Zenyatta: Destiny's Child for Mosses, Shirreffs and Team
Zenyatta: Destiny's Child for Mosses,
Shirreffs and Team
By GENE WILLIAMS
As if Zenyatta's spectacular
deeds didn't already speak volumes, the words coming from those closest to her
really define her.
"Amazing," "sweetest," "smart," "classy," "best thing I've
ever sat on" are just a few of the accolades that describe the 5-year-old mare
who's working on a perfect 12-0 career record for owners Jerry and Ann Moss.
But trainer John Shirreffs perhaps puts the topper on it all
when he says, "She's the cream of the crop." That's all he wanted to say about
the champion mare and equine star, deferring, instead, to his "Team Zenyatta,"
the people who work behind the scenes and are so important to the total
package.
Chief among those are assistant trainer and her masseuse,
Michelle Jensen; groom Mario Espinoza, exercise rider Steve Willard and Jeanne
Mayberry, who broke her in faraway Florida after she was bought by the Mosses
for $60,000 in the 2005 Keeneland September Yearling Sale.
Espinoza,
whose wife, Carmen, shares Zenyatta's hotwalker
duties with Sal Lopez, says of her, only one of four horses he tends
each day: "She's the sweetest filly I've ever been around in my life.
She's smart, she
plays and she likes attention."
Espinoza, a native of Mexico, has groomed Zenyatta since she
began racing and he has benefited from that closeness. "She likes to nuzzle me
and she licks my face a lot," he said, beaming. "I'm her good friend."
Aside
from his work in the stall, Espinoza also brings her
over to the paddock on race day. "She knows when she's going to race,"
he said. "Sometimes, she even knows a few days before the race. I can
tell by the way
she acts."
For Jensen, "It's been quite a thrill having her in the
barn. It's like a dream come true. She's one of the classiest, smartest
racehorses that I've ever been around and being able to touch her and massage
her and interact with her every day for the past two years has been quite a
journey.
"She's the
nicest filly to be around, because she likes people and she likes
attention. She likes you to fuss over her and spoil her."
When Jensen massages her, Zenyatta's intelligence comes
through in the way she communicates. "She lets me know where she wants me to
massage. She tells me where she's sore by the way she looks at me; her body
language tells me. If I don't go there, her ears go back, letting me know I'm
not in the right spot. I know her cues and follow them."
Exercise rider Willard, now in his eighth year with trainer
Shirreffs after serving in the same capacity with trainers Jack Van Berg,
Willard Proctor and Richard Mandella, has handled some nice horses in his time,
including Gate Dancer, Gentlemen, Dare and Go, Siphon and Dixie Union, to name
a few. "But I've saved the best for last," said Willard who expects to quit
riding as he moves along in his 66th year.
"She's the best thing I've ever sat on," he said with an air
of awe. "She's just amazing. We knew she was good when she came to us, but we
didn't know she was this good."
The native of Evanston, Ill., who traveled west from Hot
Springs, Ark., with Van Berg, acknowledges he was only a mediocre jockey. "I
didn't work at it very hard," he said. "If I had worked as hard back then as I
do now, I probably would have been more successful."
Willard
said he got aboard Zenyatta through trial and error. "Two or three
riders had her before me," he said. "She wasn't a lot of fun
because she usually wanted to go one way when you wanted her to go the
other.
We went from one rider to the next and I wound up with her."
Willard uses one of his tricks of the trade to keep the mare
on her toes. "You gotta let her get away with a few things once in awhile," he
said with a sly grin. "I'm not insinuating anything about the female
personality, but by letting her get away with some stuff, that keeps the oomph
in them. It's OK as long as they keep going forward. And that the way it's been
with her."
Mayberry, who breaks all of the Mosses' fillies on Plumley
Farm, across the road from her 13-acre farm in Ocala, Fla., said of the young
Zenyatta: "She was very laid back as a baby. She just galloped around easily in
her paddock. The first time I breezed her I had her in a set with other horses
and she just galloped right around them. I was shocked. I didn't know whether I
had a bunch of slow horses or if she was destined to be something special. It
turned out that she was something very special.
"She did everything easy. And she was a sweet, kind animal."
Mayberry and her late husband, Brian, trained horses for the
Mosses for several years, with 1994 Kentucky Oaks winner Sardula being one of
the standouts.
Her regular rider, Hall of
Famer Mike Smith, seems to grope for words after every victory and he's finally
decided that all he can say is "she's amazing. I can't come up with any other
words.
"It's like she knows where
the wire is, and it doesn't seem to matter how much she has to make up, how
much she has to do."
Even after a tight victory in the Clement Hirsch Stakes
August 9, Smith contends, "The winning margin was a head, but I was never in
doubt that I was going to get there. And that's pretty cool."
Pretty cool, too, is the idea that now Zenyatta will be
shooting next for her 13th victory without a loss and that would tie the
brilliant record of Personal Ensign, who completed her career with a
spectacular come-from-behind victory in the 1988 Breeders' Cup Distaff (now the
Ladies Classic) over that year's Kentucky Derby champion Winning Colors on an
off track at Churchill Downs.
Zenyatta's schedule now calls for her to race again
Saturday, October 10, in the Lady's Secret at Oak Tree at Santa Anita in
preparation for a Friday, November 6 defense of the Breeders' Cup Ladies
Classic title she won last year. A reprise of her 2008 efforts in those races
would make her a perfect 14 for her career.
Today's Card
