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Horse racing, 1975: John Damien, a jockey, trainer and racing steward, was living the good life when he was told by the Ontario Racing Commission that he would not be retained. The reason? Damien was gay. As reported by Xtra in Canada in 2007:

Damien refused: “I won’t resign. I’ve done nothing wrong. Lots of gay people work for the government and sex doesn’t interfere with their work, or with mine… I will never resign.”

Thus began an 11-year case Damien brought before the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which did not want to hear the case, claiming that sex discrimination laws applied only to gender, not sexual orientation.

But Damien refused to back down from the pursuit of justice, despite being bankrupted by legal debts in 1978. In 1986, Damien was awarded $50,000 in a suit against the racing commission, but he very soon died of pancreatic cancer. The human rights commission then added sexual orientation to its code. Damien proved to be a pioneer:

Damien proved that blatant discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation could no longer be tolerated in Canadian society and that court action in such cases would (eventually) succeed.

For more information:

• Profile of John Damien, the forgotten hero
• John Damien biography

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Julien Leparoux

Twelve top American jockeys have stripped down for a 2012 calendar that will assist the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund. It costs $13.99 and is a good cause, and also shows these jockeys have some rocking bods. From the Albany Times Union:

OK. Let’s just be frank. Jockeys are athletes. Many of them have rippling abs, and there’s something sexy in that whole facing-danger thing, a guy who puts it on the line to go speeding down the track on the back of a thoroughbred. …

Beefcakes? At between 5 feet 1 and 5 feet 6 and under 115 pounds, you might consider them petite filets. But abs don’t lie.
Still, [photographer Barbara D.] Livingston was careful to shoot the jockeys at an angle that wouldn’t emphasize their stature, and when she paired them with horses, she either chose horses on the smaller side (a leather vest-clad Calvin Borel was shot with a pony) or get only part of the horse in the shot.

Hot is hot and it’s more about quality than size. The Times-Union has a photo gallery of 16 images of the jockeys.

Hat tip to Deadspin.

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Vodka is so celebrated in Japan, especially with female fans, that pop songs have been written about her, as documented on a YouTube video.

TVG didn’t air the Cup till almost 11 p.m.  L.A. time. It was a big international field of 18 going 1 1/2 miles over grass.   The other notable entry was Breeders Cup winner Conduit from the UK.  On her way to the post, amid all the Japanese pomp and fanfares and banner-waving, Vodka was her usual quiet and business-like — never the entertainer that Zenyatta is.

But out of the gate, her MO is a lot like Zenyatta’s.  She often breaks slow because she is so big, and settles in towards the rear of the pack. Then, yesterday, under a smart ride by French jockey Christophe Lemaire, she went on like a rocket, and got in front.  But the Tokyo track has a long home stretch — more than 3 furlongs and a little uphill — and horses often tire on it.  Vodka started to flatten out a little, and Oken Bruce Lee launched a late challenge.  But his challenge sparked the filly to dig in powerfully, and she kept her nose in front as the 100,000 fans went cardiac.

It’s always amazing to see that natural competiveness come out in horses, whether it’s a band of them grazing in a pasture or galloping along a racetrack.  There is always a pecking order in horse society, and mares are as peckish as stallions and geldings.  The lead mare is boss — often she’ll tell a stallion off.  Even in a horse race, this pecking order is being thrashed out among a dozen animals that are strangers to each other and churning along tightly bunched at 40 mph, with the horses sometimes deliberately jostling each other if the jockeys allow it (it’s a violation of the rules if they do).

Over the last furlong, in the reruns, you could see Vodka giving Bruce Lee the evil eye as he pulls up alongside her — that look of “you are definitely not going to beat me.”

The winner’s circle ceremony was extra long, with more pomp and speeches and interviews and a lot of bowing.   Like Zenyatta, Vodka has earned her niche in history.  After years of campaigning (she’s now five), she will be retired to breeding.  And she will probably be boss mare in a pasture somewhere.

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Everything went wrong for Zenyatta in that race. She broke from the gate badly, was visibly unsettled and trailed by 11 lengths till jockey Mike Smith masterfully got her settled. When the field hit the home stretch, she finally got her monster kick rolling…only to have another horse cut in front of her.  But she recovered with an mindboggling explosion of speed …and got up to win by a length. She was the first female horse ever to win the Classic at the Breeders Cup world championships.

The big mare not only defeated a loaded field of 12 male champions who qualified from all over the world. She also turned in a heart-stopping performance that the sport will never forget — one that puts her firmly in the history books. The 58,000 fans went absolutely wild. There were so many GO ZENYATTA signs waving that the grandstands looked like a political convention.

Zenyatta is just a horse, right?  Why should anybody care about a frikking horse when our country is falling apart and LGBT people are under fire everywhere?  Well, some people evidently do see Zenyatta as an inspiration for their own lives…and that includes some of us. After all, we are looking for the “impossible” win too — in marriage and other civil rights.

Whenever the U.S. economy is down and out, horse racing always manages to come up with a “feel good” champion that captures the public imagination and makes people feel that they can win their own battles. During the Great Depression, it was a homely little bay stallion from California named Seabiscuit. Today, in the latest down-and-out time for America, that feel-good horse is a big beautiful bay girl-horse from California named Zenyatta.

Interested readers can go to YouTube and search under “Zenyatta” for reams of footage on her win.

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Saratoga is infamous as a track where champions get beat, and Rachel A arrived there 8 for 8, including her destruction of top colts in the Preakness and Haskell.  It was her toughest challenge yet — she was taking on a field of older,  experienced male horses, and she’d never raced at Saratoga.  And no filly had ever won the Woodward in the race’s long history.
But Rachel A didn’t disappoint her nationwide cohort of girl fans.  Instead of bringing her from off the pace, as he usually does, jockey Calvin Borel had her go to the lead and set a blistering pace, in an effort to burn off the speed horses.  In the closing furlong, Rachel had just enough pink left in her to hold off a late charge by Macho Again.  She won by a neck.
Yes, women need all the help they can get, with healthcare a huge issue for them, and the President faltering in his reform efforts.  I wouldn’t mind getting the intelligent total care that this filly gets from her owners, if I could get the human version of that care with my monthly insurance payment…

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But historic-landmark status is little protection today.  Another storied racetrack with movie-glamour history, Del Mar, is being put on the sale block by the state of California, along with several other historic sites.  Santa Anita itself is in financial trouble, reportedly up for sale.  If all these tracks go, horse racing in southern California will have been virtually decapitated, resulting in a big income loss to the state, not to mention the loss of jobs.  It makes you wonder what the state government is thinking.

Together with my local gay and lesbian horse-loving buddies, two of whom joined me for some TVG watching of the races on the last HP card, I’m hoisting a glass of wine and saying my own goodbye.

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Roger Federer beats Rafael Nadal in the Madrid final…on clay!

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As the field churned towards the final turn, the blimp shot showed jockey Calvin Borel doing his world-famous thing of hugging the rail to save ground.    He threaded his horse skillfully through any openings he found, swinging to the outside once because there was no room to pass on the left, then back to the rail again.  Midway down the home stretch,  he saw an opening of perhaps three feet  between the rail and the leading horse, Pioneerof the Nile.  Mine That Bird shot through that keyhole, and left Pioneer behind amid splashes of mud.  By the time he hit the wire, he was nearly 7 lengths in front.

“What was the name of that horse again?” one commentator quipped.   Afterwards New Mexico trainer Chip Woolley mentioned casually that he had trained Mine That Bird at high altitude — a legitimate training trick that is familiar to human athletes.  That explains, in part, why the horse had such astonishing oomph over the last quarter mile, with a lot more oxygen-carrying red-blood corpuscles than his rivals.

It was definitely an upset for the history books.  And a feel-good day for the sport — no breakdowns, and new rules in place that ban steroids and otherwise make some progress towards horse safety.

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Matt Hennie blogs on Atlanta’s gay sports scene (and other stuff) at Project Q Atlanta.

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