Zenyatta Rock n Roll to Date With History at Breeders' Cup

It reads like a cliched Tinseltown script. There's a music mogul, a model, a Vietnam vet, a salty sidekick, and a God-fearing, battle-scarred best friend who's looking for one last hurrah. They all orbit around one majestic female, a superior athlete whose dramatic flair and camera-friendly personality has energized a downtrodden sport. And in the final act, our heroine faces off against the world's best competitors -- all men -- in a showdown with history.

Of course, it's all true. And fittingly, Zenyatta -- the star of this tale, and horse racing's best story in decades -- lives at a place called Hollywood Park.

In a Deadspin era of loutish athletes, lewd text messages and litigious team owners, Zenyatta's climb to the top of thoroughbred racing feels out of place, like a relic from a more innocent sports world. There's no drug scandal or cheating accusation lurking on the periphery. There are no agents, marketing representatives or corporate sponsors involved. And even rivals admit that they'll be supporting her Saturday in what will likely be her final race, the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. Zenyatta has been tabbed as the 8-5, morning-line favorite from post eight in the 12-horse field.

"We all want to win, but we don't mind getting beat by her," Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert told reporters last week.

Horse racing will likely never enjoy the popularity it once had in American life, but even for those who could care less about the so-called "Sport of Kings," Zenyatta is worth knowing. She is, quite possibly, the greatest female racehorse of all-time, an undefeated champion who has won all 19 races she's entered, including 13 "Grade 1" events, the highest rung of racing. Her winning streak is the longest in horse racing history, a feat no other thoroughbred -- including legends such as Secretariat and Man O'War and more recent champions such as Smarty Jones or Sunday Silence -- can match.

She has beaten girls and she has beaten boys. Last year, she became the first female to win the Breeders' Cup Classic, which unlike the Triple Crown races is open to horses older than three years old and is generally considered the world's premier competition. Zenyatta has also never had to pull out of a race, a remarkable achievement in a sport where horses enter fewer races than ever -- and where the slightest injury can lead to death on the track.

On the track, Zenyatta is the rare horse with a distinctive style. She always comes from behind. Like Michael Jordan's outstretched tongue or Fernando Valenzuela's skyward glance, Zenyatta's late-charging runs have become her athletic signature, a defining trait that has become part of her mythology. In nearly every race of her career, she appears sluggish -- almost indifferent -- until the absolute end, when she darts to the outside and goes for broke. It's a habit that's exasperating and exhilarating, even for those who know her best.

It has all come together -- the team, the winning, the style -- to create a phenomenon that has propelled Zenyatta beyond the insular thoroughbred world and into the upper reaches of mainstream media. She's been spotlighted by "60 Minutes" and Oprah Winfrey, whose magazine recently featured Zenyatta in its rundown of the most powerful women in the world. (Also making the list: Julia Roberts, Vera Wang and Diane Sawyer.) Zenyatta is likely the first 1,200-pound animal with a Twitter feed, a Facebook profile (31,000 and growing) and a commemorative stein.

JerryMoss and his wife, who own Zenyatta had a special feeling about her. They first met her just prior to the September 2005 Keeneland yearling sale, one of the industry's biggest auctions. "We just fell in love with this long silky horse. We were just looking at her and she put her head on my wife's shoulder -- that's very unusual," said Moss.

The average sale price that year for a one-year-old horse was $471,872. Jerry and Ann Moss bought horse No. 703 -- later known as Zenyatta -- for $60,000. "When the price stopped, we were thrilled," says Moss, who gave the horse another Sting-inspired moniker, naming her after "Zenyatta Mondata," The Police's 1980 album. To date, Zenyatta has earned just over $6.4 million, ranking her 15th all time. (Curlin, the 2007 Preakness winner, is the all-time earnings leader with about $10.5 million in winnings.)

At the time of her sale, Zenyatta's value was somewhat diminished because she experienced a case of ringworm around the time of the auction, and it also wasn't clear whether her father Street Cry, who had won the Dubai World Cup in 2004, would be a reliable sire. The market forces were clearly wrong. Zenyatta's rash healed fairly quickly, and Street Cry has proven to be a rock star in the breeding shed. In the same crop that produced Zenyatta, he also sired Street Sense, the 2007 Kentucky Derby champion and runner-up in that year's Preakness Stakes.

As great as she is, Zenyatta is not a savior for the sport, no matter how well she performs on Saturday. By just about every measure, thoroughbred racing is dying. With the exception of one or two venues, racetrack attendance is plummeting, and overall wagering on horses -- the lifeblood of the business -- has dropped dramatically over the last four years. So far in 2010, total U.S. pari-mutuel "handle," the industry term for wagers, is down 7.2 percent, following last year's decline of nearly 10 percent. Since 2003, total wagering has dipped nearly 25 percent, and tracks are sharply reducing their number of races.

The breeding and sales market has also been hammered by the broader economic recession. As recently as two years ago, top sires such as AP Indy or Storm Cat could fetch as much as $300,000 per mating, In 2008, the owners of Big Brown, that year's Kentucky and Preakness champion, sold an ownership stake in the horse to Three Chimneys Farm, a top breeding facility, in a deal that reportedly valued the thoroughbred at nearly $50 million. Times have changed: The top sires are now lucky to fetch $100,000 per mating, and the auction market has dropped off a cliff: Overall sales at the 2010 September yearling auction at Keeneland were about $200 million, down nearly 50 percent from 2006.

On top of all that is the byzantine oversight of horse racing, which has no central governing body or commissioner. There are competing organizations for racetracks, breeders, trainers, and jockeys, with little coordinated promotion and advertising. "It's upside down and it's got to change," says Jess Jackson, the wine mogul and horse breeder who owns Curlin, the all-time money leader. "If you can market poker and NASCAR, you know you can market thoroughbred racing -- it's a far more beautiful sport."




Zenyatta, above, before the 2009 Breeders Cup Classic. This magnificent, amazing animal is torqued, wired, and ready to "kick some a**!!!!" Who owns you, bag of bones!!!!!



Keep a close eye on the Zenyatta, the horse with the yellow pad, who come's out of the gate dead last, bidding her time. She know's who she is. She know's what she has. You do not teach/train an animal to have "heart". They are born with "heart", or they are not. It is that simple. The few rare individuals who are born with "heart", will take your breath away, each time they show it to you.

Gary Payne, it seem's even the "elite" are having problems right now, and I suggest the circus will gain more ground, if we stop taking things personal. If they can market professional wresting, why not circus. It is a far more beautiful entertainment industry, to borrow a quote from Jess Jackson above. Horse racing, an animal industry is in the spot light at the moment lead by an animal, Gary and folks. What is the equivelant of Zenyatta in the circus today? Why not? It has been suggested that, the "lack of or making of a star figure" has been responsible for the decline in interst in the circus, from days of gone by. I knew an animal once named Karma, who had the "heart" of Zenyatta. She could have been the "circus Zenyatta". Who, what, where is today's "circus Zenyatta?" Hanging the high powered paper for her/his prospective industry.