A Horse Named Juba

A breathless day with few clouds and fewer worries, Cigar Mile Day 2013 at Aqueduct was my first ever trip to the Big A, all in hopes of seeing the unequaled Groupie Doll notch a victory in the featured race as well as seeing Honor Code brush up for a big win in the Remsen Stakes (II). With four graded stakes headlining the tail end of the card, a maiden special weight for two-year-old colts early in the afternoon hardly seemed to be the right place for any fanfare.

 

Then a little gray colt walked down the ramp to the saddling paddock.

 

 

 

He was not favored at all with a 20-1 morning line, the second longest shot according to the linemaker, and he wasn’t even the only gray horse in the field. The handicapper in me had already settled on eyeballing the #8 Private Label and the #10 Surfing U S A, but a look at #6 sent me scrambling through my program.

 

“Juba.”

 

Perhaps if it were an ordinary weekday at Aqueduct it wouldn’t have felt like such a big deal, but something about Juba sent the long-time fangirl within me into a tizzy. He looked like an equine snowdrop, with a coal-black mane and tail framing a face that did not suggest authority or impending dominance in the dirt. His ears pointed noon, he was a little kid watching the clock tick down to recess. The mood shifted from observer to starstruck Juliet the moment the colt looked up at me from the paddock. Perhaps he looked at a lot of other folks too, as his odds bowed to a still smart 15-1, but he kept his eye on me on the way to the gate, his tongue tasting the breeze and ears playing to the scree of the seagulls. I was hooked.

 

 

 

There are some races you want to bet on and those you should bet on, and there are instances in between when the two disagree with one another. At 15-1 he was a tease, but I dared not feel tempted to drop $2 on a passing pretty face. You know you have your racing heart staked on a horse when you feel that plummeting feeling once they leave the gate, and you’re left gasping for air when the field turns for home. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s enough to incite the most romantic of nostalgic feelings in a race place where emotional saps are the pariahs of the apron.

 

Juba left the gate in good order, settling in behind the pacesetters as the field of twelve swarmed to the inner rail. A pair of longshots matched strides rolling down the backstretch, with favored Surfing U S A stalking to their outside. By the first quarter, Juba had shuffled back slightly to 6th, still glued to that rail. The far turn approached and Rajiv Maragh moved with Juba responding, picking off the sleepers one by one. Tom Durkin, still shaky on how he wanted to pronounce his name, called out that "JOH-bah the gray" was coming on through in between horses in fourth. Darting to the inside, he lengthened his stride in a grandiose rush and from my vantage point, he was bearing down on the lead heading down the homestretch.

 

"Oh my god! He's doing it!"

 

 

 

It was a tall order to ask of any colt in his first start, and an even bigger one to ask of a Jimmy Jerkens baby. Juba was passed for first and edged for the place, but he still galloped out alongside winner Surfing U S A past the wire. Another Tapit baby had passed the litmus test, and a new outlandishly crazy fan was born.  

 

Juba scratched from starting again at the Big A in December before being shipped to Gulfstream Park as a three-year-old, where he made one start before being sidelined with a condylar fracture acquired during a workout. But it wasn't so bad in hindsight; the only horse that managed to pass him in that race was future Florida Derby (I) winner Constitution. 

 

 

 

To date, with much credit due to the @Jubacolt Twitter account, "Juba the Gray" is on his way back to the track having recently shipped down to Palm Meadows, and will soon be joined by his star stablemate Wicked Strong. Unlike his accomplished stablemate, he has not graced the winners' circle just yet, still a shining gray diamond in the rough. Like myself and many others, he is a work in progress.

 

-- By Dawna Wood