We admired her perfection, but we loved her gender. As the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic approached, undefeated Zenyatta was the race’s reigning champion and only female winner. On race day at Churchill Downs, lithe young women in micro-minis and racing silks distributed free Zenyatta posters—pink, of course. Zenyatta’s gender wasn’t just an issue; it was the issue. We wanted another Billie Jean King. We wanted Zenyatta to redeem Ruffian. Watching her lose, the crowd deflated, uncertain how to greet failure from the mare that had never failed. Trotting back to the barn, though, Zenyatta didn’t seem to realize she’d run second.
Eventually, fans rallied, focusing on her other legacy: offspring. In retirement, Zenyatta was bred to well-known stud Bernardini. Soon she was in foal. Soon after that, she wasn’t anymore. That happens. Nearly 800 distraught people responded to the news on Zenyatta’s official website. Readers confided and mourned. Some acknowledged their own struggles with fertility. Others confessed their tears or professed their faith.
Such anthropomorphizing seems misguided, even unbalanced. But it’s not, exactly. We want Zenyatta to be impeccable, the flawless diamond we’ll never possess but adore anyway. She’s actually more valuable to us with these inclusions. She reminds us of the importance of resilience, of the need to face it (whatever “it” is). She also reminds us how we are often too late, how we can’t always catch and keep the things we desire, how we can’t bestow life on command. Perhaps that’s the real reason Zenyatta’s worth watching: not to share her success, but to witness her indifference to imperfection, to see that to her, these are not important failures, to trust that the sun will shine again on her paddock, that a hand will offer fresh carrots. After all, she’s just a horse. And that’s exactly why we need her.