Macho Man Gets Beaten By A Girl: Rachel Alexandra’s Phenomenal Woodward Stakes
You almost certainly haven’t seen this. Because it happened in a sport that has been completely marginalized due to the incompetence of the management (hey, let’s have two consecutive Breeders’ Cups run on plastic instead of dirt!), fecklessness of the regulators, and dishonesty of the participants. This is so much more impressive than anything that happened in football last weekend.
A three year old filly (that’s only three years old, and a girl) went up against the best older males in the sport at the challenging distance of a mile-and-an eighth. Watch what happened.
Rachel Alexandra dueled for the lead in a vicious first quarter of 22.85 and was being pressured all the way around the track. The early pace was such that two of the older colts that pressured her, Da’Tara (won the Belmont last year) and Cool Coal Man (won a minor stakes at Saratoga by over a dozen lengths last out) faded to last and next-to-last.
Rachel Alexandra turned back those challengers and led down the stretch. But closers loomed, particularly Macho Again, an accomplished 4-year old multiple graded stakes winner (won last year’s Grade 2 Jim Dandy at Saratoga, as well as this summer’s Grade 1 Stephen Foster at Churchill Downs). At about the 1:47 mark on the video above, Macho Again is absolutely going to win the race.
Yet Rachel Alexandra, pressured all the way around the track, somehow digs down and guts out a final eight in 12.81 seconds to hold on to win one of the premier races of the year for older horses.
I spend too much time on football and basketball to really follow horse racing carefully. And I understand from my horse buddies that the older handicap horses aren’t exactly a vintage group. But when you consider all the factors at play here, from Rachel Alexandra’s youth, to the fact she was a filly racing against older colts, to the pace pressure that she got early, culminating in the way she grimly kept on going to win, it may have been the greatest athletic performance we’ll see for quite some time.
Rachel Alexandra created the kind of moment that turns people into fans of a sport. But people have to see the moment, not just the simulcast feed, but reaction shots, the excitement of the crowd, post-race interviews when the emotions are still high, etc. What a shame that Rachel’s Woodward triumph was buried way up the dial on MSG+. Fortunately some folks who were there have shared some home video. But what a shame that this remarkable performance was so hard to find. And what a missed opportunity for a declining sport.
