One of my all-time favourite horse racing images contained no horse at all.
It appeared in a trade magazine about 10 years ago, during the Cam Fella Tour. The snapshot revealed a hand-written note tacked to a stall door.
In a swooping, pre-teen crayon scrawl, it read: “Dear Cam, thanks for all of the beautiful babies.”
The photo surfaced again when Cam Fella passed away in 2001, but I’ve not seen it since. It makes me smile just to think of it, and I’m torn in deciding who deserves higher praise — the kid that wrote it, or the person who photographed it.
Just as I get a kick out of seeing my friends’ young children in a likeness of the hellraisers I spent my own youth with, it’s intriguing to watch yesterday’s glamour boys become tomorrow’s promising stallions. Perhaps that’s too much personification for what some people consider a cut-and-dry case of DNA and genetics.
But if there’s one thing the young note-writer and I share, it’s a romanticized view of harness racing. Which, on a sunny Sire’s Day afternoon, suits me just fine.