Before sunrise on the opening day of the Jubaland Cup, I walked out of the Eastleigh stable in Nairobi and past the grandstand. The etched shape of Donyo Sabuk was scored onto the pale morning sky, and the big mountain, Kenya, shimmered silvery blue. Sometimes in the long dry season, the soil hardened into long cracks and gouges under the sod, wide enough to grab hold of a speeding hoof and drag it off-centre, destroying tendons. That wouldn’t happen today, though. The turf appeared flat and fast to me. The post had a fresh coat of white paint with two jaunty black stripes, making it look like a buoy fixed and still in a bright emerald sea.
Though the morning was smooth and still, soon thousands would fill the arena and the grandstand. Race days were magnetic things, drawing not just from Nairobi but all the nearby villages—millionaires and scrapers-by, the best-dressed ladies and the simpler ones, too, everyone poring over the racing forms, searching for a sign. There was money to be made on betting, but that had never interested me. Even as a girl, I had only wanted to press into the rail next to my father, far from the noise of the crowd in the stands, the owners in their elite boxes, the betting booths where who knew how much money changed hands. Races weren’t supposed to be pageants or cocktail parties. They were tests. Hundreds of hours of training came down to a few breathless moments—and only then would anyone know if the animals were ready, which would rise and which would stumble, how the work and the talent would match up to carry this horse through, while that one would be left wearing dust, the jockey ashamed or surprised or full of excuses.
There was plenty of room for magic in any race, too, for chance and for grit, for tragedy, if an animal went down, for unexpected reversals at the tape. I had always loved all of it—even what couldn’t be controlled or predicted. But there was a new urgency now that I was on my own, and so much more was at stake.
Reaching into the pocket of my trousers, I pulled out a telegram my father had wired back from Cape Town when I sent word of my licence. Already the sheet of pale-yellow paper was soft from my fingers, and the letters had begun to fade: WELL DONE STOP ALL FINE HERE STOP WIN SOMETHING FOR ME! All sorts of magic happened on race day. But if I’d had the power to conjure anything, it would be for him to suddenly appear out of the crowd to stand next to me for those thunderous, dizzying minutes. That would mean so much more than winning—more than anything.
—
A few hours later, when Dynasty danced onto the track, I felt my pulse jump. Her coat gleamed. Her steps were high and springing and confident. She didn’t look like the six-year-old mare D had turned over to me months before, but like a queen. All around her, the other contenders were being led or ponied to the starting post. Some had running martingales to curb swinging heads; some were in tendon boots, while others wore blinker hoods to keep them on the straight and narrow. Jockeys soothed or prodded with crops as their horses skittered backwards into the barriers, jumpy and wild eyed, but Dynasty glided right through the chaos as though none of it involved her.
The starter’s hand climbed, then went still; the horses struggled in their places at the post, desperate to do what they had come for. The bell sounded, the horses breaking in a hiccup of colour and movement, twelve singular animals blurred and transposed. A clean and bolting start.
A quick bay gelding—the favourite—vaulted out first, the field loose around him, all of them drumming up the turf. The front-runners took the rail, the sounds of their hoofbeats rumbling viscerally. I felt them in my joints, like the drums of childhood ngomas, taking my heart for a ride. As the group barrelled down the home straight, I don’t think I breathed. Dynasty was there, gunning for the rail, all control and finely tuned muscle. Our jockey, Walters, wasn’t pressing or fighting her, just letting her go. She gained rhythm stride by stride, melting through the pack, sailing just above the bright turf. Walters floated, too, the blue-and-gold silks he wore butterfly light over the curves of Dynasty’s back.
In the grandstand, the cries of the crowd grew louder and shriller as the field pulsed for the far rail. The animals were like a storm moving whole, and then breaking, every strategy falling away, all caution gone. In the last few furlongs, nothing mattered but legs and length. Dynasty sailed through the final contenders and gained on the favourite, who seemed to stand still for her alone. She ran as if she were flying. As if she were dreaming the win, or winning in someone else’s dream. Then her nose was at the tape. The crowd exploded. She’d done it.
I had done it, too. Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I looked around for someone to embrace. A few of the other trainers came over to pump my hand, saying words that would have meant everything to me if they’d come from my father, and then Jock was suddenly at my elbow.
“Congratulations,” he said, leaning into my ear. The pressure of his fingertips led me through the bodies around us. “I knew you could win it.”
“Did you?”