'That's a good-movin' sucker right there.'
And then the next one you say: 'I can't be-
lieve I ever bought that piece of garbage, I
must have lost my mind that day'."
He pauses, permits himself one of those
deep, self-deprecating chuckles. "Because
there will be great disappointments," he
adds. "The gorgeous horse that's cost some-
one a lot of money, bought to go racing.
And then something you've never heard of
comes along and moves like a class act. The
whole way it's the mental thing, it's how
the babies handle it. And usually the writ-
ing's on the wall early. We do a lot of fig-
ure-of-eights and the ones that are chicken,
that duck out and all that, most of them are
no good at the end of the day."
And the surprises are perennial, for bet-
ter or worse. Brennan often goes back to
his old catalogue notes to remind himself
of his fallibility. "We've all this stuff going
on in science, with DNA tests and all, but
you'll never manipulate this game—or the
horse," he says with enthusiasm. "And that's
what's fun about it. That's what keeps you
going, looking at that next group of young
ones, and trying to develop them. Because
there's so much of their spirit you can't
measure, with any kind of instrument."
