Happy Thanksgiving

I have much for which to be thankful this year. Everyone else in my family is in pretty good health. Our two children are here with us for the holiday (today, we went to a Broadway play, "A Steady Rain"-- two fine actors, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig, in a slight play). Three close friends will be joining us at the Thanksgiving table. As usual, all are eager to do justice to Susan's annual feast; as I write this entry, my appetite is being tantalized by smells from the kitchen. I am grateful for the respite that I have been allowed from chemotherapy and expect to be able to be able to hold my own at the dinner table. Indeed, I feel better than I have since early this year, a month or so before my cancer diagnosis at the beginning of March.

As you would expect, the poignancy of knowing that it is not unlikely that this Thanksgiving will either be my last or, if not my last, the last that I will be in any condition to enjoy, heightens my appreciation of the occasion. During each of the few trips that I have taken since March-- to Saratoga Springs, Miami, Jacksonville, and Paris-- I have been constantly cognizant that I might be seeing a familiar place for the last time. Whenever I have seen a friend who lives somewhere other than New York City, I have wondered if it were for the last time: a thought that I assume has been reciprocated. 

I am grateful to have so much not to take for granted.

White Truffles and the Hand of Gaul

In France, November is in the season for wild game, oysters, mushrooms, and white truffles. This year, it was also the time when Algeria played Egypt and France played Ireland for slots in next year's World Cup football (soccer) finals.

Although Parisians seem to refer to "La Crise" in the past tense, it is still much easier to get a table in most good restaurants than it was a couple of years ago. As you would expect, at most of the restaurants where we dined, the chefs incorporated seasonal delicacies in their menus. Most memorable to me are the white truffles, the mushrooms (especially the cepes), the oysters, and the grilled, stuffed pigs' feet. 

Yesterday and the second day of our stay, we ate lunch at L'Huiterie Regis, which is on the Left Bank near the covered food market just off the Boulevard St. Germain. At the same location, this wholesaler of oysters to other Parisian restaurants also has a very simple restaurant that can barely hold its seven tiny tables, each with two seats. The menu consists primarily of the types of oysters that have arrived that day; the wine list has a Muscadet and several Sancerres. On one of the days when we ate lunch there last year, the menu also offered sea urchins; I have not had a chance to eat sea urchins often, but they were by far the best that I have had. This year, there were bright orange, flavorful, wild shrimp on the menu on both occasions; and yesterday, there were also Belon oysters-- the big ones, Belons No. 00, not the smaller Fines de Claire and the Speciales de Claire pictured in my previous blog entry. For some 30 years, I have carried the memory of Belons No. 00 that I ate at Prunier, the famous seafood restaurant on Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. The Belons that I ate at L'Huiterie Regis yesterday matched those of that memory.

I didn't realize until this week that sports fans in the United States are not serious. Algerian soccer fans are serious. Algeria played Egypt on Wednesday in Khartoum, Sudan, after having lost to Egypt in Cairo last Saturday. Before Saturday's game, Egyptian fans had stoned a bus carrying the Algerian players, inflicting bloody head wounds on three of them. In the ensuing riots, 32 people were injured, and Egyptian-owned businesses in Algeria were attacked. For the re-match in Khartoum on Wednesday, the Egyptian and Algerian fans were housed miles apart, with 15,000 riot police patrolling the streets. I had no idea that so many Algerians live in and around Paris until the streets of Paris were mobbed with cars and pedestrians waving Algerian flags following Algeria's victory on Wednesday. We were caught in a taxi during the melee. Although our taxi was hit on the windshield by a wet projectile, we were merely inconvenienced and never felt in danger. (Why should there be any danger? Algeria had won!) 

Later Wednesday night, France was playing Ireland in Paris. Ireland, which had not won in France since 1938, was leading 1-0 until late in the game, when  a French player "handled" the ball in passing it to a teammate who then scored. The referee missed the impermissible "handling" of the ball, and the tie put France in next year's World Cup finals. As we tried to fall asleep in our hotel room, the raucous Algerian fans were joined by the more decorous French fans in the streets of Paris. European newspapers yesterday were filled with coverage of the outrageous result. They referred frequently to a similar situation in the 1986 World Cup, just four years after the Falkland Islands war: Argentina's Diego Maradona won the match by punching the ball into England's goal. Maradona referred to his bit of cheating as "The Hand of God." London's Daily Telegraph promptly dubbed this French incarnation the "Hand of Gaul."

Eating Well in Paris

"Living well is the best revenge."

Last Tango?

One week ago, I underwent a CT scan, and on Thursday of last week, I had an appointment with Dr. Saltz, my medical oncologist. Dr. Saltz indicated that "everything is growing, but not rapidly." In tacit keeping with my previously stated objective-- now that the possibility of cure is off the table-- of maximizing the quality of my remaining days, Dr. Saltz gave me the option of postponing for a while longer the resumption of chemotherapy. Two thoughts flashed through my mind: I could fly down to Jacksonville, Florida, to visit my parents in nearby Ponte Vedra; and I could go with Susan to Paris, getting back to New York in time for our daughter's visit to us from November 20th through the Thanksgiving holiday. 

For months, I have wondered if I would ever see my parents again, and I have been thinking it unlikely that I could go abroad again. Susan was with me last Thursday in Dr. Saltz's office, and I asked her if she would prefer a destination other than Paris? She was not hesitant in her response.

I just got back from visiting my parents in Ponte Vedra. Tomorrow, I will see Dr. Jarnagin, the surgeon who operated on my liver. Wednesday, Susan and I will depart for Paris. Although I have some physical problems caused by the cancer and by the surgeries, I feel better than I have since February, and I may never again feel as good as I do now. Importantly, my taste buds are once again in good shape-- a prerequisite for a sojourn in Paris!

The Breeders' Cup Classic

Thoroughbred horse racing's most important annual two days of racing-- in the United States and arguably the world-- concluded today. The richest of those events, the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic, was won for the first time by a filly or mare, Zenyatta, which closed out her undefeated career with her 14th victory. The second-place finisher to the favored Zenyatta was longshot Gio Ponti, trained by Christophe Clement.

Since 1995, Christophe has trained most of our horses. We feel close to him and his wife, Valerie, and their two children, Miguel and Charlotte, and we are proud of his well-deserved, growing success. When we first sent our horses to him, he was still in his twenties and early in his career as an independent trainer. Friends of ours had had horses in France with his late father, the successful trainer, Miguel Clement; and Christophe's older brother, Nicolas, now a successful trainer in France in his own right, had visited us as a teenager at Saratoga. Consequently, I had followed with interest Christophe's debut as an American trainer.

When I decided to switch trainers, I asked Christophe to take our horses, on the theory that if he was as good a horseman as I thought he was, he would soon be too popular to have room for our horses unless we were an established client. Once again, as happened to me so often over the years, I got lucky by giving a younger person a chance before it was obvious that he was ready. It has been a long while since Christophe has needed our horses in his stable. In an article in The New York Times two days ago, Joe Drape noted that of this year's top 10 American money-winning trainers, Christophe is the only one who has never had a horse in his care that tested positive for a medication violation.

Through talent, hard work, and superior organization, Christophe has been able to win important races while conceding an edge to those less scrupulous. Although he has quietly gone about his business rather than be strident or self-righteous about the improper use of drugs, he has shown courage on the topic when asked to do so. In 1999, I wrote an article, entitled "Full Disclosure," for the October 23 issue of a leading trade publication, The Blood-Horse, about medication practices in the industry in general and in the state of Kentucky in particular. To corroborate what I had to say, I asked Christophe if I could cite something in the article that he had told me. Unlike me, a minor owner/breeder with nothing to fear from those who would resent such exposure of industry practices, a young trainer like Christophe had a great deal to lose by gratuitously making enemies. Nevertheless, he readily assented to my use of his name.

Before publishing the article, the then-editor of The Blood-Horse, Ray Paulick, who certainly had to be concerned about industry backlash, asked me what I hoped to accomplish by writing it. I replied that I hoped to bring hidden practices into the open and start a dialog. (Of course, I was also mad. As my wife, Susan, says, "It wouldn't be fun to win by cheating, but it's no fun being beaten by cheaters!") To my surprise, the article kicked off a furor, including articles by others and, in Kentucky, a medication law being passed and a leading state racing official losing his job. If Christophe's association with the article caused him any problems, he never complained.

Not the New York Marathon

The New York Marathon had its fortieth running today, in ideal weather for runners. For the first time since 1982, it was won by an American.

We won a somewhat less important race today-- the ninth race at Aqueduct Racetrack, at a mile and a sixteenth on the grass for horses bred in New York that had never won a race. Our horse, a three-year-old gelding named Mustang Island, was making his first start on the grass and the second start of his career. Because of a minor injury, he had not run in nearly a year and was too keen in the early stages of the race, fighting with the rider, Joe Bravo, to be allowed to extend himself. Once Bravo swung Mustang Island out in the stretch for running room and let him go, Mustang Island swept by the pace-setter and won going away. 

Not only was the race not the New York Marathon, it also did not consist of a particularly good field of horses. But it is always fun to win a race and good to collect a purse. (Seven-to-one odds added a little spice as well!)  And whenever one wins with a horse that has been asked to do something for the first time (in this case, run on the grass), and it accomplishes what one has asked of it rather easily, one cannot help dreaming a little.