Well, ok, discuss amongst yourselves. Is Chantal Sutherland a superstar?? Perhaps not, because achieving fame in horse racing occurs within a limited audience. Even the greatest jockeys of all time – Cordero, Shoemaker, Bailey, Hawley, were worshipped mostly within the closed ranks of horse players and never achieved the kind of mass adoration reserved for hockey stars, baseball players and basketball players when they’re not fathering children with multiple partners.
Still, Chantal is very different. Last year, People Magazine named her one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world and her arc of fame has soared dramatically thanks to her inclusion in the Animal Planets series Jockeys. In person, she is a strikingly attractive woman, but the camera makes her even better looking. Give her credit here though, she really knows how to play a camera, as I found out on Sunday. Down The Stretch, Canada’s most entertaining and informative racing newspaper has a two page interview with Chantal in the next issue ( April 24) and author Perry Lefko suggested we get her to pose in a Canadian flag. It was a good idea, since Chantal has elected to ride at Woodbine for the entire season after a winter of riding at Santa Anita, where she has been succesful, winning at an impressive rate of about 10%. That figure is even more notable when you factor in California’s deplorable ( and probably sexist) history of ignoring woman jockeys.
I met Chantal at 11;30 in the jockeys’ room Sunday and she was concerned about the wind. I wasn’t. I’ve seen several shots of Chantal wearing a helmet and she was dazzling in all of them. She just isn’t a woman who needs to have terrific hair to make you turn your head. She chose a helmet and had a red cover stretched over it.
I took her to the north side of Woodbine, because I wanted the colourful marquee of the track behind her. Dozens of people were streaming into the track and they couldn’t help but notice the beautiful little woman walking near me with a huge Canadian flag draped over her.
I didn’t really have to direct her to get the shot I needed. Chantal already has a great sense of how she looks on camera and she struck a few poses to maximize the Maple Leaf. I knew within a few minutes that I had what I needed – I think the shot on the cover of the next issue of Down The Stretch, Canada’s most entertaining and informative racing newspaper, will be the one of her standing a little sideways, with a sweet teasing smile on her face and the Canadian flag showing prominently off her shoulder and down her side.
As we walked back to the jockeys’s room, I started to ask her,
“So when will….” and before I could finish, she said
“In July,” anticipating the question about the second year of the Jockeys series. She was right, but I changed paths in mid-stretch anyway.
“Well, actually, I was going to ask when you’re getting married,” I joked.
“I don’t know, ” she grumbled with just a touch of frustration in her voice, “Whenever Mike decides to ask me.” Her boyfriend Mike Smith is a top jockey in California and Sutherland has that conflict of wanting to be with him, while wanting to win a riding title in Canada. Smith is 43, ten years older than Sutherland. She’s in love with him. She’s gorgeous, bright, ambitious, a brilliant jockey pulling in terrific money and she wants to marry him. So here’s a question? What the hell is his problem? Hey Mikey, you’ve got a chance to be with the most beautiful professional athlete on the planet (well, Maria Sharapova is much too tall for you). Better start riding to win now, before someone else beats you to the wire.
Several days ago, on opening day at Woodbine, Perry Lefko was suggesting that Chantal was starting to become the Danica Patrick of horse racing. I’ve thought about that for awhile. Patrick is the pretty formula one racing driver who has made dozens of covers, but there’s one real difference here. Sutherland actually wins races.
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