A half dozen years ago, Sports Illustrated
and ESPN both caught no small amount of crap over their respective
“athletes of the century” retrospectives, wherein Secretariat, a horse,
was mentioned alongside sprinters, boxers and ballers like Jesse Owens,
Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson.
It’s an issue of which I’m
able to see both sides: Secretariat was, after all, a dominant presence
in his field, pulling in over $1.3 million in winnings and setting new
track records at the Triple Crown venues, while also gracing the cover
of Time. (Even today, more than 15 years after his death, he
still has his own Web site, for God’s sake!) On the other hand, he was
a friggin’ horse, people! How cognizant was he of his own
training regimen? Taking this all a step further, if horses aren’t
athletes — or even if they are — what does this make the little people
that train for years to ride them?
One interesting answer comes in the form of Laffit: All About Winning.
Released right in the middle of the 2006 Triple Crown — which includes
the already-run Kentucky Derby, May 20’s Preakness and June 10’s
Belmont Stakes — the film chronicles the career of Hall of Fame jockey
Laffit Pincay, Jr., who posted an astonishing 9,530 career wins,
including three Belmont Stakes and a Kentucky Derby title. Directed by
Jim Wilson and narrated by Kevin Costner, the film is a lean,
streamlined examination of one of the sport’s diminutive giants, chock
full of interviews with peers, trainers, owners, sportswriters and
celebrities.
Laffit: All About Winning starts by documenting its accented
subject’s humble beginnings in Panama, and his incredible track record
at such great venues as Churchill Downs, Del Mar, Hollywood Park and
Santa Anita. The latter, in fact, is where Laffit famously won seven
races in a single day on March 14, 1987. From fellow jockey Luis
Jauregui and uber-fan Dan Carlton to celeb admirers like Burt Bacharach
and Dick Van Patten, all the talking heads here cumulatively do a good
job of explaining the inherent difficulties in negotiating so many
different horses to wins in races of different lengths. The movie jumps
around a good bit, but other unforgettable moments include Laffit’s
duel with fellow legend Bill Shoemaker, an early tragic fall that might
have cut short his career, a glorious Kentucky Derby comeback and of
course his induction into the Hall of Fame.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Laffit: All About Winning is
presented in full screen, and includes both English and Spanish audio
tracks. Supplemental extras include only a photo gallery of 20 random
images, but the program itself is robust enough to generally satisfy
more casual viewers. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)