Flatter: Consider a new Travers tradition at Saratoga

I have an idea to rewrite a revered albeit mysterious tradition of racing. Since this is a column, it requires about 1,000 words of preamble to maintain a journalistic tradition of racing. Then again, there is the option of using the above photo as a hint or merely scrolling to the bottom.

Thorpedo Anna will try Saturday to break another longstanding practice in racing. That would be nothing but colts and geldings winning the last 109 times at Saratoga in the Travers Stakes.

Her being in the Grade 1, $1.25 million race breaks a pattern, too. Other than Wonder Gadot, who finished last in 2018, there have been no fillies in the Travers since Davona Dale was the beaten favorite in 1979.

It is curious, isn’t it, why we Americans do not race equine girls against equine boys more often. It is said that it happens all the time in Europe and Australia. That is an apocryphal exaggeration. All the time would suggest all overseas races are completely co-ed. They are not, but mixed company certainly happens more often over there than it does over here.

I was there in 2004 and 2005 when Makybe Diva won her second and third Melbourne Cups in Australia. Yes, against the boys. And yes, carrying 128 pounds, the most for any male or female winner in 30 years.

Before I lever that personal experience to dredge up the lessons of every mare from Rachel Alexandra to Zenyatta, it might be worth trying to figure out why we do not mingle the equine genders more often here.

If, as the late TV producer Don Ohlmeyer told Tony Kornheiser, “the answer to all your questions is money,” the purse structure could be used as an alibi. Take what Thorpedo Anna’s trainer Kenny McPeek had to decide this month. It could have been far easier for his filly to cruise against her own gender and get a big chunk of $600,000 last week in the Alabama (G1) than it will be to face a deeper pool of biologically advantaged males and perhaps settle for a smaller piece of $1.25 million.

Never one to back down from a challenge, he chose the tougher path, one that has not been explored much in the past half-century.

“I think they really need to contemplate making the Alabama a million,” McPeek said on my podcast. “It’s a great race. It has been a great race. It wasn’t ultra-deep this year, but that race deserves an upgrade. It’s basically the summer oaks.”

The choice is easier next month at Parx. McPeek has mapped the 1 1/16-mile Cotillion (G1) fillies race for Thorpedo Anna instead of the 1 1/18-mile Pennsylvania Derby (G1) against males like Preakness winner Seize the Grey.

“I think the Cotillion is just an ideal spot no matter what happens,” he said. “It’s $1 million. What’s the P-A Derby? A million? I don’t get any added benefit beating the colts in the P-A Derby. Is the P-A Derby a Grade 1? So’s the Cotillion. I won’t have to work as hard in that one for the same purse.”

McPeek said gender gaps in purses are “a little insulting” with more than a hint of misogyny.

“Actually, my wife (Sherri) gets irritated,” he said. “Why is it that the fillies run for half as much as the colts? I’ll tell you the word she uses. It’s bulls---. Why are the fillies getting dissed like that?”

I theorized that it starts with breeding. While mares can have only one baby a year, stallions can sire dozens and dozens of foals, each of whom contributes to a logarithmically higher stack of money. Maybe that zoological fact trickles down to the purse structure.

Yes, this reasoning would work overseas, too, if only the reality were different there. Maybe then it is just another unsolved mystery of racing. There are plenty. Like why it is that the U.S. decided centuries ago to race on dirt instead of on the turf that has been the eternal proving ground in the old country, whatever old country that may be.

“I think it was just an up-yours to England,” one amateur history buff posited years ago. “It’s the same reason we turn left and not right.”

There are more subtle and even newer traditions that lack an explanation. Like when they used to play the NBC chimes before races at Arlington Park. I asked about that one for years and never got a concrete answer.

“Maybe it was because NBC televised the Million after the fire in ’85,” was what someone told me. I can’t remember whether it was an audio technician or a railbird or even the late Mr. D., who ran the place before he and the track passed. No one really knew for sure.

And how about that bell that gets rung 17 minutes before races at Saratoga? According to the New York Racing Association website, “It’s a nod to the days before television and smartphones when the clanging alerted riders and trainers that it was time to saddle up for the next race.”

But why 17 minutes instead of 15? And when did this tradition begin? The hour it would take me to drive to the library at Keeneland might be my first step to finding out. I will add that on the to-do list.

All this finally brings me to the tradition that I hope to change this year. That is the painting of the canoe on the infield pond at Saratoga. According to the NYRA media guide, it was decided in 1961 to paint it in the colors of Travers winner Beau Prince, in his case Calumet Farm’s devil red and blue.

“Its exact origins, however, remain a mystery,” the same media guide said.

Maybe Calumet’s Lucille Wright Markey won a side bet. Maybe it was the work of a serial enamelazzo. Whatever the case, the painting of the canoe was an idea cum habit cum lingering contrivance. That really is the root of all traditions.

So here goes. If Thorpedo Anna wins the Travers, instead of the burgundy and white of lead owner Brookdale Racing, how about painting the canoe pink? It is the color McPeek has urged fans to wear Saturday. It could be the start of a new tradition whenever a filly wins the Travers.

As rarely as that happens, I bet the next time it is suggested that pink would be appropriate for the boat, the author will be some AI bot discussing what is left of our sport in all of maybe four states.

And if Thorpedo Anna does not win Saturday, well, never mind.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.