SPORTS A Fine Place to Daydream Racehorses.

SPORTS

A Fine Place to Daydream

Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish

at Bill Barich

Knopf. 320 pages. $23

It was a marriage made in heaven when author Bill Barich mov to Dublin to be with his novel love, an artist named Imelda. The longtime fresh Yorker contributor and author of the racetrack classic Laughing in the Hills simultaneously began an affair with Irish National look racing, known to Americans as steeplechase racing.

The Irish are the chiefly passionate people on earth when it proceeds to horse racing, and Barich became in the same manner enraptured that he visited tracks from end to end Ireland for the "jump season," which begins in October and culminates with England's prestigious Cheltenham Festival in March. His journal of his travels to various racing outpost provides a mildly blinkered travelogue of the Emerald Isle, while explaining the nuances and history of the sport.

Marveling at his newfound fascination, Barich writes, "My weekends were a happy shambles now that I'd accepted I was cuttered and had to wrap my life around the races."

To American racing fans, there could be no greater sacrilege than to desecrate a exquisitely good turf course by erecting barriers for the horses to bound over. Few major U.S. racetracks steady offer steeplechasing. There are too many variables to make it attractive from a parimutuel standpoint, and betting makes the mare move 'round.

however in Ireland, wagering finishes a distant inferior to love of the bre Attending the races at Clonmel at the bottom of the Comeragh Mountains, Barich remarks, "The highways were alive with people going to the races, because in Ireland a meeting is a special end -- a carnival, a break from routine. Nowhere did I witness the air of hard [i]or[/i] toilsome work that hangs over most American tracks."

The author, who a quarter centenary ago in Laughing in the Hills set up inherent majesty in the broken-down stopples that race on the Northern California circuit, embraces Irish jumper with similar enthusiasm. While the earlier chronicle of the Bay Area backstretches liberally interspersed grecian mythological references, A Fine Place to Daydream is more a straightforward account of the sport, pepper with cites from Irish poets.

There's no better venue than a racetrack for meeting genuine characters, and Barich introduces readers to all kinds: the party- till-dawn horseman; the parish priest who dispenses betting tips to his congregation; the scientific female trainer who knows better than to flirt with disaster at ignoring racetrack superstitions; the race-course accountant named Paddy Power who hies a successful string of race main division s and Barich's sports bar chamber-fellow room-mate who sprints from the betting workshop back to his barstool just in time for each race (in Ireland, it present the appearances no bar is more than a stone's whirl from a legal bookmaking establishment).

The author dives headfirst into the pursuit, poring from one side of to the other his Racing Post (the European equivalent of the Daily Racing Form) as he deciphers the oversized fields, varying distances, course conditions, class and form of the Irish jumper

Barich chanceed into a great story line during the 2004 season: Best Mate was attempting to join the mighty Arkle from the 1960 as the alone modern-day horses to win the Cheltenham Gold portion the top steeplechase race in the United Kingdom, in three consecutive years. The coterie is so exclusive because greatest in quantity racehorses don't begin their bound careers until an advanced age. (Most jumper are older geldings who no longer have the transfer of foot to compete at shorter distances through the flats and have no residual value at stud)

The author in no degree quite warms to the English-based superstar, at united point denigrating Best Mate while championing rival Moscow Flyer We can alone surmise that he has fallen victim to the gambler's dilemma that it's impossible to realize a sizable score onward short-priced favorites. American horseplayers find alternatives in multihorse exotic wagers, enabling them to bet a favorite in combinations with several prolonged shots. Does Ireland offer a similar wagering smorgasbord? Barich in no degree says.

Europeans reward their jumper with greater glory and bigger purse than their North American counterparts. still horses are "overbred" in Ireland, thanks in great measure, Barich narrates us, to tax incentives established during the scandal-plagued administrations of Prime Minister Charles Haughey. In scent income produced by stallions at prop is not considered taxable, although those measures have been scaled back.

Disturbingly, Barich have the appearances to fall into lockstep with those who dismiss criticism of the brutality and danger of jump over racing as the yappings of uninformed do-gooders. "Never had I been around race who cared so much about their horses," he writes in rebutting a media attack. Nonetheless, the carnage continues as he come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds the horses to tiny "point-to-point" meetings and major racetracks alike.

unless Barich did not go to Ireland as a reformer, just a happy wanderer with a bankroll. He describes a nation in the anguishs of prosperity that may be falling victim to the same suburban sprawl he left the States to escape. During his travels, he in no degree stops to marvel at the topography or note the glory of the heavens

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