Flatter: Antonucci forges milestone memory in Belmont
Elmont, N.Y.
When my dad died, a colleague pierced my mourning when he told me how he felt when he lost his dad.
“There will be times when you will be 15 again, and 5 again, and 20 again and 7 again,” he said. “Those moments you remember with him will haunt you at first. But eventually, they become blessings.”
The worst of times can be like the best of times. The celebrations in life are like that, too, right? Like when the sun set Saturday on what was going to be the most awful Triple Crown season ever. With horse deaths and vet scratches and a trainer suspension and RSVP’d regrets and air pollution, this one was going to be even worse than the COVID mess three years ago.
Arcangelo wins Belmont making history for trainer Antonucci.
But in the last of the good light of these turbulent five weeks came one of the greatest moments racing could have.
Arcangelo won the Belmont Stakes. Jena Antonucci won the Belmont Stakes. A woman trained a winner in a Triple Crown race.
Finally.
At last we have a snapshot worth cherishing in this season of classics. For me, I am 14 again. And I am 34 again. And I am 56 again.
In 1973, I was 14. I watched on a black-and-white TV in Northern California when Secretariat put on the greatest horse show on earth. I won five cents off my dad, who took the field while I singled Secretariat. Before the race, mom was ticked off that dad was trying to scam me. After the race, mom was mad at me, like I was stashing some big secret from my dad.
In 1993, I was 34 and sitting in a bar in Boston watching the Belmont Stakes on one of those big, old, projection TVs. I was with a friend, a woman, who had some connection with the owners of Colonial Affair. That was the horse who carried Julie Krone to the first victorious ride by a woman in a Triple Crown race.
My friend was crying, although she admitted it was more for who she knew in the ownership group than it was for the milestone for women. I guess it was left to me to fight back the tears for what Krone achieved.
In 2015, I was 56 and in the very press box where I wrote these words. As American Pharoah came to the sixteenth pole with that insurmountable lead that was about to bring rain onto the 37-year Triple Crown drought, I heard another reporter say, “Gentlemen, it’s finally over.”
And then I thought about my dad all those years before, because he put me in front of the TV to watch horse races. I remember bowing my head that day to think about him.
Now in 2023, I am 64, much closer to the end of whatever story I am authoring than I am to the beginning. As was the case with Pharoah, I did not have a dime on Arcangelo. Where I went with Frosted in 2015, I keyed Tapit Trice on Saturday. In each case, I could not have been happier to lose that money.
Antonucci was stoic all week, but she fought a losing fight with her tears Saturday. She finally let go a little in the post-race news conference when she thought about the faith shown her by Arcangelo’s owner Jon Ebbert, whom she met only one day after he bought the ridgling.
“He’s a young guy, and a young owner and a patient owner,” she said. “There’s a lot to be learned from his example of letting a horse develop and being patient, and it has given you an amazing lifetime memory.”
As she said that, Antonucci’s voice cracked, and she finished the thought by saying, “I’m so happy for you and your family.”
In these touchstone moments, whether in sports or history or life, we go back to our roots, right? Perhaps it was in the same tiny, basement theater where Antonucci met reporters Saturday night that Krone did the same thing with another media gathering, probably a bigger one, after she wrote her chapter in women’s history.
As Krone shed her own tears of joy, she was 14 again, she said. That was when she watched Steve Cauthen ride Affirmed to the 1978 Triple Crown.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Krone was sitting on a trunk, wearing a baseball cap backward and using a fly swatter as a crop when she said, “Mom, I’m going to be a jockey.”
Antonucci grew up in South Florida, but she did not live in horse country.
“We showed and rode and stuff out in the Davie area at the time, which was horsey,” Antonucci said this week. “I actually grew up in the Fort Lauderdale and all that city-ish kind of area. … Back then there were cornfields and horse farms where the Sawgrass Mills (mall is) and the Sawgrass Expressway is. Things have changed and developed down there in the last 30-plus years.”
Antonucci stuck with a plan to find her way to horses and work with them and eventually become a Thoroughbred trainer. On Saturday she went where 30 other women tried to go before but were denied by horses who were better on 47 previous Triple Crown days.
Now she has her moment that she can call up when she wants to be 47 again. So do others who can be inspired by that.
When Secretariat won the Belmont 50 years and a day ago, the first reaction shot that CBS showed on that old black-and-white TV was of owner Penny Chenery. We knew her then by her married name Penny Tweedy. I could not help but be glad I was living in a time when women were taking big strides to break down gender barriers that an adolescent version of me could not quite understand.
Kate Tweedy, Penny’s daughter, was at Belmont Park all those years ago. She was interviewed for a few seconds on the CBS telecast, so I would have seen her. She was back at Belmont Park this weekend to celebrate Secretariat’s golden anniversary. Little did she know she would end up seeing more history. And feeling the synergy of Saturday’s big moment with that snapshot from her own life.
“Yes, absolutely,” she said as she was going back to Manhattan on Saturday night. “I was thinking about that, and I didn’t get a chance to see (Antonucci’s) whole acceptance thing, but she looked like she was pretty emotional in the winner’s circle.”
It was a moment that Antonucci will have the rest of her life as will anyone who felt the tug of emotion with her. I know I did. And so did Kate Tweedy, who was 20 again.
“It was like, yes, this is so perfect.”