03 May 2006
 
The Meadow

Races run rain or shine - No refunds. That is the policy of the Gold Cup, has been for years.
 
Of course, when they started back in 1922 it would not have occurred to anyone participating in the race to worry about rain. The servants would have held the umbrellas, and only the jockeys and the horses would have gotten wet.
 
I listened intently to the weather forecasts all week. There was plenty of opportunity for it, hurtling in the Hubrismobile across Northern Virginia like a pinball, District to Arlington to Fairfax and almost to Loudoun County. Two of the mornings I had to go most of the way to Great Meadow before swerving off I-66. There I entered one of the anonymous office complexes clustered near Dulles airport and the blue towers of the National Reconnaissance Office. There were some painfully earnest meetings to attend about something or other, I forget what.
 
Apparently, we did well enough with the guys from Corporate that we will not be summoned back for six months. In this town and with this economy, that is a blessing. Better, the forecast is for partly cloudy skies (no sunburn) and temperatures in the low eighties.
 
Great Meadow is just another dozen miles to the west, past Chapman’s Mill in Thoroughfare Gap. Loyalists have stabilized the seven-story stone shell of the mill, which burned ten years ago. The Gap marks the boundary between the urban sprawl of Northern Virginia that has overrun the battlefields at Chantilly and Manassas. Beyond it there is green and rolling hills and something like tranquility.
 
This side of the hill is washed with the madness of the developing spree that pushed the McMansions and town-houses out into the pastures. Now the owners are shackled in steep mortgages the falling prices will not let them escape, and pumping expensive gas to get them back and forth to where the money is.
 
The Gap is an important geographic feature. General James Ricketts’s Union division was flanked by the Confederates there in 1862, and his retreat enabled Longstreet’s wing of the Army of Northern Virginia to flow through and join Stonewall Jackson to defeat brash Union commander John Pope. Some of the Union troops did not stop running until they got to the Arlington Line.
 
It is also a philosophical barrier as profound as cresting the top of the Ko’olau range on the island of O’ahu- on one side is the grit of Honolulu, and on the other is the magic of the North Shore.
 
I will be going the other way by bus this morning, although I am not much of a bus person normally. I normally spew my hydro-carbons from the safety and comfort of my own car. However, since the Official Spirits of the 2008 Gold Cup are Woodford Reserve Bourbon, Finlandia Vodka and Jack Daniels, I believe that discretion is the better part of valor.
 
There will be fifty thousand people out at Great Meadow, unless the economic downturn dampens attendance. I rather think that the reverse will be true, and the day will feature some old-fashioned eat drink and be merriment. Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater Security, will thumb his nose at his critics and boldly sponsor a corporate parachute drop of his private army.
 
Then the races will begin.
 
Steeplechasing in Virginia has been a way of life since Colonial times when the horse was transportation, farm tractor and instrument of war. The Gold Cup, in one manifestation or another, has been run since 1922. They missed a couple years due to Mr. Hitler, and have raced in a variety of locations out in the Shenandoah Valley. The Cup has been run at Great Meadow since 1985, when development and encroachment made the former venue in Warrenton untenable.
 
The Cup was in danger. It took a visionary to pull off it’s salvation.
 
In 1982, news executive and philanthropist Nick Arundel found a 500-acre site on an abandoned farm about 10 miles north of the old Broadview course near The Plains.  He is a one of kind guy, a man’s man and no bullshit. He is a Harvard man with two Purple Hearts from his service in Korea with the Marine Corps and paramilitary association with the Agency in Vietnam. That may account for the Blackwater presence, but Nick was a real journalist as well as officer and Spook. He covered Washington as a correspondent for CBS and had the White House beat for UPI.
 
He bought the Meadow in the nick of time- no pun- since it was scheduled to become a huge new housing development. It has been success for a number of activities, including polo. The Cup was recognized internationally 1993, when the Royal Jockey Club determined that winners of the race would automatically qualify as starters in the famed Grand National at Aintree in England.
 
Not that the revelers at the Meadow will care much by post time. But that is one of the reasons it is all such fun.
 
This is the social event that marks the beginning of Spring. This is really a fashion show, and the horses and riders thundering across the turf as just the backdrop. It is a festival of fashion and presence, and though my looks have begun to dissolve, there is no harm in being there to look at the outlandish hats, and the pretty sundresses and up thrust bosoms.
 
I am anchoring my afternoon at University Row, though I intend to cruise the course and look at both the two and four legged fauna. By afternoon, most of the boys and girls will be tipsy, if not outright drunk. I may drift off to cruise the corporate tents, or see if I can bluff my way onto Owner’s Hill.
 
My real equestrian friends were appalled by the whole thing when I introduced them to Great Meadow. They think this is supposed to be about horses, but it is really about so much more.
 
There is plenty of misery in the world, and if well-dressed people in preposterous hats chose not to wallow in it, so what?
 
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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