No, you can't; and that's why this whole
process is played out, year after year, all
round this neighbourhood: a couple of hun-
dred here with Woods, and as many down
the road with Niall Brennan. At one time,
both were making their way from barns
at nearby Classic Mile Park. Ciaran Dunne
was there, too, and he has ridden the same
wave. They're not all Irish, of course. Nick
de Meric was born in England, for one
thing. But the variety of American horse-
men also developing young thoroughbreds
in Marion County can be spanned by the
diverse origins of J.J. Pletcher, veteran of
the Texas Quarter Horse circuit prepping
for his record-breaking son Todd, and Jona-
than Thomas at Bridlewood, raised on Paul
Mellon's Rokeby Farm in Virginia.
Members of this community will, be-
tween them, often turn out to have super-
vised the education of maybe half the field
in any given Kentucky Derby or Breeders'
Cup race. Together they sow a crop that
responds, no less than the citrus grove, to
the benign Florida winter; teaching young
horses to extend their limbs like the open-
ing of blossom.
The concentration of so many specialist
