This guy was with the Lexington Herald-Leader before he moved on...Chuck Culpepper



War Emblem's former owner at peace with self

05/08/02


I magine you owned a horse. Imagine you sold the horse. Imagine the horse won the Kentucky Derby three weeks after you sold the horse.


Would you:

a.) Begin systematically destroying every piece of furniture in your house until the entire place roughly resembled the average 14-year-old's bedroom when your fury at last had dissipated;

b.) Show up in jail because the authorities found you about two miles from your house running and screaming and foaming at the mouth and arrested you for indecent exposure;

c.) Appear atop a bridge with a pen and paper and some masking tape, writing a farewell note;

d.) Weep?

No, no, no, and no. We people who are not horse people don't comprehend those people who are horse people, and those who are horse people reside in a separate peace, an awareness deep in the bones that always seems to whisper perpetually to them: It's a game of chance.

Times about a thousand.

They know they're forever at the mercy of chance, which helps explain why they're humble souls, most of them.

"I was very happy to see the horse win it," Russell Reineman said by telephone from suburban Chicago. "I still own a piece of him. Still own a lot of his family. When you sell a horse to somebody, you wish them good success. At least I always have."

Reineman, 84, owned a horse. He sold nine-tenths of the horse for a much-reported $900,000. The horse won the Kentucky Derby three weeks later.

All his furniture remains intact.

You could find him at work Tuesday at Crown Steel, which he founded in 1938. At no time recently had he posted bail.

Watching the Derby with three friends at his Illinois home, Reineman began by feeling relieved that no rival challenged the front-running War Emblem going to the first turn. How often do 17 frisky rivals just leave you up there?

Next, he did what people oddly do in front of their TV sets: He tried to make the horse run faster with a voice the horse couldn't hear.

Finally, when War Emblem was in first at the top of the stretch, Reineman smiled hugely. He knew it was done.

Then, he and his three friends spontaneously applauded, and they stood, and they all shook hands. Nobody asked directions to the nearest bridge, and if anybody shed tears, joy caused them.

Y et another of horse racing's trippy storylines goes that Reineman had tried to sell the colt once before, in September 2000, but his trainer bought it back for him for $20,000. The rambunctious War Emblem's first race, Reineman says, included a spill of the jockey and a beeline to the barn.

When he drilled the others at the Illinois Derby on April 6, it was a swell thing for a Chicago native, but it didn't translate into English as "Kentucky Derby." Reineman quickly told reporters he respected the Kentucky Derby so much, he wouldn't enter a horse who might not belong there. Besides, front-runners like War Emblem tend to tire and fade come First Saturday in May.

Trainer Frank Springer aimed War Emblem for the shorter, less congested Preakness of May 18.

Then the famous trainer Bob Baffert showed up. He has won the Kentucky Derby twice and almost thrice -- lost by a nose once; that chance thing again -- so you can understand his angst that all his Derby hopefuls had gone hopeless. His client, the equally Derby-hungry Prince Ahmed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, wanted to purchase War Emblem.

Three weeks later, bizarrely, War Emblem led wire-to-wire for handlers he barely knew. And Reineman had done good business, for he did get one-tenth of the purse.

And he had comprehended fully the fickle beast chance, for he had bought his first thoroughbred some 52 years ago.

And he said, "I went to bed very happy, very peaceful, and very thrilled about the whole thing. About 10 o'clock."