Frust » Friday and the crowd at Saratoga stands in ovation, Zeny

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- As expected, NASCARs four championship rivals were cordial, candid and comical.No one tried to swing a chair, or even take a verbal jab.UFC, this isnt.Sorry were letting you down, six-time champion Jimmie Johnson quipped Thursday.The winner-take-all championship race Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway should be creating a semblance of tension between four rival drivers. But this quartet went bike riding together in one of their many stops on a seemingly sunshine-and-roses media tour. A week after Conor McGregor nearly threw a chair at Eddie Alvarez in a UFC pre-fight hype session, NASCARs ferocious four let trash-talking take a backseat on an easy afternoon full of heaping accolades for each other.NASCAR had the four pull up a chair on the stage during a cozy championship introduction Thursday -- you know, just like a late night talk show -- and the drivers delivered the yuks. They joked among each other, Kyle Busch repeatedly wise-cracked under his mic to teammate Carl Edwards and everybody grinned like it was Christmas morning.Come Sunday, theyll have to psychologically flip a switch and turn against each other. Even Busch and Edwards, teammates in a proud Toyota effort for Joe Gibbs who have shared everything in an open-book organization, must now toss aside professional courtesy to be the last man standing on the championship stage.But why do they have to be so chummy?You know that youre not going to beat up on a guy in a media session and make his car go any slower, said Busch, the reigning champion. To be honest with you, youre probably going to make (the car) go faster. Youre going to make him want it more. Theres no sense is doing any of that. Thats why with UFC fighters, they egg each other on, youre just going to get hit harder.This group is void of any conflict, and there are plenty of other storylines. Johnson is trying to tie Hall of Famers Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt with a record seventh title. Busch is trying to repeat, and beat his teammate. Logano wants a title to go with the IndyCar championship Team Penske already won this year in its 50th season of racing. And Edwards? Hes finally got another shot after losing the 2011 title on a tie-breaker.Theres a Chevrolet, a Ford and a pair of Toyotas. The group is represented by Roger Penske, Rick Hendrick and Gibbs, three of the heaviest hitters in auto racing.Yet with all that on the line, this group is like four buddies putting on a one-act play. Theyve been asked and answered the same questions so many times this week, they can almost finish each others sentences. Theyve got oft-told anecdotes for the repeated topics, everything is good-natured.Part of it is because its a genuinely likable group of drivers. Even Busch, so surly so many times, is at heart a good person.Theres really nothing bad to say to one another.Jimmie is one of those guys you want to hate but you cant because hes too nice, Logano said.On race day, it becomes driver vs. driver, the brutal length of the NASCAR schedule has turned all of the racers into a traveling community. They spend up to four nights a week inches apart in motorhomes, run into each other in the infield playgrounds and gyms.Bad blood doesnt boil very long in these parts.We do have a rapport, and we also do learn how to socialize outside of the car and then how to flip the switch, Johnson said. Its just something that I guess we grow up dealing with from a young age racing, however we did it as youngsters up until now. A fighter is somebody, they might see that guy one or twice in that moment, and oh, by the way, in the UFC they try to kill each other anyway, so its all about killing the guy.Logano doesnt think this cordial attitude is any different than any other sport. The drivers do their jobs when the green flag falls, and they co-exist when they climb from their cars.You watch a football game, after the game theyre all shaking each others hands after they just knocked the heck out of each other, Logano said. That happens. You even watch a hockey game, afterward they all shake hands, whether they want to or not. Its enforced.But I do think theres obviously a switch that everyone, maybe when they put their helmet on, things change. Were all out there as competitors, but right now were outside the car, we also get along, right? 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The medical staff initially thought hed torn the ligament, and the test a day later in Cincinnati confirmed it. Zenyatta was born on April 1 -- no kidding -- and she made her racing debut on Thanksgiving. Youre welcome.After such delightful coincidences of the calendar, anything was possible. So, why not 19 straight wins and nearly a 20th, three championship seasons and Horse of the Year, international fame and adoration, and a place on the Hall of Fame wall in Saratoga Springs in her first year of eligibility?Those of us lucky enough to witness the emergence of Zenyatta as a filly of consequence attach our memories to special moments. For this reporter, Zenyatta was always a necessary stop, if only to stand at her stall and wonder aloud how it was possible for anything so big to be so fast and so sweet.Though counterintuitive in Americas culture of speed, Zenyatta was a racehorse who led from behind. She turned races upside down, requiring race-callers to account for her every stride at the back of the pack as if that is where the action was truly unfolding, because it was.Her athleticism in full flight was a sight to behold. Here is Zenyatta skipping lightly over the heels of stablemate Life Is Sweet when Garrett Gomez tried to sucker Mike Smith to the rail on the backstretch of the 2009 Milady Handicap. Here is Zenyatta looking right and then diving left to hit a narrow hole in the 2010 Santa Margarita Handicap. Here is Zenyatta knifing between horses on the turn of the 2009 Breeders Cup Classic before picking her seam and running down Gio Ponti.It was inside the sixteenth pole, said Ramon Dominguez, who rode Gio Ponti that day and will be inducted on Friday as well. Thats when I heard the commotion from the public. I looked over and saw her and thought, Okay. There was nothing I could do.Zenyatta was 5 for 5 when she had her first tough day in the 2008 Vanity Handicap, her first race at nine furlongs. She washed out, fussed going to the post, and pulled herself up once she hit the lead to beat Tough Tizs Sis by only half a length.You want them to be challenged, said her trainer, John Shirreffs, in the wake of that race. You dont want them to have it easy all the time, especially not when theyll be facing much tougher opposition as you go along.Zenyattas opposition often was maligned as moderate, a function, no doubt, of the ease with which she devoured most of her fields in hand. Let the record show, however, that her beaten opponents included champion Gio Ponti, champion Summer Bird, champion Ginger Punch, Breeders Cup winner Life Is Sweet, Santa Anita Handicap winner Einstein, and the major stakes winners Switch, Hystericalady, Music Note, Cocoa Beach, St Trinians, and stablemate Zardana, who upset Rachel Alexandra in New Orleans, the same Rachel Alexandra being inducted alongside Zenyatta.The Hall of Fame spotlight will be on Zenyattas owners, Ann and Jerry Moss, as well as Shirreffs and his wife, Dottie. And, of course, Mike Smith, who rode Zenyattta with the confidence of a man running for a train he knew hed always catch.ddddddddddddShes the best thing that ever happened to me, thats for sure, Smith said.The sentiment is echoed, especially by Jerry Moss, who bought the daughter of Street Cry as a yearling for $60,000.She was big and beautiful, Moss said. She just had this skin rash. We were prepared to go much higher for her, and when the hammer stopped, I just wanted to make sure it was us. Kiss a frog, see what happens.Call it kismet. Call it a fairy tale. Give it whatever name you like.I take no credit other than to admit I am a very lucky man, Moss said. If some of my luck seems to have gotten into the equine part of my life, so be it. Ill accept the credit for being lucky.Moss would be the first to spread the credit around. The list of people who deserve praise for Zenyattas care and well-being also includes Mario Espinoza, Frank Leal, Felipe Rivera, Michelle Jensen, Freddy Miller, and Steve Willard. If their names are not on her Hall of Fame plaque, they should be.I also have to attribute a lot of her success to David Flores, Shirreffs once said, referring to Zenyattas jockey through her first three starts, before Smith took over. He was so patient with her in those earlier races. She would break slow, and he did nothing to rush her or ask her to do anything she wasnt ready to do. She won anyway, but the experiences were positive and helped her a lot.Zenyattas narrow loss in her final start to Blame in the 2010 Breeders Cup Classic proved that she was, at last, human after all. The race still stings, perfection being so very close, but nothing is held against her.To have a horse of this nature, this stature, is a dream come true, Moss said upon her retirement. I just love her. I just hope shes happy and healthy and goes on to be all shes suppose to be.As her plaque is presented on Friday and the crowd at Saratoga stands in ovation, Zenyatta will be lolling about in her 15-acre pasture at Lanes End Farm in Kentucky, probably finding some shade. She is in foal to Medaglia dOro, a Travers and Whitney winner, after having lost her fourth and most recent foal last April to postpartum complications.They certainly mourn the loss of a foal, said Todd Claunch, Lanes End assistant manager. But you could tell, when we brought her back and put her in her paddock, she put her head up, looked around, and said, Im home now. You could see the release in her eye.When she was a maiden mare, Id never seen such a muscular horse, Claunch added. She was like a gladiator. She doesnt exercise herself as much now, but shes still in great shape.Its really nice having her here at the farm. But watching her train and race, that must have been really spectacular.Yes, it really was. ' ' '