Guest Post: The Last Resort

--Mark Cramer

   If you can't get reservations for the seaside Deauville meets, as a last resort you can go up the Normandy coast to Dieppe. It's a resort town for the claiming ranks of vacationers--a stony beach, but a magnificent palisade and a castle towering amidst rolling green hills above the beach.
   A half-hour walk inland from the beach is the Dieppe race course, also a last resort, for some horses that have not been able to make it at the Paris tracks or at Deauville. The conditions for the ninth and final race were “for horses that were not among the top-five finishers in their last five races, excepting small tracks that do not offer national pari-mutuel wagering.”  
   I have become a lover of such country tracks. Often big-time stables come slumming, expecting to pick up an easy win, only to be thwarted by the hillbillies of the Thoroughbred world.  
   A few years ago, I bicycled 100 kilometers from outside of Paris to Dieppe, not even knowing there was a race course there. The road leading into town passed along the empty backstretch, and I resolved to return on a racing day, which I did this past Tuesday.
   Also arriving in Dieppe was the Irish filly Cocktail Queen, daughter of Motivator (none other than the sire of Treve, winner of the 2013 Arc de Triomphe). Cocktail Queen had just finished fifth in a field of seven in a Group 3 race at Ascot for a purse of £60,000. She was now racing for a €20,000 purse.

Outdoor café culture at the Dieppe race course.

   She got beat by Storm River (Stormy River {Fr}), a French-bred gelding coming from a claiming race with a €23,000 purse. Dieppe is a place where scores are settled. Winning gentleman rider Florent Guy is often involved in such small track retribution against aristocratic invaders, with 24% wins and 59% in the money, incredible stats considering the large average field size in France.
   I bet on a similar pattern in the third race, for women amateur riders. The favorite had once been in the G1 French Derby and was now slumming for a purse of €15,000. Among the riders, only two had respectable win percentages: the rider of the favorite, with 10% wins, and the rider of the horse I backed, Madmoiselle Barbara Guenet, with 32% winners. Because of this jockey stat, I found myself betting on a claimer against a former stakes contender. My claimer won at 8-1.
   The anti-aristocrat bet does not always win at places like Dieppe and André Fabre broke the pattern in the 6th race by winning with a colt named Fauve (Ire) (Montjeu {Ire}) at 4/1. It was a poet's victory, with "Fabre" and "fauve" forming a near perfect alliteration in French pronunciation.
   The arts were also alive in the walking ring, where a local painter stood in a kiosk before his easel and did a painting of the horses. The winning rider of the seventh race was to be awarded the work of art. Raphael Marchelli won the race, but was later fined by the jockey club for "abusive use of the whip-nine lashes." The fine was €75, but he got to keep the painting. 


Horses coming on to the track. The receiving barn in the background has typical
Normandy spires.

   When I first wheeled past an empty Dieppe race course a few years ago, the French renaissance of small rural tracks had only just begun. Most small tracks offered only local wagering that was not tied into the national French PMU. This afternoon's Dieppe racing was simulcast across the nation.
   The locals showed up in good numbers for the racing, with encouragement from the regional newspaper, Paris Normandie Dieppe Bray, which published a four-page spread on the day's races, including abbreviated past performances.
   There'll be racing on July 14th to celebrate the French national holiday. After the racing, you can stroll down to the beach along a side street with a vibrant display of colorful Normandy brick architecture, then watch the sunset and see the fireworks.
   My plan is to visit all 250 French race tracks. Dieppe was my 23rd.  Each of these smaller rural tracks is different.
   What was distinct about Dieppe? The artist with his easel in the walking ring, the grassy apron, the rolling green hills behind the backstretch, the typical Normandy spires of the receiving barn, and the mile-and-a-half circumference more in the form of a triangle than an oval, with three turns to get around, with the jockeys vying for the outside rail in the stretch drive.

Jockeys vie for the outer rail in the stretch.

   But French rural tracks have one thing in common. There's an intimacy that allows the racing fan to chat with the jockeys and trainers, get a close look at the horses, and even voice opinions directly to the management.

 

KANSAS CITY

--Bill Oppenheim

Dubai it’s not. In fact, Midwesterners may be entitled to have a little chip on our shoulders, because everybody makes fun of us; but hey, when you want somebody to read the news or host a chat show, you turn to us: Walter Cronkite (born in St. Joseph, Missouri, lived in Kansas City until he was ten, then Texas), Johnny Carson (born in Iowa, grew up in Nebraska), Dick Cavett (Nebraska – thank you, Wikipedia), for example. Me, I have a voice for radio – no pun intended.

I was born in Kansas City, but grew up in Wichita, Kansas, so I am a bona fide Midwesterner – meaning I come from west of the Mississippi River, not east. A lot of people from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, even Kentucky, refer to themselves as Midwesterners, but on my map they come from the Mideast. Of course, nobody is called a Mideasterner, so I guess we inherit them, like the old New Yorker cartoon that shows everything west of the Appalachians as ‘the hinterlands’. My mother was from Kansas City, so I spent a fair amount of time here off and on up until the time I went to university (but that was in 1966). But I had been an infrequent visitor in the ensuing 40 years until my parents, after 40 years themselves in Florida, moved back to Kansas City in 2006. Since then I’ve been a frequent visitor.


Flyover city? Not according to Bill...

The Kansas City metropolitan area, straddling both Missouri and Kansas, numbers about two million people, the biggest between Minneapolis-St. Paul (three million) to the north and Dallas-Fort Worth (six million, would you believe?) to the south; of course, Chicago (10 million), the third-biggest metropolitan area in population in the United States, is the Midwest’s biggest metropolitan area, but it is a good day’s drive to the northeast, on the eastern border of the Central Time Zone. So Kansas City is a big enough deal in its own right, big enough to support smaller-market major league sports teams. Like every place west of the Mississippi River, really, one of its greatest attributes is space. If you grew up west of the Mississippi, you’re unlucky if you don’t have almost an innate sense of space. It comes with the territory.

Urban planner J.C. Nichols    Life.com

Kansas City metro stretches for 40 miles or so north to south and probably 10 to 15 east to west, the majority of that on the more developed south side actually in Kansas. But it really does straddle the two states. The downtown area is in Missouri, just south of the Missouri river. Back in the early years of the Twentieth century, the first moves out of downtown areas were to what came to be called ‘uptown’ areas; the suburbs came later, the next step out. Kansas City’s ‘uptown’ area, about four miles south of the city center, is called the Country Club Plaza, and a very unique uptown area it is. In 1907 the developer J.C. Nichols began buying land in the area and proposed a shopping area which would cater to the newest big thing, the automobile. They called it “Nichols’s Folly”. But after a trip to Seville, Spain, Nichols and his architect, Edward Buehler Delk, used Seville as the template for the Plaza, which opened in 1923 (Wikipedia again). It’s about a mile square, I suppose (did you know a mile squared equals a square mile, by the way?), and retains even today a great open, spacious, Spanish feel – fountains, statues, mosaics – lots of mosaics on buildings. Plus Nichols established beautiful residential communities – good-sized, two-story houses on big lots – south of the Plaza. One of the amazing things about the south side of Kansas City has been the expansion of these kinds of neighborhoods probably another ten miles to the south and southwest. It’s a city with a surprising number of really pretty residential neighborhoods. Lots of space, but – not something generally known about eastern Kansas and western Missouri – plenty of hills and trees, too; above all, though: space.

Another little-known fact is that the very area on which the Plaza was built was the scene of the Civil War battle of Westport (October 23, 1864), sometimes called “the Gettysburg of the West”, because the Confederate defeat there was the beginning of the end for the Confederate forces on the western front; after the Battle of Westport, Confederate forces were basically in constant retreat. Just south of the Plaza, in Loose Park, is a replica cannon from the battle and some plaques showing where the various actions during the battle took place. Sure enough, if you look north from the bluff at the top of the park, you can see for a long ways, across what is now the Plaza and Westport, to the Missouri River.

So Chicago it’s not (wow, has that become a happening city center, under the last Mayor Daley), Dubai it’s not, New York it’s not. But workable cities (well, metropolitan areas) of two million, with a good feel, plenty of space, and where the traffic usually does flow, like Kansas City – they have plenty to recommend them.

OK, enough touring – I’m headed back to work, in Kentucky, next week. Maybe see you there.

Coincidence

--Bill Oppenheim

Probably the most influential book I have read in my entire 61 years is the Richard Wilhelm translation of the Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes), which includes an Introduction ‘for the Western mind’ by the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung; did you know Paul Mellon underwent analysis with him, and later was responsible for the publication of Jung’s complete works in English by the Bollingen Foundation, which Mellon endowed (somewhat like the TRF, I guess – great blog on industry responsibility on that issue by Sue Finley today) of Princeton University? Anyway, one of the concepts Jung outlines is what he called ‘synchronicity’ – that what we sometimes consider ‘mere’ coincidence is really a bit more than that: events which actually co-incide in time.

Continental and United are now one   nj.com

So I was traveling yesterday on Continental (soon to be united as United) from Edinburgh, my home airport, through Newark (the usual 90-minute delay), to my home state to visit family, including my dad, Harold, now 92 and the editor of his building’s monthly newsletter, which he does on Photoshop or whatever on his computer, and which is 14 pages this month. When people ask me where I’m from (I do live in Scotland, and do not have a Scottish accent), I sometimes ask them to guess, and the clue is that the most famous person from my home state is imaginary. A lot of people guess Florida, because they think Mickey Mouse comes from Florida; but, of course, the original Disneyland is in California, and he’s not the most famous person from either state. No, it’s Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz; we’re from Kansas.

Newark's Terminal A is due for a refurbishment

Here’s where the synchronicity comes in. When you’re traveling solo, especially on the commuter jets like from Newark (Terminal A, not nearly as hospitable as the international Terminal C) to Kansas City, if you’re sitting next to somebody it’s pretty hard not to talk to them. So yesterday I was sat next to a pretty strong guy with what I thought might be (Native American) Indian features who said he was from Kansas; turns out he is half-Samoan and grew up in Pasco, in the Tri-Cities area of Southeastern Washington, but has lived in Council Grove, Kansas, I think he said for the last fourteen years. He’s a railroad engineer (translation for Europeans: drives trains), in his case drives freight trains out of Herington, Kansas, west to Pratt and east to Kansas City. Had a Scottish father, but if you think somebody named Al McBee is going to be some Scottish-looking guy, no; the Samoan dominated. Anyway, you don’t want to know his whole life story, or mine, but, like so many people, his story is so interesting. Everybody’s is, somehow or other, and it’s striking to think that, if the computer put you in a different seat, you’d never had met that person or had that conversation; you’d have had a different one, or none at all (of course, you do have to ask, and be genuinely curious). I think that’s what Jung meant by synchronicity: the intersection of things, in time, at a place. Al, thanks for chatting, hope this doesn’t embarrass you, and good luck, man.