In the immortal words of the fictional Gordon Gekkco, “greed is good, greed is right and greed works“. Yes, but usually not for us, the horse players.
One can argue that greed is the predominant reason why our horses don’t race for very long. One can also argue that greed is a factor in why our horse don’t race very often. One can even go so far to as to say that greed plays a role in why our horses have become so unsound.
Enter the law of unintended consequences and we have greed to thank for Curlin, our horse of the year and now the world champion, running as a 4 year old.
To hear Jess Jackson tell it, you’d think the whole thing was a well thought out orchestrated move designed for the long term betterment of the sport. But with two of Curlin’s part owners being lawyers indicted for swindling the plaintiffs of a class action lawsuit against the makers of the the diet drug Fen-Phen, there is a bit of a monkey wrench thrown into the mix.
The three lawyers are also the target of a civil case brought by the plaintiffs, some of whom have asserted that Gallion and Cunningham used proceeds from the case to purchase Curlin, who finished third in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Belmont Stakes. The lawsuit, filed in 2004, is scheduled to go to trial in September.
At the time of the year when a champion 3 year old is making his final curtain call, the greed of two of Curlin’s owners disturbed the “natural order” and kept Curlin in limbo long enough to make it not only plausible, but attractive to keep him in training as a 4 year old.
Hooray for greed! Greed owes us big time… and it seems as though greed knows how to return a favor!
While we’re on this roll, let’s hope that greed comes through in the long run and proves that it can be just as profitable, if not more so, to run your fancy pants horses past 3… hell, they might even get a little better with age (and fetch you more money in the breeding shed)!
I’m guessing that if you were risk averse you might not be involved in horse racing at all, right?
