My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey's Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America's Favorite Horse
by Edgar Prado, John Eisenberg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Edgar Prado, John EisenbergEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-04-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Harper
Book Reviews of My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey's Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America's Favorite Horse
Book Review: Braveheart.
Summary: 5 Stars
Easily the saddest racetrack story since Ruffian (Ferdinand's trip to the slaughterhouse was the worst off-track one), Hall of Fame jockey Edgar Prado rides to the rescue and saves Barbaro's tale from the depression heap. The warmth of friendship between horse and rider along with Prado's detailing of the many good things that Barbaro's battle and passing have inspired make the book a heroic work.
Prado feeds readers added carrots by showing what it's like to be a successful jockey. Yep - as some may have guessed - horse racing is a business. Even a big-time winner like Prado needs to continually compete and excel or the game will pass him by. The pull of work/profession is something most of us feel and to see Prado bucking it a bit to be with Barbaro during the horse's hospitalization connects with us on a deep level.
Biographical information about the jockey's rise from a poor yet productive family in Peru is well-placed. The gifts bequeathed to the author by his parents are an important part of "My Guy Barbaro." Yet I lost track of Prado's father in the story. The book left me uncertain whether the father is living or dead. The love of animals the father instilled in Edgar lives on and that's the more important thing.
Another fuzzy point is the reason why Roy and Gretchen Jackson switched Barbaro from grass to dirt running. We don't read it from the Jacksons' mouths but we can conjecture that they were seduced by the allure of winning the Triple Crown. They're certainly not the only owners captured by this idea but it's tragic just the same. The tragedy becomes sharper when reading Marcus Hersh in the Daily Racing Form on the day of the 2010 Arlington Million writing about the dearth of top-level American grass runners and considering that Barbaro could have been a foundation sire for a surge in U.S. grass success. The Jacksons must have felt an additional blow from the American dirt ethos when another horse they bred - European grass champion George Washington - fatally broke down in the 2007 Breeders Cup Classic (run in the Monmouth Park slop), a race he should never have been in.
Racing is becoming more international (Great Britain now has a Kentucky Derby qualifying race) and this should prompt American owners and breeders to try harder in the grass game. The waning of the U.S. Triple Crown and lessening the obsession with breeding for dirt speed would likely improve the health of the American thoroughbred and boost interest in the American game, especially in Europe. Funny that the Triple Crown is American racing's biggest asset and biggest liability at the same time.
Besides the bravehearts shown by Barbaro, Prado, trainer Michael Matz, and the Jacksons, the most compelling thing about "My Guy Barbaro" is that it shows what it's like to be a human being in a suddenly tense and fluid situation. Prado (with the help of co-author John Eisenberg) puts us in the saddle at the 2006 Preakness. Our hearts pound as the jockey has to make the most weighty decisions in split seconds. We also get a glimpse of the grand fact of horse racing and almost everything else - that things converge from the distant past and the near present, creating a situation no one (other than G-d) could have imagined. Consider Barbaro's turf beginnings when mulling Matz's saddling of the horse on the Pimlico dirt backstretch then leading him onto the grass course where Preakness runners are traditionally saddled. Barbaro probably thought he was going to run on the grass and may have adjusted his physiology accordingly. Also, consider the troubled loading of Diabolical and how that second gate click sent Barbaro off prematurely. Prado considers them in hindsight but his reaction at the moment was the eternally human - "Why is this happening now?" Our hearts go out to this braveheart.
The puzzle is solved by studying the words of the great scientist/philosopher Ernst Mach, who said you may think you can predict the outcome of the most simple situation/experiment but don't be surprised if the expected results don't become actual. In other words, be cautious. Dr. Mach inspired me to question the certainty of Barbaro in the Preakness. I went three deep with Bernardini on my Pick 3 that day and it paid nicely.
Prado and Matz were consoled in the aftermath by teaming up on 2006 Breeders Cup Distaff winner Round Pond and separately winning Barbaro Stakes races the next year at Pimlico and Delaware Park. The author had hoped for extended joy through Barbaro brother Nicanor in the 2009 Triple Crown but it was not to be.
My hope is that Prado gets his first Preakness victory (all those wins in Maryland yet winless in the state's biggest race) aboard a Barbaro sibling or at least a product of Dynaformer (Barbaro's sire). It would be great if Matz and the Jacksons are part of it. 2011 will mark five years since Barbaro's breakdown. The stage is set and I'm willing to place a futures wager on the fact that our spiritually attuned jockey/author is ready to ride and write a new and glorious final chapter.
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Summary of My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey's Journey Through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America's Favorite Horse
A new superstar appeared on the American sports landscape in the spring of 2006: Barbaro, a three-year-old racehorse, won the Kentucky Derby by six and a half lengths, the largest margin of victory in sixty years. Barbaro's impressive performance immediately stirred talk of a possible Triple Crown. But in the opening yards of the Preakness Stakes two weeks later, the horse suffered a catastrophic leg injury that ended his undefeated career and left him fighting for his life.
Edgar Prado, a native of Peru and one of the world's top jockeys, rode Barbaro to glory and then stood beside him for months as the horse valiantly struggled to survive and millions of fans held their breath. Having ridden in more than twenty-five thousand races over the previous two decades, Prado thought he had been around too long to fall for any one horse, but Barbaro?intelligent, charismatic, and resourceful in sickness as well as in health?stole his heart.
In My Guy Barbaro, Prado recounts his own story, a tale of grit and dreams that moves from his impoverished childhood in Lima, Peru, to the winner's circles of the greatest racetracks in the world, and memorably chronicles his emotional time with Barbaro before, during, and after the horse's breakdown. Their bond was special and immeasurable. With Prado still reeling from a wrenching personal loss, Barbaro lifted his spirits by giving him “the ride of a lifetime” in the Derby. When the tables turned and the horse needed support two weeks later, Prado was there, going out of his way to make a succession of visits to the New Bolton Center, the animal hospital in Pennsylvania where Barbaro underwent more than two dozen surgeries and was ultimately put down.
Barbaro made worldwide headlines for eight months, and now Prado's poignant, clear-eyed narrative takes us where no reader has gone before?onto Barbaro's back in the heat of a race and into the intensive care suite where Barbaro's life-and-death drama played itself out. My Guy Barbaro is a heartwarming, unforgettable story of a man and his love for a beautiful animal and an irreplaceable teammate.
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