Posts Tagged ‘Natalie Voss’

Someone made a comment on the Paulick Report yesterday after reading an opinion piece by intern Natalie Voss on Horse of the Year lobbying that the "silly season" has begun. Perhaps it has. 

Horse of the Year voting is over and we’re a couple of weeks from knowing the verdict. The big races of 2010 are months away. We’ve turned 11 shades of purple holding our breath for the past eight years to find out who will operate the VLT parlor at Aqueduct. Zenyatta is "still retired," according to her connections, though she continues to train like a racehorse. And California horse owner David Milch, who turned the Wild West upset down with his HBO original series "Deadwood,"  is contemplating a similar take on horse racing. If that series debuts at the 2010 Jockey Club Round Table dinner, it will send Dinny Phipps and friends screaming into the Saratoga night

Today, after reading this morning’s online story from the San Diego Union-Tribune about the upcoming movie on the life of Hall of Fame jockey Julie Krone, my mind started wandering. Who will play Krone in the film, which Julie herself said is appropriately titled "Freak."? I’ve thumbed through my backlog of US Weekly magazines, consulted with my teenaged, movie-going daughter, even went to TMZ.com to see what actresses are in the news these days.

I don’t have the answer, but Gravity Films president Katherine Brooks (she of "The Osbournes," Jessica Simpson and MTV’s "Real World" fame), who announced the project in November, apparently does. Quoting from the San Diego Union-Tribune article, the actress and Krone will have something in common. At some point in their career…both women endured ridicule and judgment. “The actress playing Julie is not what people will expect,” Brooks said. “People will go into the movie with their preconceived notions of who this actress is because of tabloid gossip, but they will come out respecting her, because they will be reminded of how strong of an actress she is.”

So here  is the article from the San Diego newspaper. Give it a read and then come back and let us know who you think will play Krone in "Freak." I don’t have a clue. We’ll put the best answers in an upcoming poll and put it up for a vote. – Ray Paulick

As you may know, our intern, Natalie Voss of the University of Kentucky Equine Program, submitted a piece a few weeks back throwing her hat in the ring for Rachel Alexandra as Horse of the Year. It was a strong piece and one of hundreds that have or will be written on the subject. But when I read the following piece about her perception of the media wars between the two camps, I was impressed by her analysis of a subsection of this larger argument. I don’t necessarily agree with her, but of course that’s not the point.

On a side note, this was submitted to us last week but because of the shorthanded nature of the Paulick Report, I regrettably didn’t have time to look at it until yesterday. I bring this up to give her credit for noticing the potential return of Zenyatta before others in the mainstream press.

- Bradford Cummings

By Natalie Voss
As 2009 comes to a close, the Eclipse Award ballots are finding their way to voters and once again the Rachel vs. Zenyatta Horse of the Year debate is lighting up blogs and message boards in the Thoroughbred world. I’ve already voiced my opinion on which filly I would like to see win the award although I believe both are deserving of the honor. However, the more interesting part of reading the headlines is not the same old debate but instead the media campaigns both horses’ supporters and connections have been running post-Breeder’s Cup.

Outside of my opinion of her qualifications as Horse of the Year, I think Zenyatta’s camp has been more guilty of electioneering than Rachel’s (although they eventually picked up on the concept also). While it’s reasonable that California should honor a champion who has brought them extra attendance and handle with a retirement ceremony attended by Gov. Schwarzenegger at Hollywood Park, the subsequent announcement that the Lady’s Secret Stakes would be re-named for her rubbed many the wrong way. Stripping Lady’s Secret of that honor in order to make more headlines was completely unnecessary.

Also reasonable is the assertion that her official workout several weeks later was done just “to take the edge off”. (We’ll ignore the fact that there was no cause to have a supposedly casual work officially timed and published.) 



Things really started getting ridiculous when it was announced around the same time that Zenyatta would parade yet again, on the opening day of Santa Anita despite her retirement. Sure, it was a great opportunity for fans to see her again, but what motive did her owners have for delaying her trip to Kentucky for a repeat her ceremony at Hollywood?

She also made news with the auction of Moneighs to benefit retired racehorses (a great cause but awfully convenient timing). Because of all these photo opps and press releases, Zenyatta’s connections received the Big Sport of Turfdom Award for “their efforts to work with media and track publicists”. And indeed they did make an effort.

Rachel’s group was slower on the uptake; although she made news for her workout and shipping schedule, as an active racehorse this would have been carefully tracked regardless of the approaching Eclipse ballots. Jess Jackson did come forward to the press in early December about his attempts to set up a match race with Zenyatta (which put a lid on the Mosses’ attempts to publicly compare the two fillies). The Fair Grounds stepped up soon after, hinting that such an opportunity could come again in early 2010 in the New Oreleans Ladies. Rachel also got her name in the papers for charity with an announcement that $20,000 was donated to the V Foundation for Cancer in her name.

In my opinion, such obvious campaigning on the part of each filly’s connections and the California tracks cheapens their accomplishments. It will demean the accomplishments of whichever horse wins the Horse of the Year title. Perhaps worse, it will make it easy for outsiders to look at the highest honor in our sport and say that like so many other things in the horse world, it was all about politics. 



Yet, the Mosses and Jackson are perhaps demonstrating that it is possible to use the national media for good rather than further bloodying the evil face it has given the sport. This may not have been their intent as each campaign their champion filly, but I can only hope that somewhere Alex Waldrop and all NTRA employees, the self-declared marketing gateway of the Thoroughbred industry, are taking notes.

It is about time that someone among the horse racing higher-ups recognized the enormous marketing potential that lies in all our equine and human atheletes’ accomplishments year after year. After all, how many of us didn’t grow up in a training barn but became immersed in racing when we saw a horse like Zenyatta parade at Hollywood, or Rachel jogging in the fog at the Fair Grounds? If you build the energy, the stories, the excitement after a year like this one, the fans will come.



Sounds like good material for the NTRA’s New Year’s Resolution, doesn’t it?

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Although I don’t necessarily buy her conclusion that Rachel Alexandra “must” be elected Horse of the Year for 2009, I can’t disagree with Natalie Voss that we have two very exciting and deserving candidates for the sport’s top honor. Zenyatta and Rachel Alexandra are to many in Natalie’s generation what Secretariat, Ruffian, Affirmed or Seattle Slew were to mine, or Seabiscuit was to a previous generation of racing fans.

A University of Kentucky Equine Communications student, Natalie joined the Paulick Report earlier this year as an intern. This, her first published piece for us, reflects both her enthusiasm for Thoroughbred racing as well as her burgeoning knowledge of the sport. But most importantly, as we look to expand our audience in the future, it is imperative that we listen to the voices of the next generation. — Ray Paulick

By Natalie Voss
Right before this year’s Breeders’ Cup, the Paulick Report posted a handful of editorials and news articles taking the view that Zenyatta could not beat the males in the Breeder’s Cup Classic. The Europeans were too tough, it was too big a test for her first try against boys, Summer Bird was a sleeper sitting on a big performance: the reasons were various and valid. I’ll admit that if you had asked me, I would have pointed out all these things, particularly because although Zenyatta has a tremendous lifetime record of victories, she hadn’t blown away any of the fields she’d beaten.

On these points I’ll admit I was proven conclusively wrong. For perhaps the first time in her career, Zenyatta was forced to overcome adversity and did so with ease. The loading debacle before the race, her slow start and spotting 12 lengths to the leaders early made me shout in disappointment ”She’s done” as the field moved down the backstretch. I gave my television set a round of applause right along with the Southern California crowd when we realized she had fought through to the lead coming to the wire. It was a truly incredible race.

But now the party is over, and we are left to all put our two cents in on which horse will be forever associated with this season by carrying the title “Horse of the Year 2009,” and here are mine: as incredible as Zenyatta’s win was this weekend, the title still must go to Rachel Alexandra.

There have been, and will continue to be a flurry of editorials on the Paulick Report and elsewhere from various handicapping experts and journalists voicing their (sadly, ultimately irrelevant) opinions on which of the two fillies should go home with this honor. Mine may perhaps be less relevant than any of them, as I am just starting out in the racing industry, a mere college intern for the Paulick Report, but for what it’s worth here are my assertions:

– Zenyatta has faced and beaten stakes company males once. Rachel has done it three times, with many (although not all) of the horses she beat also appearing in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Both fillies ran against and defeated many top fillies and mares this year. In short: they have faced almost all of the same opponents.

– Considering the above, Zenyatta does just enough work to win, weighing in with an average margin of victory of two lengths. That is what a winning racehorse is supposed to do–just enough to get the job done. But a champion is a horse who smashes their competition impressively, particularly in the face of adversity. Rachel’s 20 length margin over her peers in the Oaks, her crushing six-length margin in the Haskell, and even her hard-fought length victory in the Preakness, so soon after the Oaks and despite her dislike of the Pimlico surface, all make her victories more impressive than Zenyatta’s.

– Zenyatta had a relatively easy season, in my opinion, only running five times this year while Rachel has run nine times, each time facing harder competition and setting five stakes records along the way. Zenyatta set one.

– Rachel’s exciting victories made a splash in the sports world at large, which the racing industry so desperately needs. Granted the attention of the “non-equine world” is not a great indicator of what events in racing are most relevant, but name me a horse that has captured more (positive) attention from casual fans this year, or even within the last ten years. We need a horse like her. And now that we have one, we need to reward her for what she’s done for the industry: she’s given us a great athlete to point to when people ask us to explain why this sport is great.

Whoever wins the award will be deserving. The most remarkable aspect of the debate to me is that, for the first time in my young memory we are choosing between two females for Horse of the Year. Looking back at the list of past winners, I have always become immediately jealous of other generations that they have lived to see such greats as Secretariat, Affirmed and Ruffian, while as a loyal fan since 1995 the greatest season I can boast witnessing is Silver Charm’s in 1997. Now I think finally, we are all privileged to have seen something truly, timelessly great for the first time in years and that is a pair of horses who should both be remembered through history for their accomplishments…and perhaps that is the greatest reward of all.