LaberFred » e who was there. But on the day, that was mixed with

Got to hand it to the New York Racing Association: Its spending it while its still got it. Half a million bucks for a Grade 3 race. A million for fillies on the grass. An extra $200,000 in couch change just to get a certain someone in the gate.Oh, to be tapped into casino cash.How long it lasts is anybodys guess. The state has turned its greedy eyes to the casino bounty, thereby threatening the recent purse boom that makes possible a day like Saturdays Stars and Stripes extravaganza, with its $1.25 million Belmont Derby and $1 million Belmont Oaks, along with four main-track stakes worth $1.55 million in total.How flush is New York racing? Flush enough to promise the connections of reigning filly queen Songbird a purse of $500,000 if she runs in the Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga on July 24. Without her, the race goes for $300,000. This is old-fashioned pay to play made possible by the cutthroat competition for marquee horses among casino tracks who answer only to themselves.Songbird had been leaning heavily toward the CCA Oaks anyway, which means the 13 fillies lining up for the Belmont Oaks were always safe from one of her casual drubbings. Catch a Glimpse, on a run of seven straight, will be the deserving favorite. But in the end, their toughest opponent will be the 1-1/4 miles.Many of the pedigrees scream for the distance. Noble Beauty is by Kittens Joy out of a Minecraft mare. Last Waltz mixes Danehill Dancer with the blood of Arc winner Trempolino. Time and Motion brings Pulpit and Kris S. to the party. And what do you do with the Coolmore fillies trained at Ballydoyle by Aidan OBrien? One is called Coolmore, the other Ballydoyle, which is kind of like naming your daughters Beyonce and Adele.Into this tall grass wades Keith Desormeaux with Decked Out, the winner of the Providencia Stakes at Santa Anita in April and a close fourth last time out in the Grade 2 Honeymoon. She most recently was seen in New York tackling the likes of Off the Tracks and Just Wicked in the Schuylerville and Adirondack stakes last summer at Saratoga.To ship across the country for a race like this, you have to be ultra-confident, Desormeaux said. I guess on the surface of her last couple of races, finishing fourth in both, you might want to say, What is he doing? But those races were exceptional. They were all closing so strong. Shes been training with such vigor, and she is so sound, that youve got to take the opportunity to run for a million dollars at the distance.Until this year, a filly like Decked Out probably would have stayed home in California to run in the American Oaks, a quality race that was double-teamed out of existence by the closure of Hollywood Park and the creation of the Belmont Oaks. The idea of a late-December running of the American Oaks has been floated by Santa Anita officials, but really, what would be the point for fillies about to turn 4?Decked Out is a chestnut by Street Boss, which gets her about seven furlongs, out of a mare by Met Mile winner You and I. It does not necessarily follow that in a career of 12 starts, Decked Outs two best races have come at 1-1/8 miles, the difference apparently supplied by a Desormeaux training style that puts a premium on a big finish. (See: Texas Red, Breeders Cup Juvenile; or Exaggerator, Santa Anita Derby and Preakness.)Pedigree is not the end all, Desormeaux said. I believe theres more mile-and-a-quarter horses out there than youd think, if they have the conformation and can adapt to the training. But with, what, 60 to 70 percent of our races being sprints, why would you apply yourself as a trainer to getting a mile and a quarter?Decked Out comes from last, which is where Kent Desormeaux, the trainers brother, will have the filly early in the Belmont Oaks. Her backers have learned not to panic but still be prepared to take the worst of any traffic that might come her way. She was beaten just a half-length in the Honeymoon with a brief check on the far turn and an altered course in mid-stretch.Kents had a lot of input on the decision of how she runs, Keith Desormeaux said, and he does not think a mile and a quarter will be a problem. So, here we go.Compared to their monopoly of the pre-Belmont media scene, the Desormeaux brothers will be just part of the crowd on Saturday. Theyll warm up earlier on the card in the $500,000 Dwyer Stakes with Swipe, the Birdstone colt best known for finishing second in four straight stakes to Nyquist before handing the baton to stablemate Exaggerator. Swipes 3-year-old season has gone in fits and starts, but with a solid six-furlong sprint under his girth at Belmont, the one mile of the Dwyer seems right up his alley.As for Exaggerator, whose flop in the Belmont still resonates, Keith Desormeaux has lost no faith.Trainers are not one to dwell on the past, I dont think, Desormeaux said. Exaggerators doing great. Hes recovered, and hes wanting to do more. Hell have his first breeze back on Saturday morning in preparation for the Jim Dandy at Saratoga. 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It is a cliché dragged out by fans and pundits regularly when discussions take place around which teams are better than others. Heading into the 2016 Rio Olympics, you wrote about the depression Allison Schmitt experienced after the 2012 London Games, and what she has done to seek help and eventually share her story. How do you approach the reporting for such an intensely personal and challenging subject like an athletes mental health??Ive wanted to write about post-Olympic depression for a long time. Athletes reference it a lot, and there are stories about it around every Games, but I found most of those pieces dealt in generalities and were very predictable. The suicides of Olympic athletes Ive covered have made me heartsick. I wanted to drill deep into one athletes story in a way that could touch others.?I didnt know much about Allison except that shed won a bunch of medals at London 2012 and trained with Michael Phelps. Id been around her only in large group situations where she always seemed guarded. I was very surprised at the content of the initial interviews she did with the Associated Press and The Baltimore Sun in the spring-summer of 2015, after her cousins suicide. I covered the Pan American Games in Toronto that July and watched her demeanor on the pool deck. She seemed more open.?Sometimes I go on pure intuition when I approach someone to be a central figure in a story, and this was one of those times. I spoke to Allison briefly at Pan Ams, and made her agency, Octagon, aware of what I wanted to do. Then I arranged a casual meeting alone with her at USA Swimmings annual awards dinner in November (where she received an award for her advocacy). We spent about 15 or 20 minutes together, and I was very clear about what I had in mind:?I wanted to go beyond where she had gone in other interviews and would ask her to revisit some painful times in detail. I also told her Id like to see her in a couple of different environments over the next few months, and talked about timing for posting the story. I think that transparency helped me build trust with Allison. She was fully on board from the start.?I also was able to introduce myself to Allisons father, Ralph, and her aunt, Amy Bocian, at that dinner. Having the familys confidence and commitment was crucial.?I spent time with Ralph and Gail Schmitt and their oldest daughter Kirsten at home in Michigan in February 2016. On that same visit, Allison made an appearance before a large gathering of high school athletes. Her words that day were raw and moving.?Allison and I sat down one-on-one in Arizona (her training base) in mid-April. It was as intense an interview as Ive ever done, but we were both ready. She went straight to some of the most difficult parts of her journey. Shortly afterward, I spent an evening with Amy and Tim Bocian at their home in the Pittsburgh area. I re-interviewed Amy and Allison at the Olympic trials in Omaha. I cant say enough about the courage of everyone concerned to delve into some very rough topics.?The key to this reporting process -- a year from start to finish -- was that I had time to build slowly and not just start slinging intimate questions at people??You bring such empathy to your feature writing, and youre also adept at crafting sharp analysis off the news. How do you strike the balance between those impulses??Im a very restless writer and one of the ways I keep myself happy is by roving between analysis, feature work and investigative reporting. They do overlap. Every great feature requires some basic investigative skills. Every great investigation requires the feature-y skill of getting people to open up. Both require good analysis, and good analysis requires good reporting. The biggest adaptation for me has been writing strong opinion on individuals and entities I cover. I was brought up old-school in journalism and conditioned not to do that because it can burn bridges. On the other hand, Im at a point in my career where I feel as if I have a lot to offer in the way of cumulative observation.?You wrote about how some Olympians have had to wait for their medals while performance-enhancing drug cases are resolved. Where did that story begin and how did you see it unfold??I was searching for an original way to approach the impact of doping and the dysfunction in the current anti-doping bureaucracy. An Olympic medal is going to be in the first line of an athletes resume and the first line of their obituary. For most of them, a medal, depending on the color of that medal, can have a significant economic impact. Yet the quasi-legal system often allows re-allocation of medals to get held up in the pipeline for years even when theres a doping bust at tthe competition.dddddddddddd Re-testing is a great deterrent on paper, and it absolutely should be done, but theres no transparency about the way its done -- which sports are tested, which nations, which athletes, when and why. By the time the rightful medalist gets upgraded, financial and emotional benefits have evaporated, the athlete who cheated has reaped the spoils, and theres no mechanism for compensation. Everyone keys on the podium ceremony. I knew these athletes stories would be accessible both to people who follow doping issues closely and people who dont.?The foundation of the story had to be data-driven, and there was no accurate information clearinghouse or list of medals that had been stripped. I envisioned a user-friendly graphic that would give people, in one glance, an idea of how many athletes had been denied their moment. Investigations editor Chris Buckle worked with our research staff to make that happen. We started months before the piece ran, and it was incredibly labor-intensive. We picked the year 2000 as a starting point because that roughly corresponds with the founding of the World Anti-Doping Agency and the current system of anti-doping jurisprudence.?I knew there were some strong personal stories out there that had visual storytelling potential as well, and that led to collaboration with Outside the Lines and my frequent reporting partner T.J. Quinn. He and producer Andy Lockett focused on two athletes -- Canadian cross-country skier Beckie Scott and American shot-putter Adam Nelson -- and I broadened the lens to others in my digital piece. It was important to me to include non-U.S. athletes in the story. I didnt want it to have a nationalistic tone, because there are plenty of American athletes who have been caught doping, sometimes years after the fact.?I was happy with the piece. Unfortunately, I dont see a solution to this issue coming any time soon.?You have covered almost every sport and event around the world. What was the most challenging and why??They all have their own challenges. The Olympics are exhausting, and the last two -- in Sochi and Rio -- had some arduous aspects, and the interview mixed zone is not an ideal workspace, but we get to sleep in the same bed every night. World Cups (and World Cup qualifiers) feature interesting travel and stadium situations. I once covered a qualifier in Jamaica where we were seated at a table on the track around the pitch with no electricity or monitors, and we would caucus after every shot or important sequence to decide what had happened. Fortunately it was a day game and we could go back to the hotel to write. Ive covered the Tour de France 12 times - eight of those start to finish and four of them solo -- and nothing is as logistically difficult as driving yourself around a three-week bike race. Endurance sports as a whole are an interesting category because you cannot see everything that happens in a marathon or a triathlon or a bike race or a 10-kilometer open water swim, and you have to stitch together a lot of the narrative from various interviews afterwards. Ive always liked that. No matter what the working conditions are, if you have strong relationships going in from your pre-reporting, and decent access, you can do your job.?How did covering the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings affect you??I was locked down in a hotel near the finish line for several hours and of course felt the same anxiety, horror and sorrow as anyone who was there. But on the day, that was mixed with my intense frustration that I couldnt get out and report from the street. I had to breathe, compose myself, think about what I COULD do from where I was and stay away from speculating on things I?couldnt see,?which is a pretty important lesson for any reporter. That initial experience drove me to find other ways to tell meaningful marathon-related stories for days, weeks, months and years afterwards. It also reconnected me with family in the area who were at the race and personally affected.?I spent a lot of time in Boston earlier in my life. I still love the city and cherish my memories, but its a place of reflection for me now in a way that it was not before. When I go back, I make a point of retracing my steps from race day and thinking about loss, generosity, heroism, achievement and gratitude.?Plus-1: ?The best advice I ever got was _____________.?Show me, dont tell me. I think of it nearly every time I write a longform piece. ' ' '