He loved Barbaro and suffered with him.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/tim_layden/04/14/derby.prep/index.html
Working through the grief
Ex-Barbaro trainer plots new course sans gifted horse
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Michael Matz seems a little older this year. That description does not denigrate Matz. At 56, he still appears at least a decade younger than his birth certificate claims. His hips and shoulders are impossibly slim, as if time has spared his equestrian’s body; his eyes are still a piercing blue. Maybe it’s just the subject matter that has aged him.
"Last year was a hard year, no doubt about that,’’ says Matz, as he stands in a cool morning sunlight outside his barn at Keeneland Race Course. Last year, in 15 words: Barbaro. Kentucky Derby romp. Preakness breakdown. Life-saving surgery. Worldwide outpouring of support and, ultimately, grief. If you are a reader who needs more explanation, you wouldn’t have started viewing this story in the first place.
Between late April and early June, no fewer than three documentaries will premiere (NBC, HBO and an independent production, "The First Saturday in May,’’ which premieres this week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York) that feature the Barbaro saga as either all or part of their content. In each of these, Matz will earnestly – and honestly – pour out his heart, effortlessly playing his role: Grieving Trainer.
It has been exhausting, but Matz has the benefit of sincerity. He loved Barbaro and suffered with him. "There was something about him that will never be forgotten,’’ says Matz. "His heart, his fight … whatever it was. The fact that he never gave up. But people saw something in him.’’
Here Matz smiles with lips pursed. That’s the way he always smiles, as if holding a little something back. "Of course the racing industry is not going to stop and wait for me to get over him,’’ Matz says. "The business is going to go on. Life is going to go on.’’
In that vein, Matz has a shot at returning to Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May. He trains a three-year-old named Chelokee, who finished a hard-luck third in the March 31 Florida Derby (Chelokee was checked in traffic at the quarter-pole and re-started). There is little doubt that Chelokee is among the best three-year-olds in training, but the Kentucky Derby is limited to 20 starters; and if more than 20 enter, the field is determined by earnings in graded stakes races. Chelokee, who earned $100,000 for finishing third in the Florida Derby (his only start in a graded stakes race), is very much on the bubble.
"It’s a very funny situation,’’ says Matz. "I do think this horse has a very good chance to win if he gets in. I really do. But he has to get in.’’
Chelokee talk is a respite for Matz, a chance to be just a trainer again. Barbaro’s story has thrust Matz into a position that is unlike almost any thoroughbred trainer in history. Yet the experience is not so new for him. Before he was Barbaro’s Famous Trainer, he was an Olympic Medalist and before that he was a Plane Crash Hero, having helped three young children escape from a burning wreckage in 1989 in an Iowa cornfield. Most people are defined once in their life. Matz is at three and counting.
"What happened last year is something that happened,’’ says Matz. "It’s like the plane crash. It’s with you for the rest of your life. What you do with it is up to you. What I’m trying to do with Barbaro is think of the good that came with it, the way he inspired people, the way people cared about him.’’ (Fate managed to find Matz at every turn in 2006 and include him in the script; Matz-trained Round Pond won the Breeders Cup Distaff at Churchill Downs, but only after two other horses broke down).
On another level, Matz’s attachment to Barbaro’s memory is more fundamental. He is a trainer. Barbaro was a great horse. That memory is endlessly long, as well. "What can I do?’’ asked Matz. "I can’t just give up and say I’ll never have another good horse again. I will probably never have another one like him, but then again, not many people do.’’
Yet he works most viscerally in an industry of hope. "Every year, the two-year-olds come in, and you say to yourself, ‘Is this the one?’’’ says Matz. "You do your best and you hope one of them develops.’’
Chelokee has developed, albeit late. An offspring of the swift Cherokee Run, Chelokee didn’t break his maiden until last October and didn’t win again until taking a seven-furlong allowance race on the undercard of the March 3 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park. Four weeks later, he might have been the best horse on the track in the Florida Derby, if not for traffic problems.
His bubble status underscores a weakness in the Derby’s graded-stakes tiebreaker. Money earnings are not always analogous to the quality of a horse’s performances. Others have suggested that a point system would be more equitable and such a system would also have its flaws; but it is worth exploring. If Chelokee wants in, he should be in.
Of course for Matz, the present and past are seldom far apart. This week, Barbaro’s owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, came to Kentucky and watched their four-year-old, Showing Up, finish second in the Maker’s Mark Mile at Keeneland. They also went with Matz to Mill Ridge Farm to see Barbaro’s full brother, the recently named yearling, Nicanor (from the same fouxhouns painting that gave Barbaro his name), and Barbaro’s dam, in foal with another full brother.
"The brother looks very nice,’’ says Matz. And here came the slight smile again, this time with the scent of hope in the air.
