The Racers Gaius Appuleius Diocles Grabs Hold of His Leather Helmet
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The Racers Gaius Appuleius Diocles grabs hold of his leather helmet, adjusts his grip on the reins and does not die. The charioteer beside him quickly becomes the charioteer behind him. Sixteen hooves crush the fallen man. The wheels of his writhing vehicle follow for good effect. 150,000 spectators cry triumphantly. An emperor grins. Workers rush onto the infield and scrape the torn body off the sandy track. Gaius Appuleius Diocles continues on with his lap. He is a chariot racer, and a rare one. He is 40 years old and still alive. He is also the richest athlete to have ever lived. *** Calvin Borel’s helmet is sturdier, aided by an extra two millennia of technological progress. The padded shell of impact-resistant resin nonetheless falls off as he bends down to tie his shoes. He returns it to his shaved head and clumsily secures the straps. 150,000 spectators observe the feat on a Jumbotron. A queen smiles. He mounts his ride and gives the salivating horse a soft kick. A news reporter rides up on a training horse beside him. Calvin Borel is too busy whispering to his own horse to notice. He is a thoroughbred racer, and a loud one. He is 40 years old and oblivious to death. He will never be as rich as Gaius Appuleius Diocles, but he is about to become the modern reincarnation. *** The Circus Maximus held its first race in 326 BCE. Built entirely of wood, a quarter of Rome’s population can witness the activities within. On busy days, citizens take advantage of the landscaping -- squeezed between two steep hills, 250,000 people can find a workable vantage point. Peddlers and prostitutes line the outside gates. Bookies lurk in all corners. Popular events include gladiator fights and the disemboweling of slaves. They are little more than warm-up acts. The main show takes place over a track 621 meters long and 150 meters wide covered in a mixture of dirt and sand. The spina, a raised median, splits the track in two. At each end stands an obelisk, creating a 920-meter oval around which charioteers must run. The turns are perilously sharp. The ground around each obelisk is continually stained with blood. Diocles steadies his four horses and secures his footing on the chariot. The wooden contraption cowers in comparison to its military counterpart. Small, lightweight and rickety, the chariot offers the great racer all of a six-inch axel to balance on. He emerges from the turn unscathed and enters into a straightaway. A few seconds of relative peace. He completes his first lap. There are six more to go. *** Churchill Downs opened in 1875 as a replacement for two failed racing ventures in Louisville, Kentucky. Built on 80 acres of grassy flatland out on loan to the grandson of explorer William Clark, its defining characteristic was not added until 1895: two twin spires shooting up out of the clubhouse and overlooking the dirt and turf tracks. Seating accommodates 50,000; the track infield, which doubles as a concert venue, can hold another 100,000. In its inaugural year, a race was put on to mirror the gaudiness of tracks across the Atlantic. It was billed as Kentucky’s Derby. Borel leads his horse around the paddock in preparation for the 133rd installation. The two saunter around the small warm-up circle in tandem, lost in two different worlds. The horse admires the ground upon which it is about to trod and carefully plants a hoof, oblivious to the thousand camera flashes creating a stop-motion movie around him. The man atop him smiles sheepishly, equally unaware of his role as actor. He is busy looking up at a vaguely cloudy sky. He neglects to mention to the camera crew and millions of TV viewers what shapes his gaze discerns. *** It is the year 144 and Diocles races for the red team. His tunic is dyed a bright scarlet, somehow livelier than blood. He was not always a member of the red faction; his career began at age 18 with the whites. Six years later, he switched over to the greens for a brief three-year stint before settling with the reds. The only stable Diocles never touches is the blues’. The Circus Maximus track can fit twelve chariots with four horses apiece. Each stable sends out three charioteers, all prepared with a choreographed strategy. Teammates collude to crash opponents into the obelisks, a legal and often lethal action. Diocles, a veritable veteran in a sport where most are either retired or dead by age 30, has earned himself the role of team leader. Diocles is not a native of Rome. He hails from the Roman province of Lusitania, an area encompassing modern-day Portugal and parts of Spain. Chariot racing has made him a superstar. Sculptors craft statues in his likeness. Graffiti artists paint his face on city walls. Inscriptions depict him with a smooth, angular face, broad, heroic shoulders and a quietly gallant stare. He used to be a slave. Successfully driving a chariot requires three fundamental traits: a charioteer must be tall, light and expendable. The first two are captured in youth. The third, in conquered provinces. Death rates are so high that no proper citizen allows their own children to take the reins. Charioteers don a leather helmet as well as shoulder, knee and chest pads, all of which suffer a fate of immediate irrelevance the moment a racer’s feet depart from the chariot’s axel. To control the chariot, racers must tie the reins around their waists. Every racer carries a knife to slice off the reins in the event of a crash -- an action for which there is never enough time. The knives find better use as weapons to deal with opponents who dare to venture too near. Slaves, deemed to have little to lose, are commissioned to jockey the chariots. For those selected, the task is greeted with a rabid enthusiasm. They have been offered the rarest of opportunities: the chance to buy their own freedom. Every race has a purse that is split among the top three finishers. The team’s owners and the driver then divvy up the winnings. If the driver survives enough races, he accumulates enough wealth to make himself a free man. Some retire on the spot. Others remain to make the most deadly of livings. Diocles chooses to remain. He has found a profession that earns him five times the salary of a provincial governor. His physical prowess is not nearly what it was two decades ago when his career first began, but his reputation as a deft and fearless rider has earned him consistent mounts in the most high-stakes races. A single win can earn him more than most citizens would dream of for a lifetime. He is idolized by the public, particularly by the lower classes. He is one of them. He is uneducated and illiterate. *** It is 2007 and Borel races for hundreds of different owners. Most of his clients are repeat offenders; jockeying is a game of connections, of winning the respect of trainers and owners and becoming the racer of choice for an entire stable of horses. This afternoon, he races for a trainer named Carl Nafzger, a gray-haired, baby-faced sexagenarian. They both report to owner James Tafel, a behind-the-scenes breeder who retired as CEO of a small Illinois publishing firm. It is Tafel who selects the outfit Borel wears to the gate; he chooses a yellow jersey with stripes of steel blue. The get-up fits snugly on Borel -- and would fit nearly any other jockey at the track. The rider atop a horse traveling 65 kilometers per hour must be small, light and aerodynamic. There is little deviation among size. At five-foot-four and 116 pounds, Borel’s silhouette would be nearly impossible to pick out of a lineup of jockeys. His mug shot is another matter entirely. Skeletal, worn and wrinkled, he owns the most disarming smile in the sport. His lips curl out instead of up, providing him a heart-wrenching look of childish glee. When his smile wanes, a more somber portrait emerges. Borel is an old courtesan in the Sport of Kings. At 40, he is nearing the closing stretch, limited by the brutal physicality of a jockey’s life. The ten or so minutes a day he spends in a furious stampede are certainly dangerous -- he once left the track in a coma after breaking three ribs, puncturing a lung and destroying his spleen after being thrown from his horse -- but the real wear and tear comes from the lifestyle required to support the racing. 116 pounds is not his natural weight. He is forced daily to regulate every bite he eats in order to make a required weight, usually resorting to steam-bathing to shed extra pounds of water. Jockeys and dental care rarely appear in the same sentence; white teeth are hard to find as a result of forced regurgitation. Meanwhile, Borel wakes daily at four a.m. and is to work at the track by five to ride horses for their training. Borel is no stranger to horse racing’s less glamorous jobs. He is from Cajun County, Lousiana, and his accent does little to hide the fact. At the age of eight, he began competing at local bush tracks, home to unsanctioned and unregulated horse races. By 16 he was riding professionally. At 25, he won the Super Derby, the richest race in Louisiana.