Cover me: American Pharoah and the search for authenticity

June 11, 2015

What Anna wants, Anna gets – particularly when it comes to a sleek, gorgeous, well-muscled male.

And what Anna Wintour, Condé Nast creative director and Vogue editor, wants right now is American Pharoah.

Ahmed Zayat, who has pledged that the Pharoah will belong to the American people, has told Bloodhorse, which covers the Thoroughbred industry, that AP will grace the cover of the next issue of the fashion bible.

"We are breaking new territory," Zayat, who operates his family's Zayat Stables, said June 10 in a podcast interview with Bloodhorse.com.

I’ll say. Anna has featured some studs in her day – Tim Tebow (shirtless), Colin Kaepernick, her fave Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic (Speedo), Ryan Lochte (cover, with Serena Williams and Hope Solo at the beach). Now she has a soon-to-be real stud. ...

Caitlyn Jenner, feminism and the beauty trap

June 10, 2015

Provocative piece in The New York Time’s Sunday Review by journalist, filmmaker and former women’s studies professor Elinor Burkett, who, while sympathetic to transgendered women like Caitlyn Jenner, doesn’t want them to co-opt her experience of womanhood.

“…As much as I recognize and endorse the right of men to throw off the mantle of maleness, they cannot stake their claim to dignity as transgender people by trampling on mine as a woman,” Burkett writes in “What Makes A Woman?”

For her, the answer to that question takes a lot more than the nail polish Jenner referred to in her interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “20/20.”

The essay earned Burkett the sobriquet “crotchety” and brought me back to the days of my youth when feminists were often considered humorless battle-axes who despised Marilyn Monroe. ...

Heartbreak at the French Open: Novak Djokovic loses to Stan Wawrinka

June 9, 2015

From the high of American Pharoah winning the Triple Crown, I plunge to the low of Novak Djokovic losing to Stan Wawrinka in the French Open final.

After routing Rafael Nadal in three sets – unthinkable at Roland-Garros and a whole other kind of heartbreak – and outlasting Andy Murray in five sets, Nole fell to Stan in four. He was so close to his dream of a career Grand Slam. It wasn’t to be. At least not this year.

It’s easy to make excuses – and Nole, to his credit, has learned not to make them even though beating Rafa and Andy back-to-back must’ve produced a physical and emotional letdown – but he simply got outplayed by a player who has beaten him in big matches before, like the quarterfinals of the Australian Open in 2014. ...

American Pharoah: Life after the Triple Crown

June 8, 2015

So what’s next for the champ? The Pharoah has gone back to his home base, Churchill Downs in Kentucky, for a breather. But he may soon be back in our area.

Trainer Bob Baffert has said he’ll run two or three more times this year, possibly at the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park in New Jersey on Aug. 2 and the Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in New York Aug. 29. The ultimate goal, though, is the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic in October where he could meet up with our old friend California Chrome.

It’s so exciting to watch a 4-year-old like Chrome take on a 3-year-old like the Pharoah. I remember a 4-year-old Seattle Slew beating a 3-year-old Affirmed twice in the only battles of former Triple Crown winners. But then a 4-year-old Affirmed beat a 3-year-old Spectacular Bid, who should’ve won the Crown in 1979, the year after Affirmed. The superiority of a 4-year-old racehorse to a 3-year-old is sort of like Roger Federer in his prime taking on a teenage Novak Djokovic. It’s no contest. Still the Pharoah might take Chrome. ...

American Pharoah, Triple Crown champion

June 6, 2015

Well, say what you want and, of course, in the blogosphere, the public has already said plenty. American Pharoah isn’t Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner. The field the Pharoah ran against in the Belmont Stakes Saturday, D-Day, was weak. Blah, blah, blah.

But you know what? You play the hand you’re dealt. American Pharoah led wire-to-wire, as did the last horse to win the Triple Crown before him, my beloved Affirmed, in 1978. AP ran the Belmont faster than Affirmed and Seattle Slew, who won the Triple Crown in 1977. He did whatever was asked of him, poor baby, running with his spongy earplugs, because the crowd noise rattles him. In doing so, he gave us a moment in history. That’s what great athletes do. They give us a moment in time in which we can say “I was there when” or “I remember when,” a moment that unites us with those we’ll never know. ...

Ride on, American Pharoah

June 6, 2015

Saturday, June 6 is D Day in more ways than one. American Pharoah will attempt to become the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 to win the Triple Crown. Post time is 5:50 p.m. on NBC, though coverage begins at 3:30 p.m.

The odds, the experts say, are not with the Pharoah. There will be fresh horses – Frosted and Materiality, among them – gunning for him. Belmont Park, with the longest of the three Triple Crown tracks at 1 ½ miles, is not his home track as it was in the 1970s for Affirmed, Seattle Slew and Secretariat, the last three Triple Crown winners. Horses are bred today for speed not endurance. Yada, yada, yada. ...

Open season: a fashion report from the French

June 3, 2015

What’s with the men at the French Open? I don’t mean their play, which, while not exactly setting the world on fire, hasn’t been terrible. I mean the way they look.

Any discussion of men’s style on the courts of Roland-Garros must begin (and, please God) end with Stan Wawrinka. With his stocky physique, pug nose and rough skin, Stan has always had a certain animal magnetism. One of his nicknames is even “Stanimal.” But his bed head and thin plaid shorts that look like boxers, complemented by a polo shirt that does not flatter his chest, suggest nothing so much as a bus-and-truck Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Honestly, even Roger Federer – known for his sartorial superiority, thanks in part to Anna Wintour – has fallen short, as he did in his match against Stan, with a Nike ensemble that consisted of hot pink shorts and a deep periwinkle shirt. The contrast is too jarring.

Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal’s fashion sins have been less in his choice of outfit (blue Nike ensemble, meh) than that of accessories. On court, he sports a $750,000 watch that recalls something you purchased at a convenience store while on vacation, having forgot your real watch at home. We’re not talking croc-embossed, rose gold-plated Longines chronometer here but something with an orange grosgrain strap and lots of gears. And why, pray tell, does Rafa need a watch on-court? It’s not like he’s going anywhere. His matches last hours. Plus, tennis stadiums have clocks. So why does he need to wear the watch, except that he’s being paid to wear the watch. ...