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Sunday, October 01, 2000

It's an unabashed made-for-media event, but worthy of attention anyway:

The world's all-time money-winning woman thoroughbred jockey is teaming with the all-time money-winning harness horse, also a female, to try for a world record in an event in which neither has competed.

Julie Krone is coming out of retirement to ride just-retired trotter Moni Maker in an event called monte -- racing trotters under saddle instead of with a cart. The time trial will be between races at The Red Mile in Lexington, Ky., at 3 p.m. Friday.

Trotting under saddle was a popular sport in the United States in the mid-19th century. Although such races are rare in this country nowadays, they are still quite common in France.

The record Krone and Moni Maker are trying to beat is a mile in 1 minute, 582/5 seconds, set by Brooke Nickells on Preferential in 1994. Before that, the record had stood more than 50 years: the great Greyhound, ridden by the late France Dodge Johnson, did a mile in 2:01 at The Red Mile in 1940.

Moni Maker's owners are reasonably confident the 7-year-old mare and Krone, 38, can get the mark. The two got together to practice in New Jersey Sept. 22 week and did a training mile in 2:03. The last half-mile, however, was an eye-popping :57 4/5. Later, Krone had said because the gait felt so different and she was so unfamiliar with the horse that she had been afraid to push too hard.

In other words, she left a couple higher gears untouched.

Co-owner Geoffrey Stein got the report from her harness trainer Jimmy Takter, the man who broke Moni Maker to the saddle after her career-ending victory in the $500,000 Trot Mondial in Montreal Sept. 9.

"He was just in awe; he said she was amazing," Stein said in a telephone interview. "She'll adapt to anything. He said she could probably go [1:54] in this battle."

As in all standardbred time trials, there will be two horses prompting her pace. Takter and Wally Hennessey, her regular driver, will drive two galloping thoroughbreds hitched to sulkies on either side of her. It sounds like a fun spectacle.

Stein said the seed for trying Moni Maker at monte was planted a couple years ago when the mare was racing in France. The French driver who held the reins that day told Stein "he thought she would be the perfect monte horse."

But, Stein said, "there was too much at stake for us to risk it then."

The idea resurfaced at the end of a career in which Moni Maker won 67 races in seven countries and at 28 different tracks. Her career earnings of $5,589,256 are not just the highest by any standardbred but by a female of any breed.

Stein, who is in management Tattersalls, the sales company that runs The Red Mile, said he and his partners were always aware that Greyhound had made his final career appearance in a monte time trial, and they thought it was appropriate Moni Maker do the same before going off to the breeding shed.

They wanted a woman rider because the record has been held consecutively by women since 1940. Ellen Harvey, director of Harness Racing Communications, suggested Krone, who retired a year ago and was the first female inducted into the Thoroughbred Hall of Fame last August. Krone currently is an analyst for the TVG racing network, but she remains active with horses. She rides her own hunter jumper and also competes in team penning.

Stein loved the idea. "Having Julie Krone takes this from a harness event to a national event," he said. "There's been a lot of national interest."

Takter, who did not return a phone call, and Hennessey were natural selections to drive the prompting horses. The only person who has spent more time with her over the past six years is her caretaker.

Stein said they haven't decided to whom they will breed Moni Maker, but that doesn't mean that retirement isn't final. Neither, he said, would they be tempted to take her to France for regular monte events.

"I think I just want to get the record," Stein said. "I don't want to put her on a plane to Europe again."

After six years of racing and a monte time trial, she will have done enough.

Art that sings

Tony Bennett doesn't just sing; he's well-regarded as an artist, too. In a savvy marketing move, Churchill Downs has contracted the jazz stylist to do the artwork for the 2001 Art of the Kentucky Derby posters and program covers.