons. I love that era of football. I’m a big Clooney fan and I like that he brought the movie back home to Maysville, Kentucky for its debut. He hasn’t forgotten his roots and that strikes a chord with me because my paternal grandparents were from Maysville and Mays Lick, just 12 miles down the road.
I’m hearing mixed reviews on the movie, but that won’t deter me. Then again I’m not sure it can crack my Top 10 list of football movies, which has it’s own personal quirks and will surely P.O. all those fans of Rudy.
Nothing against Notre Dame. I’ve got Knute Rockne - All American on my list. And I grew up a big fan of the Fighting Irish. My dad, being Irish-Catholic, wanted me to go there, I got accepted, hung around one day — “okay there’s the Golden Dome, hey, no girls” — and split. Went to Dayton instead.
Later on, one thing did tick me off about Notre Dame though. When I worked in Florida and regularly covered the Miami Hurricanes — a team I really liked and still do — I didn’t care for the holier-than-though “Catholics versus Convicts” attitude of the Irish. On the flip side, I liked Gerry Faust a lot.
The one sports movie I really wanted to embrace was We Are Marshall, but ever since Ohio State’s game at Texas a couple of years ago, I can only see Matthew McConaughey in one light. He was on the Longhorns sideline the whole game and his over-the-top, hey-look-at-me antics soured me on the guy. Now when I try to watch him in a movie and think only of that.
Here’s my Top 10 favorite football movies:
— North Dallas Forty (1979) — A wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys during the 1960s, Peter Gent wrote the novel “North Dallas Forty,” football’s version of Ball Four. Nick Nolte and singer Mac Davis — playing Gent and Don Meredith — give you a behind-closed-doors look at the game, showing the callousness of the front office and the players love-hate embrace of their game.
— Longest Yard (the 1974 original) — Ex Florida State football player and movie stud Burt Reynolds plays a former pro quarterback who lands in a prison run by a brutal warden. Facing a moral dilemma of his own, he has to decide if he wants to lead a ragtag group of inmates in a much-hyped game against the guards.
— Brian’s Song (1971) — The sad story of the relationship between Chicago Bears teammates Brian Piccolo (James Caan) and Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams). Sayers is black, Piccolo, white, and though competing for playing time, they became close friends, especially when Piccolo is diagnosed with cancer.
— Horse Feathers (1932) — The wise-cracking Marx Brothers help Huxley U. upset Darwin in the big game over Darwin. I love this one if for nothing more than to hear Chico call the signals — “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, this time I think-a we go up the middle!”
— Friday Night Lights (2004) — This stars Billy Bob Thornton as a high school football coach and he’s one of my favorites. In this film version of an even-better book, Thornton is the high school coach in a West Texas town that loves — maybe obsesses over is a better description — its team, the Permian High Panthers . Tim McGraw is great playing a has-been player who now takes his frustrations out on his running-back son.
— Remember the Titans (2000) — This is the true life story of football coach Herman Boone, who is a good friend of Middletown (and former CJ) coach Jim Place and even visited Dayton and worked the sidelines for the Eagles. In the movie, Denzel Washington plays Boone, a black coach put in charge of the football teamat a newly integrated Virginia high school in 1971. Will Patton plays the the white coach who must step aside and become Boone’s assistant.
— Knute Rockne — All American (1940) — It’s the story of the man who put the Irish program on the national map. Pat O’Brien plays the legendary Notre Dame football coach and Ronald Reagan plays George “The Gipper” Gipp, who utters the famous line “Win just one for the Gipper,” before he dies in a real tear-jerker scene.
— Black Sunday (1977) — Terror organization plans to blow up the Super Bowl. Bruce Dern plays an unhinged former Vietnam POW who has been lured into piloting the remote control blimp that will do the deed.
— Heaven Can Wait (1970) — Warren Beatty is a Rams quarterback who dies prematurely, but returns from heaven in the body of a tycoon, then promptly buys his old team and leads the unsuspecting and skeptical players to the Super Bowl.
— The Replacements (2000) — A a heart-warming, romantic comedy based loosely on the 1987 NFL strike. Keanu Reeves plays a quarterback who leads a often bumbling bunch of has beens and losers— coached by Gene Hackman — to victory
Honorable Mention: The Freshman, All the Right Moves, Wildcats, Radio, Invincible, Any Given Sunday, Rudy, We Are Marshall and, though I don’t know if you categorize it as a football movie, Jerry Maguire .
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Wednesday, April 2, 2008, 11:53 PM
A source close to the Marquette University basketball program has said Wright State’s Brad Brownell is on the short list of Golden Eagles athletics director Steve Cottingham as a replacement for departed coach Tom Crean.
Crean was introduced Wednesday as the new head coach at Indiana University.
According to ESPN.com and at least two other national sports web sites late Wednesday night, Brownell is considered one of the front-runners to replace Crean. Earlier in the day, ESPN”S Andy Katz reported that IU had been set to go after Brownell had it not been able to lure Crean.
One basketball insider at WSU said he expects Brownell to take a higher profile job as soon as he finds one that fits. Although Brownell has admitted he’s been contacted by a couple of schools since the Raiders season ended, he hasn’t named them publicly and has reiterated that he is happy with his job at WSU.
Brownell remains one of the hotter prospects in college coaching right now. He is the winningest NCAA Division I coach under the age of 40. In two seasons at Wright State, he’s led the Raiders to a 44-20 record, took the team to the NCAA Tournament last year and was named co-Coach of the Year in the Horizon League this season.
Prior to Wright State — in his four seasons as head coach at UNC-Wilimington — he led the team to two NCAA Tournaments and twice was named Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year. He’s never has a losing record in six years as a head coach.
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Friday, March 28, 2008, 06:43 PM
You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words?
Well, sometimes a picture is just a picture.
As for Orlando Sentinel and ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill and radio talkmeister Screamin’ Stephen A. Smith, I think you two are seeing something that’s not there.
Then again, contrived controversy does get you noticed on the blogosphere and bump those on-air ratings. Or, is there something else going on here all together — some kind of jealousy by one P.O.’d black woman — as Skip Bayless, another over-blown, look-at-me talk show type, suggested to Hill.
The point of contention is the April cover of the fashion magazine, Vogue. It’s the Shape Issue: “Secrets of the Best Bodies” and it features Cleveland Cavs superstar LeBron James and supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
James — dressed in black workout gear and letting loose with that same mouth-open scream you’ve see him do so many times after a rim-bending dunk — is dribbling a basketball with his right hand and has his left arm draped loosely around the waist of the smiling Bundchen, who’s wearing a slinky, form-fitting green dress.
Hill called the cover “distasteful” and compared the image — shot by the much-acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz — to that of King Kong imposing his will on Faye Wray.
“Maybe the point was to show the contrast between brawn and beauty, masculinity versus femininity, strength versus grace,” Hill wrote. “But Vogue’s quest to highlight the differences between superstar athletes and supermodels only successfully reinforces the animalistic stereotypes frequently associated with black athletes.
“A black athlete being reduced to a savage is, sadly, nothing new. But this cover gave you the double-bonus of having LeBron and Gisele strike poses that others in the blogosphere have noted draw a striking resemblance to the racially charged image of King Kong enveloping his very fair-skinned lady love interest.”
I think this is a racist take by Hill herself — painting James as some big ape — but she found support from Dr. John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor and author of the controversial book “Darwin’s Athletes: How Sports Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race.”
“It’s a great, great issue that Vogue has made trivial,” Hoberman told Hill. “It’s exploitative. It’s going for the primitive, racial emotion as opposed to something tasteful and edifying.”
And Smith parroted some of those thoughts and more on his daily radio show Friday.
Maybe I’m a Neanderthal or simply naive — and I do realize that Hill as a young black woman and myself, a white Baby Boomer, probably see things differently — but I didn’t have the same initial thoughts she did when I first saw the cover.
This was before the firestorm hit, and to me it seemed pretty natural for a Shape Issue that both would be wearing the clothes they wear on the job.
James is a super-amped, in-your-face athlete and that’s how he looked. He doesn’t seem to be holding Bundchen against her will. In fact, she’s smiling as if she’s having a good time.
That’s what prompted Bayless to ask Hill on air whether she was bent out of shape because LeBron was on the cover with a white woman.
Hill denied that — said something like that could not be further from the truth. But you can’t deny that some black women — like some white men — have the same adverse reaction when they see a black man and white woman arm-in arm.
Now if you want to grill the folks at Vogue on why they haven’t had more black women on the cover of their magazine — something like three in 114 years — I’m all for that.
But to think that James was duped here — or to paint him, as Hill does, as a guy who is uneducated on the plight of blacks — is unfair and biased in its own assumptions. Few athletes control their image or associations more than he does .
He told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he was pleased with the cover: “Absolutely. It was good.”
As for the controversy, he slapped it aside the way he does a lazy lay-up by an under-sized, opposing guard:
“Everything my name is on is going to be criticized in a good way or a bad way. …Who cares what anybody says.”
The way I see it, things could have been worse.
He could have been in pinstripes and wearing a Yankees cap.
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By Tom Archdeacon
| Thursday, March 27, 2008, 02:10 AM
COLUMBUS — For all the promise that next basketball season may have for the Dayton Flyers — a healthy Chris Wright, the continuing emergence of Marcus Johnson, who’s edge and athleticism, I think, will make him a real star, hopefully a bulked up Devin Searcy that could give more of a much-needed inside presence, and maybe even some help with the addition of Dunbar’s Josh Benson — one huge question looms:
How do the Flyers replace senior guard Brian Roberts?
Who’s going to be that steadying force? The guy to hit the big shot when the game’s on the line? The guy most other teams can’t stop unless they throw two or three players at a time at him?
Wednesday night — when the Flyers season ended with a 74-63 loss to Ohio State in an NIT quarter-final game at sold-out Value City Arena — Roberts was UD’s only game-long counter puncher.
“He did a hell of a job all game long,” Flyers coach Brian Gregory said. “He played 36 minutes and never had a turnover.”
Roberts finished with 20 points, including 4 for 9 shooting from three-point range. Those treys made him the school’s all-time leader with 293 three-pointers, two more than Tony Stanley.
Roberts also passed Jim Paxson Jr. and moved into fourth place among Dayton’s all-time scorers with 1,962 points, just six behind third-place Henry Finkel.
When Wright was hurt this year, Roberts often carried the team. Sure there were spans of a few games — especially late in the season — where he seemed to zone out for a little bit, but you try carrying a team an entire year. There had to be some weariness, physically and mentally. And when he was double and triple teamed, he needed other Flyers to step up. Sometimes they did, many times they did not.
So with Roberts gone — and guard Andres Sandoval graduating, too — the Flyers have error-apparent London Warren, back-up transfer Mickey Perry, rarely-used freshman Stephen Thomas and the incoming Paul Williams from Detroit.
There’s also been talk that the Flyers have been looking at a junior college guard in Kansas. They have no available scholarships left, but it seems as if they’re trying to get rid of Brazilian transfer Thiago Cordeiro.
Wednesday night was the sixth game in a row he didn’t get off the bench. And in the past two months — except for 19 minutes against Duquesne — he’s averaged less than three minutes a game when he did play.
Last year — for different reasons — Desmond Adedeji got the same freeze out until he moved on. I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here — if it is, and it happens everywhere, this is one side of the game I don’t like — but Cordeiro’s departure would open a spot for a more seasoned guard.
Still it’s hard to imagine any of these guys replacing Roberts.
After Wednesday’s game, UD coach Brian Gregory sang the praises of his senior:
“Those will be some pretty big shoes to fill…. (Without him) we’ll be a different team next year. …There’s not gonna be a lot of Brian Robertses coming down the pike. You don’t just take someone and plug him into Brian’s position.
“In a coach’s career, if you get three or four special guys. you’ve got to consider yourself lucky. I worked (as a Michigan State assistant) with Mateen Cleaves, Eric Snow, Jason Richardson and Andre Hutson. They’re special guys, as well as special people.
“Now I’ve gotten to coach Brian Roberts and he’s the same. He’ll go down as one of the greatest players of all time in the program’s rich basketball history…He’s a unique player because of his ability to score off the dribble and off the pass. He doesn’t have to dominate the ball in order to dominate the game. Not many players can do that.”
For all that promise to pay off next season, the Flyers need to find a guard who can do that at least some of the time.
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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
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I was very lucky to have gotten to meet Eight Belles on Sunday, April 20 at Keeneland Race Track here