Horse of a Different Color: A Tale of Breeding Geniuses, Dominant Females, and the Fastest Derby Winner Since Secretariat
By Jim Squires
PublicAffairs, 300 pages, $26
Last May a gunmetal gray colt with modest connections and an even more modest pedigree won the Kentucky Derby in a blazing 1 minute 59 4/5 seconds. This “lunch-bucket horse,” Monarchos, blew by the favorite, Point Given, in the race’s last half-mile and provided lip-licking satisfaction to underdog lovers from coast to coast.
Although Monarchos did not go on to win the Triple Crown (he was sixth in the Preakness and third in the Belmont Stakes), his victory in the world’s most famous race was proof to many that patience and pragmatism can still counter the powerful currents of money and hype that tug so irresistibly at the foundations of American sport. No one is more certain of the value of patience–or aware of the fickle nature of luck–than Jim Squires, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune and the breeder of Monarchos.
Squires’ memoir of his encounter with racing fame, “Horse of a Different Color,” is a wry and charming account of what he calls the “unbelievable, entertaining, ridiculous” events that launched him and his homebred colt from Two Bucks Farm in Versailles, Ky., to the winner’s circle at Churchill Downs. With prose as serviceable and unpretentious as the khakis and ball caps he professes to wear, Squires’ book is a funny, occasionally biting tour of the thoroughbred industry from the point of view of the participant least likely to be found mugging for the cameras on race day, the “hands-on” horseman who matches the stallions to the mares with the hope of producing the perfect runner.
Squires and his wife, Mary Anne, established Two Bucks Farm after he left the Tribune. “Breeding racehorses for a living is not something a sane, intelligent, mature person experienced in American capitalism would ever attempt to do,” he writes. With a substantial “gold-plated parachute” to cushion the transition, he does it anyway, noting that 30 years in the newspaper business had left him “hopelessly addicted to the thrill of labor in a doomed industry.”
The early years are a roller-coaster ride defined by brief highs (the first sale of a yearling at a profit) and wrenching lows (the death of a newborn foal). Yet Squires sticks to his game plan, such as it is. He doesn’t have the resources to pay astronomical stud fees or buy coveted stakes-winning mares. He commits himself instead to a “K-Mart version” of blood-stock research, matching mares who have unrealized greatness in their veins to sires he can afford. He buys the mare Regal Band “instinctively” despite her lousy record as a broodmare. The decision to breed Regal Band to Maria’s Mon, a “blue-collar ‘freak’ ” whose background puts him near the bottom of the rigid thoroughbred caste system, is merely common sense. If the foal is healthy and sound, if it is the good-looking athlete he hopes for, Squires might be able to make a little bit of money.
It doesn’t quite happen that way, of course. Reading about what does happen, and how, is great fun, just the tonic needed to get one’s juices flowing before this year’s Derby drama. Squires follows Monarchos’ progress, and his own, from breeding shed to birthing stall, from paddock to sale ring to training track with the lucidity of a skilled journalist. “Horse of a Different Color” is a rollicking primer for the layman who hasn’t spent hours at the racetracks and sales barns of Keeneland and Saratoga. Squires’ compact descriptions of horse auctions, equine biomechanics, and track training methods introduce a reader to “beneath-the-surface industry intrigue” without unnecessary jargon or name-dropping.
Squires’ use of third-person point of view rather than the preening first-person perspective a reader might expect keeps the story focused firmly on the horses. Squires makes ample fun of himself (he is “the Two Bucks guy,” an unpedigreed pretender in the Sport of Kings, and Mary Anne is “the dominant female” who keeps his feet firmly on the bluegrass-growing ground). He also aims the sharp darts of his wit at others, though rarely in the service of making himself look good. In truth, Squires presents himself as somewhat of a bumbler, the ” ‘idiot’ ” in the proverbial village who stumbles into a lucky situation that may result in stupendous success if he can somehow manage not to screw it up.
The book’s greatest strength is Squires’ voice. He is part raconteur, part recondite reporter. His light, mobile use of skepticism when analyzing his motives and the motives of others raises “Horse of a Different Color” well above the level of the self-congratulatory public relations that too often masquerade as autobiography. When Squires wrestles with the contradictions inherent in a business that is “a gambler’s game even at the top,” he is insightful, though not wholly even-handed. He is clearly uncomfortable with the effects of international money (from Dubai and Ireland, especially) on a sport he believes should remain headquartered in Kentucky. Yet he admits it was this money that kept the industry afloat after its bubble burst in the 1980s. And it is still that money–from Coolmore Stud’s John Magnier, “the Bill Gates of the horse business,” and Godolphin Racing Stables’ Sheik Mohammed al Maktoum–that most breeders depend on to maintain profit margins.
Squires also has sharp words for the industry’s worship of raw speed, a devotion he believes ruins too many young horses too soon. He takes this worthy opinion over the top with his attempt to cast Monarchos’ battle against the “Big Red Train” Point Given as a replay of the ugly duckling Seabiscuit’s epic 1937 match race against the elegant War Admiral. While it is true that Monarchos’ trainer, Johnny Ward, trained his colt unconventionally to prepare him for the rigors of the Derby’s mile-and-a-quarter distance, and that Ward suffered in comparison to Point Given’s media-savvy trainer, the irrepressible Bob Baffert, the confrontation was not quite the Little Guy versus Big Guy duel Squires describes. Monarchos’ owners, Debby and Jack Oxley, have spent millions in their search for a Derby winner. They are not underdogs of any sort. Ward, described by one wag in the book as unable to “train a vine to go up a wall,” has a harder row to hoe, as do all trainers when they face the full-to-overflowing, deep-pocket barns of trainers like Baffert and D. Wayne Lucas. The playing field is not level, but where in American sport is that still the case?
The triumph explicit in this book is more than enough to carry readers over the finish line. Squires doesn’t have to stack the deck to have us rooting for Monarchos because the colt, in the end, does what he is bred to do, what Squires dreamed of when he “instinctively” plotted the perfect match of equine physique and heart. Monarchos wins the Derby from off the pace, charging from 10th place to first with a move that raised hairs on the necks of all who saw it. It was magnificent. Bold. Unprecedented. Squires’ recollections of the race, of his burning Derby Fever and of the colt who quenched it are the culmination of a book well worth the labor.
