Rachel Alexandra, who won the Preakness and was undefeated in eight starts last year, won Horse of the Year honors in January over Zenyatta. Yet this weekend Rachel faced her first defeat – after a six month layoff – at the New Orleans Ladies Stakes.  For anyone unfamiliar with thoroughbred racing, this level of competition between two ladies is unprecedented!

Before the upset, the two super horses were supposed to face off in a race for the ages at the $5 million Apple Blossom invitational on April 9 at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark.  According to the New York Times, Rachel’s co-owner Jess Jackson began hedging his bets a week ago when he said he would send his filly to Arkansas only if she were dead-solid perfect.  After this weekend’s race, trainer Steve Asmusssen said they would reassess their filly’s schedule.

All this drama just underlines the ironies of our times.  The economy may be still struggling, and it’s often hard to find good news,  but history is being made on the nation’s racetracks by two unlikely heroines.

What an unusual and exciting twist for Women’s History Month!

including hockey and alpine skiing.  After all, our neighbors to the frigid North seem to have these winter sports and lots more in their DNA.  I know – I grew up in Michigan with a Canadian-born father and spent my childhood rooting for Detroit’s  superstar hockey player Gordy Howe (the greatest of them all) and challenging cousins to contests on skates and sleds on both sides of the U.S-Canadian border, loving every moment of it.

Yet something remarkable has been happening – previously star-crossed U.S. Olympic teams are currently dominating this year’s events on the hills and on the ice over Canada and European powerhouses Germany, Austria and Russia.  And the mighty Canadian Hockey team was just taken down a huge notch by the scrappy U.S. team.

Sports writers have been making a lot of surmises, but one theme that seems to keep coming up is expectation versus preparation.  Key American skiers are coming back from a disappointing Olympics four years ago in Turin, Italy, where the U.S. may have come in second in overall medals at Torino 2006 to Germany, but many of the superstar skiers came up short.  Turns out they just got more determined this time, while the Canadians may have assumed it would be a rerun.

Business success, from entrepreneurs to global enterprises, often works on the same principles as sports.  An expectation of superiority often proceeds a fall – just look at the on-going drama in the auto industry.  Yet skiers Bode Miller and Lindsey Vonn are proving this year yet again that past disappointments in the Olympics can be turned around with dedication. On the other hand, the hometown advantage and crowd support won’t ensure success.  Practice and persistence, in the end, can win out. And hold on, we’re still awaiting the final act on this Olympics drama.

It promises to be exciting!

The New Orleans Saints had never made it to the Super Bowl and they seemed to offer little inspiration to a city that needed to learn how to win again. That all changed this year.  The Saints were the clear underdogs going into the Super Bowl against the legendary quarterback Peyton Manning and his Indianapolis Colts.  Despite a slow start, the Saints rallied to take the trophy 31-17.  In the interviews that followed, it became clear that the whole city of New Orleans took this win as their own – and declared the team’s victory as proof their town was back on its feet.  Based on the fact that this Super Bowl drew the largest audience of any televised event in U.S. history, there may be an argument that the nation embraced the Saints as well.

While the Saints, and New Orleans as well, seemed to have the odds stacked against them, it all turned around again in a moment.  Endless news stories about the generosity of the team members, and in particular the quarterback Drew Brees and coach Sean Payton, reflects the now-seamless identity of team and town.  The branding of this city and team is a great case study in creating the best possible kind of brand loyalty. Who Dat Nation can truly yell,  go, Saints!

For more information on branding, consider attending a special NAWBO-NYC panel – register at www.nawbonyc.org

Rachel Alexandra, who won the Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown, is getting rock star treatment at Saratoga this summer as her owners debate which Stakes Race she should be entered in next.  Early in August she cruised to her eighth straight win in the Haskell Monmouth Park in New Jersey, just a few ticks off the track record.

http://www.nj.com/sports/njsports/index.ssf/2009/08/rachel_alexandra_romps_in_hask.html

The other super filly is in California. Zenyatta, five years old, has never tasted defeat in eleven starts, including winning last year’s Breeders’ Cup Ladies Classic, but she has only run against fillies.  Zenyatta was a late bloomer, who did not begin racing until she was a three year old and last year was a strong contender for Horse of the Year. She was awarded the Eclipse Award as American Champion Older Female Horse for 2008.

However the rap is that Rachel’s owner Jess Jackson says he won’t run on the “plastic” tracks out west where California’s racing surfaces are synthetic and Zenyatta’s owner Jerry Moss  seems in no hurry to head east.  I wrote about horseracing and spent a year working for a few trainers at the New Jersey tracks in the late 70s, when it truly was a male dominated sport. I was thrilled to get to know one of the few  gutsy women trainers then and watch that era’s super filly, Ruffian.  It was the same time that women were just beginning to challenge the status quo in the workplace as well as in sports.

I’m excited to see we’re moving to a new level this year. Although, as one sports writer put it, it seems that not even the sport of kings can get a pair of queens into the same race!  Stay tuned, the story’s not over yet.

I remember the day Ruffian died.  She was a huge black filly with unbelievable spirit and beauty.  It was July 6, 1975 and she was locked in a duel with the Kentucky Derby winner, Foolish Pleasure, a small chestnut, in a highly publicized match race at Belmont Park.  Then as dark clouds gathered, Ruffian stumbled and went down.  The roaring fans in the grand stand gasped collectively. My friends and I were in shock and then the tears came.  The gallant filly had broken her leg. She was later euthanized.  It was as though the heavens weeped as a thunder shower moved in that day.

I missed last year’s tragedy where Eight Belles broke down after running second in the Kentucky Derby and was put down, but I think I would have cried again, even though two strong fillies have won the Derby since 1980 (and Regret won in 1915). The truth is that fillies race against colts all the time in Europe, but the classics are generally run on the turf there as opposed to on the dirt in America. I’m convinced that is what makes the competition more prone to injury.

This year a brave filly named Rachel Alexandra is flashing the charisma and spirit of Ruffian and her owners decided to test her in the Preakness against another small brown Derby winner, this one a longshot 50-1 gelding called Mine that Bird, a Canadian champ trained by a maverick cowboy out of New Mexico who didn’t get any respect at Churchill Downs until he blew the competition away.

I balked at the idea of watching two gutsy horses of opposite sexes matched up again in a classic race, especially when one of them is an underdog you want to love! It seemed unfair, I thought, to mess with a storybook ending for Mine that Bird when I originally read that the race was shaping up and that Jockey Calvin Borel was abandoning his mount on Mind That Bird to ride the filly.  But I wasn’t surprised that a lot of feminist sites loved the idea of the match!

Still, when Rachel Alexandra won that Saturday in May, I took a deep breath then gave thanks for all the ways the world has changed since Ruffian and for a cast that Hollywood could never dream of!  And stay tuned this racing season for more episodes with Rachel Alexandra, most recently racing and winning again with fillies in the Mother Goose at Belmont, and two “birds” still testing themselves, now that Summer Bird won the Belmont Stakes over his “brother” Mine that Bird (both were sired by Birdstone). Could it be a better reality series?