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Day Two
TOUR
DAY 3
Beginning
the third day of a 6-day vacation, I got to thinking that
the French government should be paying for this vacation, at
least paying some of the hotel bills or meals. My rationale
is sound, and I plan to present this to the Ministry of the
Environment.
Bonus-Malus
They have
a program called Bonus-Malus. The bonus is a subsidy to
consumers who buy cars that use less gas. The malus is the
surcharge they pay if the car is a gas guzzler. This is, of
course, to reduce carbon emissions. Within the same frame of
reference, I should have gotten a government discount for
having bought my bicycle and yet another subsidy for doing
an entirely gas-free vacation.
What
would Monet have done?
By 10:30
in the morning, the powerful sun had already whitened out
the stony textures of Senlis, sort of a white-bread effect
on ancient stone walls, wooden doors and wrought iron
balconies. Monet was right in hanging around until early
evening to do one more painting of his chosen scenes. The
midday sun removes much of the beautiful graininess of an
urbanscape and also washes out the mellowness of a rural
scene. Senlis was still impressive but we had to roll on and
miss its best face.
Our
timing was not all bad. Hanging out at the track in the
merciless mid-afternoon hours and cycling in the late
afternoon all the way until sundown would allow for a
reprieve from the some of the grinding heat and a more
intimate bonding with the countryside. The more I studied
the map, the more apparent that at 10pm we would find
ourselves in the middle of a most beautiful nowhere and with
longshot odds against finding a place to stay.
Was it
time to panic?
I have
traveled with people who panic, when I am usually the calm
one. In this case I was the worried one with Alan remaining
unfazed about the menacing potential of our becoming
stranded. I reminded Alan that I had crossed the sparsely
populated Vexin at times when it was impossible to find even
a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Time-travel back to Vexin’s
era of Roman roads, and surely the facilities were better.
But armed
with his cell phone, Alan was infinitely confident that
phone calls here and there would uncover a chambre d’hôte
(bed and breakfast) somewhere beyond this or that field of
dimming sunflowers.
We glided
into Chantilly about noon, crossing a river, and then a lake
where optically it appeared as if the massive stone castle
at the other end was floating pumice.
I staked
out a bench under shade trees on the backstretch of the
track, next to the Grands Ecuries (the once-royal
stables that today are a backdrop for the races).
Ripe
camembert on the backstretch
It was
market day. I guarded the bench and Alan went to meander
through the outdoor market stalls and pick up lunch: crusty
baguettes, camambert at a perfect point of ripeness, fresh
apricots and black cherries in season.
After
lunch, we walked our bicycles across the point where the
backstretch ends and the chute begins, noting that the grass
surface was firm but not nearly as easy on the ankles as it
looked from the grandstand. We parked our bicycles just
outside the entrance and soon dumped our backpacks in the
air cooled press box, venturing into the outdoor heat only
to watch a race or and make a wager.
Chantilly!
Just so I
don't appear romantically superlative about Chantilly, I
will quote someone else, an Englishman, since the Brits are
known for French bashing. The Glorious Goodwood Betting
website notes that, "Few race courses in the world can rival
Chantilly when it comes to architectural grandeur and scenic
splendour...Chantilly exudes an air of old-world charm." Alan and I agree.
Here’s a
link where you can view a real
Chantilly race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcyVLfQQGmQ
The track
is set in a vast beech forest, north of Paris. The horses
actually pass by two castles during a race: first the
Grands Ecuries (which you can see on the video) and then
the immensely elegant Chantilly castle (not apparent on the
video because of the camera angle).
From our
comfortable, climate-controlled press box nook, we passed
the first race: with only five horses, not much of a betting
proposition. I made a token bet in the second race just to
feel part of the splendor. Recreational wagering, even for
two dollars, is a long-term loser. It's called the
"trickle-out economics” by some and the “piss away economy”
by others.
American
bred
The third
race had arrived. I had been longing for this moment since
arriving at the hotel in Senlis the night before. Here was
the Royer Dupré trained Sweet Hearth, the only horse in the
field that was not a proven loser, and in fact, the only
horse to have won a listed race (a little more than a year
back). Any horse winning at the listed level within the past
year would not qualify for this race. Sweet Hearth had won a
listed race just before the cutoff point, so he barely
qualified for this 7-furlong sprint. Yes, he was coming back
after a long layoff but that meant, given the conditions of
the race, that he was the only horse that was not a proven
loser against lower-class horses.
Since
Royer Dupré had caused me to lose what I thought was a great
bet at Compiègne, I felt he owed me one.
I was
thinking that “finally I had uncovered an example of
brilliant simplicity in handicapping”, only to make a late
discovery that muddied the picture. In grass sprints, I
usually like to play American pedigree, bred for speed. (The
American trainer Wesley Ward proved this to be true by
winning this summer at Royal Ascot at 33-1. I have always
wondered why American trainers of grass sprinters do not
ship to France for the 5-furlong Prix de l'Abbaye, on Arc de
Triomphe day. They would have a great chance to win.)
Sweet
Hearth was an American bred, sired by Touch Gold. But there
was another U.S. bred horse in the field: Singing Machine.
(I don't recall why, at the moment, but Alan liked Singing
Machine for a different reason.) Sweet Hearth was 9-2 while
Singing Machine was 12-1. What if Sweet Hearth faltered
because of the long layoff? Could Singing Machine beat
her? It was a leap of faith to think so, but the maiden
Singing Machine, in this terrible field, had shown two good
races at Chantilly, and compared to her rivals, she could be considered a
maturing “horse for course”. Nevertheless, she had only one
in-the-money finish in seven tries and would now be
competing against a former listed-race winner.
I decided
to split my bet in two, playing Sweet Hearth to win and
Singing Machine to placé on the notion that the two race
favorites looked vulnerable to me and the placé (show)
payoff might come back even better than the win payoff of
Sweet Hearth. By playing two horses, I was hedging, but in
fact, I had a chance to win with both bets.
The bell
rang and they were off. As the horses galloped by the Grands
Ecuries, the picture frame was stunning but neither of my
bets was racing near the front. When they made the turn for
home in front of the castle, Sweet Hearth was making his
move, advancing smoothly and powerfully. Singing Machine
seemed to labor.
I began
to sentence myself to a torture session in the Iron
Maiden. I had split my bet between these two horses and now
it looked as if my original choice, the one that had
energized me for the past 14 hours, was going to win while
my late horse-for-course discovery would turn into a dud.
In late
stretch it looked for sure that Sweet Hearth would
prevail, so my eyes moved to Singing Machine, who was now
eating up terrain like a cheetah. It was a photo for third
place and one of the two horses was Singing Machine. I
watched the replay and saw her nose in front of the fourth
horse.
Sweet
Hearth returned the American equivalent of $9.20 while
Singing Machine produced a $10.80 placé payoff, sparing me a
slow and agonizing death in the grip of the Iron Maiden.
It was
turning into a good day and that became even more apparent
when I collected on a cold quinella (top two finishers in
either order) in the fourth race. Yes, the Q only paid
$8.40 but using my French version of my "Short Form" method,
those were the only two horses to qualify. In the USA, the
Short Form involves eliminating proven losers at today's
class level and excluding horses with no-win trainers (less
than 12% wins). In France I eliminate no-win or cold
trainers, even if their horse looks good, and I make an
earnings-per-race curve, throwing out all horses that are
way below the mean.
In the
fifth race, I was beginning to feel as if I could don a
Super-handicapper cape and fly over the
Chantilly infield. My horse, Yes Mate, was the only Short Form qualifier, and he
was leading magnificently around the final turn. In deep
stretch, he seemed to lunge into an even longer lead, with
the favorite lacking room, as if he were on the Ventura
Freeway at rush hour. But then the favorite got untracked,
found his diamond lane, and made a late burst.
Yes Mate,
at 9-2 and the favorite finished in the same photo. From the
replay I saw that the heroic Yes Mate could not quite resist
his pursuer and was defeated by less than a head.
Alan and
I had time for one more race. I recall that he too was ahead
for the day, having made the same placé wager on Singing
Machine, and having stayed out of the other races.
A bit of
horseplayer psychology for those who don’t play the races
For those
of you who have never played the races, try to understand
how it is possible for a regular player to leave the track
with a wide smile after a losing day of no mistakes but a
long face following a winning day that could have gone much
better. No, this is not the old cliché about horseplayers
"wanting to lose deep down inside". That's mainly
cheap-minded pop psychology.
The
turbulence whipping my inner soul came as a result of the
sixth race. It was a 17-horse low-level handicap race laden
with traps in the past performances. It was the type of race
that neither Alan nor I would usually play. Both of us noted
that Premier Violin had a reasonable chance to repeat his
previous 12-1 victory, and this time he was 10-1. Neither of
us played the horse to win.
Looking
at my past performances for this type of race, I had decided
to play only the Multi. The decision was based on a return
to the scene of a successful crime. Exactly a year back, I
had been taken by a TV film crew to Chantilly and was filmed
as part of a documentary called Americans in Paris. In an
attempt to impress the audience, I felt the need to collect.
I had stayed up late the night slashing through
the Multi-race past performances like an explorer with a
machete in a complex jungle. One year ago it had been a
cheap handicap race and that’s the way it was today. One
year ago I had hit the Multi (picking the top four finishers
in any order) before an international TV audience. So you
can see why I bypassed the win bet on Premier Violin, trying
to retrace my successful steps from one year back.
Of course
I used Premier Violin in my Multi combination.
We had
many miles to cover that afternoon and risked being stranded
in beautiful rolling farmland at 10pm with nowhere to sleep,
so I bought my Multi ticket and we walked out of the track.
Just as we were about to wheel off, backpacks on, bikes
unchained, the horses burst out of the gate. We decided to
wait another two minutes for the result.
At the
finish line there was one horse ahead of the field, Premier
Violin, at 10-1, and I needed three more. Alan and I looked
at each other with the same question mark: why had we not
mad a win bet on Premier Violin?
The
Multi: best bet in French racing!
Of the
remaining four horses that were clustered at the finish
line, there was:
Master
Light, 20-1, a horse I had used on my ticket.
There was
Ksaros at 5-1, another horse I had played.
Then
there were two more: Lucky One at 12-1, who was not on my
ticket, and Minnalousche at 20-1, who I had included on my
ticket.
I waited
for the photo to be deciphered.
Lucky
One, the one not on my ticket, had finished third,
sandwiched between my four correct choices.
The
horseplayer has a habit of melting down into the
shoulda-coulda-woulda mode. For me this post-race musing
involved both looking back and looking forward. I had once
again had a profitable day at
Chantilly, a track I knew intimately. On the other hand, our next
track was to be Clairefontaine, where I had never even had a
single winner. Clairefontaine is a grand illusion. It has
the superb elegance of Keeneland, but the quality of racing
of the Stockton Fair. Yes, I had a solid profit from
Chantilly, but had I played Premier Violin to win, I could
have gained more of a psychological and financial cushion
for the upcoming attack on Clairefontaine, where we were
destined to confront E, F and G races on the flat and
18-horse jump races for first-time starters going three
miles.
I decided
to go easy on myself: the "mistake" did not qualify me for
the Iron Maiden. Using my derived Short Form method, I had
picked four of the first five finishers in a most perplexing
17-horse race, so I decided to be happy about the winning
day, and applaud my handicapping, and above all, thank the
God of Serenity that we would now be cycling in the glorious
French countryside, enraptured by the transforming shades of
nature as Monet would have been.
To travel
west, out of the
Chantilly forest, we were forced to take the main road, the D924. Years ago,
highway builders still refrained from obliterating the
surroundings, so there were enough tall beech trees to break
the impact of the sizzling sun.
Once
beyond the forest, Boron-sur-Oise, the mighty lashed back.
Not only did the heat slow us down but, inevitably, we
misread signs, got bad instructions from the well-meaning
locals, and wasted time retracing our steps in order to find
the right way out of each town.
Communion
on two wheels
We were
skirting the northern part of the vast Vexin Regional Park
in the Picardy region. Once we reached the town of
Amblainville, the Monet-color-changes were phasing in and we
found ourselves participating in a communion of all shades
of green before a golden horizon. The rolling hills seemed
to merge with the movement of our wheels.
This
time, my stop-the-clock setting was the village of
Hénonville, not only for its elegant castle but especially
for the hilly townscape where rows of textured façades with
colorful but fading window shutters left the viewer with a
bizarre synchronicity: hippie-psychadelic and Puritan New
England, and you couldn’t figure where one ended and the
other began.
Contrasting emotions swirled from within. One moment there
was the incipient panic that it was already
9pm and we had found no place to stay for the night. Next,
there was the near infinite serenity. Fatigued as I was, I
lost the sense of pedaling and floated over the road. Most
of the time, Alan disappears beyond the hill in front of me
but this time I kept up with him.
No time
to panic
We
knocked on a door for information and a whole extended
family came out to help. We learned that there was a trailer
park up the hill. But Alan’s aesthetics-first approach made
sense. We still had at least an hour of dimming sunlight in
the mellow countryside. The more we advanced tonight, we
reasoned, the better chance we had of eventually making it
to Deauville in time for the Clairefontaine races the day
after tomorrow.
The road
snaked along a high ridge. To the left we looked up into
darkening forest. To the right we looked down on plowed
fields and centuries-old stone barns with sagging tile
roofs. The breeze was now fresh enough to dry my sweat.
And then
it was
10pm and we had climbed to the
village
of Tourly and the sun was gone but its lingering light made
Vexin, spread out before us, look like an infinite quilt.
We
stopped at a small square where there was a place to sleep
on a gravestone bench, that is, just in case Alan’s phone
leads all failed.
Call 1: a
bed-and-breakfast with NO VACANCY but they gave him another
number.
Call 2:
to the man who knows everyone in the region. He has nothing
available himself but says: “try this one place in
Fay-les-Etangs”.
Call 3: a
Dutchman nationalized French with a vacancy in
Fay-les-Etangs. Bingo.
I turned
on my headlight. We retraced our route, back down the hill
that had led us to Tourly, and then swing left turn into
wheatfields where, from a distance, you would have seen only
two heads slide by.
Finally,
65 kilometers from Senlis, an old stone house with exposed
wood beams, a dense garden and modern comforts within: much
better than the bench by the gravestone. We would need to go
about 120 kilometers the next day in order to be near enough
to roll into
Deauville
the following morning. I had done 120 kilometers in one day
before, but with flat terrain when the temperature was in
the high 70s or low 80s. The forecast was now for the low
90s and the roads were going to be hilly, including a few
long and steep climbs.
Big
decision tomorrow morning! No, not about where to safely
invest during the crisis, not about how to get rid of a
chronic illness, not even about calling my congressman to
demand that he stop the government from using my tax money
to pay for Citibank’s toxic assets. No, the big decision in
my life, right now, was whether to linger in the morning
over a copious breakfast or down an orange juice and toast
and get out on the road early, to gain precious time.
Warning
from our one-night landlord: just to get out of the bowl
where Fay-les-Etangs is settled, we would be facing a long
and steep climb.
Rather
than worry about Day 4, why not enjoy the tail end of Day 3?
We had more ripe camembert left over from lunch. The owner
brought us crusty bread to go with the cheese, plus a beer.
We had fresh fruit for dessert.
When the
adrenalin has been pumping, it’s not easy to fall asleep. I
had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. I
visualized the next day. Win or lose, it would be a splendid
challenge. <
Day Two Day
Four>
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