Saved by Sunday Silence

Everyone has lulls. Those times when no new ideas come and everything seems to have lost its luster. Some factors in your control, and sometimes things outside of it, these lulls always seem to come at the least opportune times. Over the past year, I’ve managed to write only a pair of blogs on the sport I claim to love. Writing became to feel like a chore, and less of the expressive outlet to which I wanted it to be. Faced with the many facets of life, it was hard to carve time for the time to express my thoughts on racing to the masses. The banter of the sport on social media had taken a toll on me. It was no longer fun to discuss the sport in open forums. And so any free time I did have was now being spent with my nose between pages of books ranging in topics from economic theory to classic science fiction. It was almost like I was finding anything to do except blog or keep up with racing.

Into my 9 month long book-a-thon I needed something different and decided to pick the one edition of the Thoroughbred Legends collection that I had not read yet. The biography of the great Sunday Silence proceeded to remind me of why I love this sport. This reason is the same I give any acquaintance when they inquire into to my peculiar hobby that does not fit the genre of a Silicon Valley tech nerd. I tell them I love the sport because in a world of controversy and questionable motivation, it is hard to find pure competition free of malicious influence. But this isn’t true in horse racing, is it? What about the trainers caught doping their charges and the jockeys caught breaking rules while looking for an edge? But not the horses. The horses are pure. Their drive to win is pure. Their tenacity and beauty is pure. This purity is my love.

Sunday Silence didn’t know that just about everyone in the game was betting against him. He didn’t care. His apathy to the racing world, aka just being a horse, was the telling fact of his story that I admired most. He ran his heart out every time he was saddled and carried his prowess into the shed becoming one of the most breed influencing sires since Northern Dancer. I could not say enough about Sunday Silence to do him justice, so I shan’t even try. He was amazing, and I wish I was following racing at the young age of 5 while he was in his prime and wowing the world with every stride.

I find it very ironic that this one book of the Legends’ series was not read until this time of my life. Call it whatever you’d like, but this was more than coincidence. We all have moments in our lives that we can’t explain or don’t understand. This was one of those moments. The story that personified the very trait I love so much about the sport at a time when I needed it most. It was too perfect not to share And so we arrive to today. The Kentucky Derby trail is heating up and the older divisions are starting to get moving. It’s one of the best times of the year to be a racing fan, and my rekindling of the passion for the sport could not be better timed. This blog was not intended to be long, nor full of facts or superlatives. It was simply to share that even when your doubts creep into your mind, it’s love that makes the foundation indestructible. If you truly love racing as I do, and as many of us do, sometimes it takes a good lull to allow yourself to recognize how much the thundering of hooves is a part of you. I’m excited to be coming back to the community of racing. I never guessed how much I’d miss it.