Free Saving Baby by Jo Anne Normile Page A

give it everything he had and show the world what he could do.
    It felt like a frozen moment. Everything was shut off. It was as if I were waiting for someone to say, “Here’s what happened.” Then, in a flash packed with spikes of emotion that made me feel like I was going to explode, the minute was over and Baby had come in dead last, soundly beaten by fourteen lengths, a length being the length of a horse.
    I felt so mortified that I almost wanted to give back to everybody the money I knew they had bet on him.
    The horses continue to gallop for another half mile or so after the race is over. They can’t stop immediately. But I was already running down the stands to reach Baby and comfort him. The poor thing was covered in sand and dirt from what was kicked up at him by all the horses running ahead of him. He was breathing heavily, never having run so fast in his life.
    Though I tried to hide it, I cried on the way back to the barn. Coburn, uncharacteristically, was throwing things around, saying, “He did that purposely.” It was so ridiculous I didn’t even call him out on his nonsense but instead just whispered, “Oh, Baby, it’s not your fault.” Even at that stage I hesitated to contradict my trainer openly.
    Baby had calmed down by the time he had been walked back to the barn, as if it were any other day. He was even hungry.
    Afterward, people reassured me. “Don’t worry. A horse rarely wins its first time out.”
    Baby’s next race was eleven days later, October 21st, perfect in that horses do best with ten to fourteen days between races. They need that much time to build up their speed again before their next all-out run. For this race, the newspaper predicted that he would come in third rather than first.
    Baby did come in third—he “showed”—and, better still, he missed first place by only three-quarters of a length. You’d think I was the jockey, the way I was shouting out. It was an excellent display, and we were paid $730 out of the $7,300 purse—very exciting. We could begin to recoup on the $10,000-plus we spent to train him.
    The race itself was a thrill to watch. Baby had come from behind. Things didn’t look so promising as he remained near the back of the pack at the last turn. But the jockey was saving him for the end, when he started “picking up” one horse after the other. Head after head after head, Baby edged forward, until finally coming out almost right at the front of the pack. One more furlong to the race, and he might very well have won.
    The third race appropriate for Baby was slated to take place on November 5th—exactly two weeks away and also a perfect amount of time for him to rest up before giving it his all once again. “You’re sitting on a win,” people said to me.” “Next time out!”
    But when I spoke to Coburn about it, he seemed hesitant. “We’ll see,” he said.
    â€œWhy is it, ‘we’ll see,’” I answered. “Baby came out of this race fine. Is there something wrong, something I should know?”
    â€œOh, he’s fine,” Coburn countered. “But when he races is my decision.”
    I soon pulled it together. Coburn had taken on a second client in September, and that man had two horses in training and a third to start soon, meaning that Coburn stood to make two to three times the money off him as he made from training Baby. The man wanted one of his own horses entered into the race, and at that time in Michigan, one trainer couldn’t race two horses at once. There was the chance he’d use one to create a traffic jam for others in the race while creating a clearer path to the finish line for the second horse. Coburn, I believed, no doubt wanted to accommodate the other owner’s wish to race one of his own horses, since that man was paying Coburn more money.
    Coburn’s patient way with Baby