Netflix Series Puts Spotlight on Racing Personalities

Halfway through the third episode of "Race for the Crown," a coyote makes an appearance above the hillside course at Santa Anita Park. He's scruffy and furtive, your standard-issue scavenger, but artfully rendered in the super slo-mo camera work that is de rigueur in the modern sports docudrama. His screen time lasts barely seconds, as he lopes along with the grace of a fuzzy gazelle. But the moment is ripe, and the message is clear. "Race for the Crown" even makes the varmints look good. To that point, the six-part Netflix series charting the highs and lows of the 2024 Triple Crown has provided a mishmash of Kardashian-level eye candy and segments of pure serendipity. Who knows how much was left on the cutting room floor, and who cares? The bounty of unrehearsed video acquired by the filmmakers happily includes key players such as Kenny McPeek, Jayson Werth, D. Wayne Lukas, and, yes, even the irrepressible Mike Repole, whose presence throughout the six episodes is driven by his fiery colt Fierceness and his unquenchable desire to beat the ever-loving daylights out of everybody else. For sure, there are some sequences manufactured after the fact, and interview segments are clearly cut and pasted to fit the narratives. But heck, I could watch McPeek barbecue thick steaks all day long, or the ex-ballplayer Werth go ballistic at the victory of Dornoch in the Belmont Stakes (G1), or Lukas creak around on his cane then come up firing verbal bullets. Then there is Michael Iavarone. Why, you might ask? Because every series like "Race for the Crown," for all its serious intent, needs a healthy dose of comedy relief, and this viewer, for one, cannot get enough of Michael Iavarone, the man with the George Hamilton tan. Here's Iavarone wearing what looks like a window treatment borrowed from the Palace of Versailles. Here's Iavarone being taken to the cleaners on the purchase of an early-season 3-year-old for "seven figures," which is believable, as long as you count the two to the right of the decimal point. But never mind. The play's the thing. So here's Iavarone, dressed like Zorro's stunt double, swilling champagne with his entourage at a Miami nightclub, celebrating the purchase of a horse who will never run again. Don't get me wrong. Through the opening episodes, there is plenty of racing action, all of it framed around such major events as the Florida Derby (G1), Blue Grass Stakes (G1), Arkansas Derby (G1), and Santa Anita Derby (G1), strewing dramatic flowers on the path to the Triple Crown events covered in episodes four, five, and six. The technology of action photography seems made for the Thoroughbred in motion, even though the racing fans in the audience always will want more. So if you wondered just how close the finish of the 2024 Kentucky Derby was—among Mystik Dan, Sierra Leone, and Forever Young (JPN)—here it is in all its gasping glory. But how can you resist Iavarone and his wife, Jules, tooling along in their white Mercedes-Benz V8 Biturbo Cabriolet, on their way to a session with a medium after the purchase of the horse they hope will take them to the Derby. Mike is skeptical. As mystics go, he'd rather own Dan. "So, they talk to the dead?" he says. "What does that have to do with the horses running?" Jules makes a case for a new experience. "Why can't we just do normal things?" he says. "Have we ever done normal things?" she replies. It can be argued that Thoroughbred racing is as far from a "normal thing" as anything, and "Race for the Crown" offers just enough to make the case that the real world rarely intervenes. On-screen time spent with John Stewart of his new Resolute Racing brand suggests a parallel universe in which everyone collects a hangar full of barely driven cars and travels by private jet with a doting fiancée, while periodically checking for wealth updates on a smartphone. For my money, there could have been a lot more jockey stuff, if only to finally erase the taste of the ham-handed reality show "Jockeys" that was foisted on an innocent viewing public by Animal Planet in 2009. There is a diversion to Katie Davis, of the Flying Davis clan, that probably tells viewers what they already knew, that it's tough sledding for a woman in a man's world. Davis is a bundle of charm, though, and the cameras love her as she suffers through a series of micro-insults that include not one but two parking attendants who do not believe she is a jockey, and a fan on the rail whose "You're a jockey?" is answered by Davis' name in the program riding in the George E. Mitchell Black-Eyed Susan Stakes (G2) on Preakness eve. Her victory in a race on Belmont Stakes weekend at Saratoga Race Course seems to make it all worthwhile. And not for nothing, she is wearing the Sackatoga Stable silks carried by Funny Cide during his Triple Crown adventures, with trainer Barclay Tagg spied in the background. "Race for the Crown" strikes true gold with Brian Hernandez Jr., racing's Everyman, whose long-standing connection to the Kenny McPeek stable pays off big time with Mystik Dan and Thorpedo Anna. We get a new face in Jaime Torres, who undressed his Preakness Stakes (G1) rivals by taking Seize the Grey wire to wire. The show also follows Frankie Dettori in his quest for American success in the wake of his legendary European career. Frankie has no luck in the Derby or the Preakness, but by then it hardly matters because of his six-winner day at Santa Anita Park, presented in a giddy montage and video-bombed by none other than Bo Derek. The Dettori segments get downright repetitious, and the awkwardly staged scenes with his wife, Catherine, do neither of them any favors, except to display Frankie's skill with kitchen utensils and their ongoing affinity for champagne. But then, as if Fellini took the reins, enter Umberto Rispoli and Antonio Fresu, fellow Italian jockeys who have worshipped Dettori for years and now find themselves competing boot-to-boot with their hero. Having observed Rispoli close at hand, I can guarantee he was not putting on an act in his irreverent jousting with Dettori. And Fresu, Marcello Mastroianni handsome, offers his share of sharp barbs as the three ex-pats go about their dangerous business. It takes a creative team to make already known outcomes entertaining. "Race for the Crown" does not rewrite the genre, but it is consistently watchable for both the exhilarating race action—accompanied by appropriately soaring music—as well as the small stuff, staged or otherwise, such as: Eight-year-old Annie McPeek running along the Oaklawn Park racetrack in the Arkansas twilight to catch up with her father and take his hand. Jayson Werth's disdainful sniff of a gift box rose commemorating his participation with 10th-place Dornoch in the 150th Kentucky Derby. "Once-in-a-lifetime deal... and we f----- it up," he says, with a slam of the gift box lid. The mother of Jaime Torres, in the back of the SUV taking their family to Saratoga for the Belmont Stakes, offering a prayer to "watch over him all along the way." And Mike Repole's hilariously bitter sign-off after neither Fierceness nor his back-up colt Mindframe could bring him joy in a Triple Crown race. "I'll be polite and say that you wasted three hours of my life," he says to... who? Netflix? "I know the f------ three hours I gave you right now is Oscar-worthy. So don't f--- this up." They didn't.