Against All Odds
eeeeeeEEEEEEEgads!!!
Dangerous Reader!
Now then.
Lemme ask you:
Think back. No-No, my darling. FURTHER back . . . all the waaaaayyyyy back through the flickering fog of your sensational life and tell us this:
When was the moment when you got EVERYTHING you ever wanted?
Tell us, Dangerous Reader: Where were you? What happened?
I ask because I have been watching this 20-second video all week. It is about a horse that nobody noticed. And about the woman who trained him. The first time I saw it—LIVE—I wanted to hurl myself out the window, even out the closed window, even out the closed window I could not get my hips through—— and rocket into the sky and twirl and twirl and twirl. No woman trainer has ever won the Kentucky Derby . . . And, READER! It is nearly impossible that a horse could come from soooooooooooo far behind.
Now watch:
So, the thing I’d like most in the world right now is to hear about your moment:
The day everything you had ever worked for came true.
And I think we’d all adore hearing your horse story ——Right? Who was your first horse?
Horse: Golden Tempo
Jockey: Jose Ortiz.
Trainer: Cherie DeVaux
P.S. Only a horse that has been trained by a genius can make up this much ground, peak exactly at the right minute, the right hour, on the right day, to come from last place to win by a neck.
I shall apologize immediately for the length of it but it's too funny because it came true and was linked to a horse !!
So I never owned a horse when a child because even in france it was still too expensive for my family to get one, but I was nut about horses so I was going from Paris via a little train to Versailles and there in a low key suburbs of Versailles was an old little barn where there were horses belonging to the owner of the barn that you could start on and then ride if you could get better. And it was not too expensive.
After two years of riding and cleaning stall to get more lessons at discount I reached the age of 14. I was tall but scrawny, flat chested, much like a boy really. But I started to have owners with really good horses who would ask me to ride their horses in show jumping and of course that was my dream.
So one day, in May in fact, of my 14th year, I rode one of those really good horses at a show, I think the rails were at 1m20 and I was clear, for the jump-off.
But the apex was that next door to the show, was an intense prep-school for male students who were in their 20s preparing for Polytechnic which in Paris is a very difficult university to get in.
And this was a sunny sunday and though the students were cramming on Sundays too, some had come and over the hedge were watching the show. And once I had cleared the course they erupted in shouts and screams and whistles to cheer us my horse and me. I can't tell you, no male was paying attention to me at the time, as I was this scrawny-tanned-boylooking-girl but there for like one minute I was cheered on !! Oh my, I still remember the astonishment and bliss of it !!! lol lol lol
OMG, dear EJean! No wonder you wanted to break out the window and twirl and twirl up in the sky! What a marvelous tale of love and devotion winning out, coming from behind!
My moment would have to be whispered to you in a personal private conversation someday, but for now I'll happily twirl and celebrate that young woman and her beautiful marvelous horse!