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H & L News Alert HORSESHOES AT THE SUPER BOWL
I know you are all shoeing fanatics, but maybe some of you took a break from work on Sunday to watch the Super Bowl (Note to foreign readers: my local team, the New England Patriots, won its first Super Bowl. Ever.) But a funny thing happened on the way to the Superdome. The Patriots' coach, Bill Belichick, received a pair of horseshoes in the mail. You see, the Patriots weren't supposed to make the playoffs this year, what with the #1 quarterback, Drew Bledsoe, out of action. When the playoffs loomed before them, Coach Belichick knew he needed a miracle effort from the team. They needed to play as well as he knew they could. So he showed them a video of the 2001 Breeders Cup Classic, the finish of which was recently voted the greatest moment in Thoroughbred racing for the year 2001. The European champion Sakhee and the USA's 2000 Horse of the Year, Tiznow, battled head to head down the backstretch. No horse had ever won the race twice. There was Tiznow, winner of the 2000 Breeders Cup Classic. He'd been hopelessly lame behind all spring from a back injury and disappointed in two warmup races this fall. No one thought he could do it...but at the wire, he dug down deep somewhere in that track surface, and lunged under the wire ahead of Sakhee and a star-studded field of international champions. That was the sort of effort it would take to get the Pats to the Super Bowl, the coach told his players. They had to find whatever it was that Tiznow had found. Not long afterwards, the Pats' coach got a present in the mail from WinStar Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, where the recently-retired Tiznow will stand at stud. It was a framed pair of hind racing plates, Tiznow's own shoes, decorated with a halter plate, inscribed "KICK *#@!" Which, of course, they did, surprising all their critics. Still, going into the Super Bowl, they were picked to lose, by at least 14 points. The Super Bowl, of course, is the Breeders Cup of football. And vice versa. Before the game, Belichick received another package. This time, it was 100 Tiznow caps and a poster of the Lombardi Super Bowl trophy, with Tiznow's Breeders' Cup finish reflected in the polished silver. It was inscribed: "It's not the horse in the race, it's the race in the horse." We all knew something was up when the teams took the field; the St Louis Rams were introduced one by one, invincible super-star by invincible super-star. As the Patriots were introduced, they rushed the field as a team unit, refusing to be introduced individually. One of the most exciting Super Bowls ever filled the next few hours. About 10 pm on Sunday night, America stopped. We all turned to TVs and radios or the Internet. With five seconds to play, the score was tied. The perennial underdog Patriots had the ball. Would they blow it? (You could hear the cynics jeering..) The under-appreciated Tiznow won the Classic in the last split second. Who would ever have predicted that, just like the horse, the under-appreciated Patriots would win the Super Bowl in the last nanosecond, when a desperate field goal split the uprights? And if you watched closely as the Patriots danced around the field clutching their trophies, you'd have seen that the helmets were gone. And if you thought you saw a Tiznow cap here and there, you were right. Somewhere in Kentucky, an underrated, barefoot, multi-millionaire stallion knew just how those leaping laughing football players felt. (To read all about Tiznow's relationship with the New England Patriots, and to see his shoes, visit www.tiznowpress.com) © 200 2 Hoofcare & LamenessAll rights reserved |
