A Delightful Fluke

Today, in the ninth race at Belmont Park, we had planned to run one of our horses, Mustang Island. He was the second choice in the race on the morning line. This morning, I got a call from our trainer, Christophe Clement, indicating that Mustang Island came back lame from a routine jog. It seems that he popped a curb (a type of soft tissue injury) on his left hock. If we are lucky, he might be ready to run again in a couple of months.

This Saturday, at Pimlico Racetrack in Baltimore, the Preakness Stakes will be run. The Preakness is the second leg of the so-called triple crown of racing. The Preakness is held two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and three weeks before the Belmont Stakes. No horse since Affirmed in 1978 has won all three of these races. In my opinion, the only horse with a possibility of winning the triple crown in 2009, the Derby winner, Mine That Bird, will not be the first triple crown winner in 31 years.

In a delightful fluke,  Mine That Bird won the Derby as a 50-to-one long shot, the second highest odds on a winning horse in Derby history. Mine That Bird got pinched back to last of 19 at the start of the race, giving his jockey, Calvin Borel, the opportunity to gallop him along at the back of the pack, along the rail. The surface along the rail was firmer than the rest of the track as a result of rainfall and track maintenance procedures (sort of like the strip along the beach where a wave has just receded). With about 3/8s of a mile to the finish line, jockey Borel, in a brilliant ride, was able to begin passing the other horses on the inside, as they drifted off the rail owing to fatigue. In essence, Mine That Bird ran without interference on a firmer, faster surface, on the shortest circumference of the course, while the other horses jostled each other for position on a deeper, slower surface.

Even though Calvin Borel is illiterate, he is no fool when it comes to horses. He is switching horses tomorrow to ride the only filly in the Preakness, Rachel Alexandra. I think she is as good a three-year-old filly, at the sort of distance over which the Preakness is contested, as I have ever seen. Tomorrow, for the first time, she will try to beat male horses. I think she can do it.

Eternity

A friend of mine passed along to me a quotation that he incorporated in his eulogy for his father, a lifelong teacher.

                        "A teacher affects eternity, he never knows where his influence stops."

                                                        Henry Brooks Adams

Over an excellent lunch at the Oyster Bar (my red blood count is responding, by the way), my friend, a co-investor and co-director with me in companies that we helped to build, was kind enough to suggest that I had had influence similar to that of a teacher, through mentoring managements of companies and younger colleagues through the years. To my surprise, he said that he himself sometimes thinks about what I might say or do in a given circumstance. Because of the great esteem in which I hold this very decent and successful man, I must admit that I was not only flattered at the time, but also find myself pondering what he had to say. (He also urged that I write something, other than in my blog, about my experiences in business, which I have never done. I have never been convinced that I have anything original, of any consequence, to say about business. I could tell some pretty good war stories, but I would have to fictionalize many of them to protect the guilty-- and some of the innocent!)

As I think about Adams's quotation, I think it is probably true that all of us influence others, for good and for ill, if only in our personal lives and decisions, far more than we realize. Certainly I have been startled many times over the years when someone has mentioned to me how much he or she has applied in his or her life something I said to them fifteen or twenty years ago-- which I invariably have no remembrance of ever saying. (I never had a great memory, even when I was young.) In my career, I certainly did not have as much opportunity to influence others as does a lifelong teacher. Nevertheless, as I think about it, the nature of my career inexorably entailed affecting a fair number of people's lives. 

From 1966, when I got out of training class on Wall Street and became assistant to the director of research at Reynolds & Co., I was involved in the hiring, firing, promoting, and demoting of people throughout my career. As a private investor and venture capitalist, I invested in well over eighty other privately held companies, in many of which I was directly and indirectly influential. Managements and co-investors at least have to pretend to pay some attention to you when you own voting shares, when you may be willing to invest more, and when you perhaps sit on the investee company's board of directors and compensation committee. In addition, I sat on the boards of publicly held companies and not-for-profit institutions. Most such responsibilities require making some difficult decisions that affect other people's lives. With the best of wills, not all decisions prove to be wise, and certainly many are viewed as negative and hurtful by people directly and indirectly affected. Ironically, many people who are cheered by a decision take the wrong message from it, and many who disagree with a decision, and dislike you for making it, learn from it-- perhaps consciously, perhaps not--  and improve their lives as a result.

Recently, I have been asked several times what I did best in my career. I think I hit my peak at about age 12 when I trained my Dalmatian, Colonel, for obedience trials. Otherwise, I think that I was best-- for which I have been immodest enough to credit myself  elsewhere in this blog-- at giving people, particularly young people, a chance to do things for which they were ostensibly not qualified and which often had not occurred to them to try.  Most succeeded at their new opportunity.  Sometimes I suppose I "mentored" them intensively, sometimes not. But I never felt comfortable being called a mentor. I always felt that I was learning so fast, because I had so much to learn, that I was hardly in a position to regard myself as a mentor. 

How does one define eternity? For me, it will last as long as the human race exists. I do not think that the human race, or our planet, or our solar system, will last forever. But I do accept that there is a secular eternity as long as human beings exist; as an imperfect being, I hope that the good that I have contributed to it outweighs the bad. As I think about it, I attribute most of my failings, other than mistakes in judgement, to cowardice. I am still trying to muster courage.  It is never too late for self improvement!

Sacred Music and Chemotherapy

Sacred Music ran fourth in her race today. MSK ran hours late in its chemotherapy suite today. Early reports are that she came out of her race in good order. As a result of kind friends treating us to a bottle of post-therapy Dom Perignon, I am pleased to report that I came out of my chemotherapy session in good order also!

When to Drink Champagne

"In victory, you deserve Champagne; in defeat, you need it."

             

                 Napoleon Bonaparte

This morning, at about 10 a.m., I reported to the emergency room at MSK; at about 7 p.m., I left the hospital, implanted with a vena cava filter. As determined by ultrasonic examination, I have blood clots in my lower right leg. Apparently, my cancer has predisposed me to blood clots. The existing blood clots are highly likely to propagate into the upper leg. Because blood clots frequently cause pulmonary embolisms, which kill 50,000 to 200,000 people each year in the United States, the doctors would normally treat me with anticoagulant drugs. Unfortunately, the size of my primary tumor makes anticoagulants inadvisable. MSK will monitor the blood clots, which will be an ongoing problem for me, and defer for now making a decision on giving me anticoagulants. The filter was inserted through my neck into the inferior vena cava, the largest vein in the body, which drains blood from the lower body into the heart. The vena cava filter is designed to trap clots, to reduce the probability of pulmonary embolisms.

Tomorrow, Sacred Music faces 15 other three-year-olds, including eight males, in her race in Strasbourg, the Prix Champagne de Venoge. Whether or not we she is victorious, we will raise a glass to her!

Mother's Day: Sacred Music Redux

My right shin and ankle are pretty painful today, so our horses may have to be my exercise proxies for a while. When the doctors examined my leg last Thursday, they were unsure about the locus and cause of the generalized pain.  The pain is more acute now than it was then, so I have a better idea about its nature: bone is not involved, and it has something to do with circulation. Partly because I note that moist heat seems to help the condition more than cold, my current uninformed opinion is that my chemotherapy has given me a case of phlebitis, or something of that ilk. My current inclination is to wait to go to the hospital tomorrow, when the specialists are all on duty, rather than go to the emergency room today, Mother's Day Sunday. Besides, it is a pretty day, and I'd much rather go out to brunch than sit in the emergency room!

Nicolas Clement, our trainer in France, has entered Sacred Music in a race at a track in Strasbourg. The race is on Tuesday, at a distance of 2,350 meters (nearly a mile and a half), for a total purse of 17,000 Euros.  He says that she has trained well since her recent racing debut, and that the long distance of her race on Tuesday should be no problem for her.  Although I think that we have every reason to expect her to give a good account of herself. I don't know the form of  horses in France. When we get the entries tomorrow, Nicolas can help us assess the opposition.

Meanwhile, we are pointing two of our horses in New York to races at Belmont Park. We have entered Mustang Island for a race on Thursday on the grass, similar to the race that Hot Money won last Saturday. This sprint race on the grass will be the second start of Mustang Island's career, just as last Saturday's race was for his fellow three-year-old stablemate, Hot Money. Two days ago, W.C. Jones worked well over the Saratoga training track, as his trainer, Christophe Clement, prepares him for his scheduled comeback race on May 24.  We have been resting and rehabilitating four-year-old W.C. Jones since his last race, which took place about a year ago. He will need one more work before his race. Although it is a tall order to ask a horse to win at a distance of a mile and a quarter (the exacting distance of the Kentucky Derby) after a long layoff, Christophe is celebrated for his ability to have a horse ready to give a peak effort under such circumstances.

Hope springs eternal in the horse business, particularly when one has young horses that have not yet established the limits of their potential. The racing of Thoroughbred horses is a sport with origins in England more than three centuries ago.  The sport is full of hoary and colorful aphorisms. A favorite of mine is, "No man with an unraced two-year-old ever committed suicide." We have an unraced two-year-old colt, Backslider, in training in Kentucky.

Gym Rat II

This morning, although I have less energy than yesterday, I went back to the gym. On both visits to the gym, I was inhibited a bit by one of my recent side effects from chemotherapy, a sore shin and swollen ankle. I would estimate that my strength and cardiovascular fitness are, respectively, about 40 percent and 25 percent of their levels of four months ago. But when I look back two months to the beginning of my chemotherapy, I am now stronger and have much more endurance. 

Gym Rat

 For the first time since we left for South America in early February, I went to the gym today. Although I didn't do much-- 25 minutes of cardiovascular work and about 10 minutes of light weightlifting and sit-ups-- I got pleasantly tired. As I had wondered if I would ever be able to go to the gym again, I also had the satisfaction of minor accomplishment.

In early 2002, having determined that I would retire from my job at the end of 2008, I decided that I did not want to be physically unable to enjoy fully my retirement years. So I went on a diet, which entailed losing about two pounds a month for 24 months. Then I did two things to keep the weight off: 1) bought new clothes and had my old clothes altered, so I would have an immediate logistical problem if I gained weight; and 2) went on an exercise program, which consisted of two hours at the gym every morning (one hour of cardiovascular exercise, one hour with a personal trainer) and about an hour of walking around the city during the day. A number of people, not least Susan, said I got to be too skinny. Vestigial love handles argued otherwise.