Hank Scorpio wrote:
Was Diamond Man half gray half brown? If so, I would have bet him big. Always have to bet the grays...
Yeah, he was a roan. His mother was Broadway Siren who was the best broodmare in Illinois. I was the first guy to realize that and I tried to buy her baby every year. I think I had three of them. I know one of the others was named Charley Choo Choo. We had high hopes for him but he died suddenly.
We bought Diamond Man at the Cottonwood sale in 1999. I think we paid around $50,000 for him. My partner and I figured we would each take a quarter and my partner's mom and dad would take the other half. But my partner's dad said, "Are you guys crazy giving that money for that clumsy looking thing? I don't want him." So we sold half to Shirley Levin, the old lady with the flowing white hair in the picture.
He trained down like a champ in Florida but we always had trouble keeping weight on him. He broke his maiden with Jim Curran driving. Curran was great once he got a horse on the front end. He could throttle down that speed like nobody else. The next week there was a stakes race and we used Dave Magee who was driving for us a lot at the time. For my money, Dave is the greatest driver ever, but his one weakness is that a real headstrong horse can get away on him once in awhile. Diamond Man got down to the three-quarters in about 1:23 which was really going for his second start as a two year old at that time. He just got beat on the wire. But that took a lot out of him and even though he won an elim at Springfield he was never quite the same the rest of the year.
In the winter of 2000-01 we had him down in Sorrento, Florida and he trained down good again. The weight was always a problem. He started the season slow and I began to think he maybe wasn't as good as we thought. He was still training real good though and seemed to be improving. One Saturday we put him in a minor stakes race at Balmoral and put Tony Morgan down to drive. He went off at 7-1 and I bet $200. Morgan uncorked him in the stretch and he won in 1:50.4. He was pretty much unbeatable the rest of the summer. We kicked the shit out of Rattle and Rock every week which was extra sweet because he was trained by that little prick Joe Anderson. Then in the Langley elimination, Diamond Man jumped it off for some reason. He had never taken a bad step in his life before that. He got back on stride and finished fourth but didn't make the final. He dominated the consolation but Rattle and Rock won the final and got Horse of the Year. That was some bullshit.
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