Local Riders, Trainers Still Detained

With Saturday’s first post at Techmo-Facto Racecourse in London, Hong Kong imminent, thirty-one local jocks and seventy-three trainers, along with nearly all of the Hong Kong bred livestock remain imprisoned on charges related to the Techmo scandal.

With only one full day of racing scheduled each weekend, Hong Kong government officials reacted swiftly and unabashedly, using helicopters to fly in those riders from Great Britain which haven’t engaged themselves for the Lingfield card on Saturday.

Additional measures, recruiting foreign trainers and barring all Hong Kong-bred athletes from competition were met with quelled hostility.

“We have hundreds of talented men and women here at Techmo-Facto (Racecourse), why punish the honest, innocent horsemen by drafting scabs?”

Kara T. Chop, a veteran trainer at Techmo-Facto and its predecessor, the old Atari Downs, trains E Buda, a recent acquisition to the Hong Kong string starting in Saturday’s Pal Listen Stakes for older horses. Most troublesome to Ms. Chop is the presence of only one starter to have ever so much as seen Hong Kong.

“Splinter Cell is the only runner to have ever been here, David Jay Nitechat, he’s the only other trainer. And that horse is given no support by local punters, despite a victory here at Techmo-Facto.”

Betoonein Wontoo, a native of Kenya and trainer of morning line favorite Teutonic Terror, is entertained by what he deems is Ms. Chop’s complete lack of confidence, and as he states it, “apparently talent as well.”

“I’ve been all around North America with this horse in the last few months and I can tell you that Ms. Chop must have distant relatives in the American state of Arizona. I went there the first time for a stakes race, a little starter stakes, and the local people were outraged that this horse was going to take ‘their’ money. I ran second.”

“But first chance I got, I went back, and that time, I did take their money. Tell Ms. Chop that E Buda may have been shipping right alongside ‘Tootie’ (Teutonic Terror); hell, I hope she tosses dirt at the glass windows, her horse comes here from Italy by way of Oregon via North Carolina.”

Further complicating the feud, American born, British raised and preened jockey Curtis Shinkle arrived from Lingfield to ride Teutonic Terror, replacing barred rider Kent Osukawa. Arriving from Newton’s Abbey, Timmy Brewer, rides Ms. Chop’s E Buda. Timmy Brewer, also American born, took a path not too dissimilar to that of Curt Shinkle, and both ended up as rival competitors, riding at Lingfield.

Timmy Brewer’s father, Timmy Brewer Sr., was a longtime leading rider at the small, often explosive Maine Intercontinental Racetrack in the American State of Maine. Young apprentice rider Shelley Shinkle, a pioneer at just eighteen years of age, fought hard for the construction of an outside rail at Maine Intercontinental after witnessing the use of one while working as a blackjack dealer at the newly opened Mountaineye Racetrack in West Virginia.

Shinkle settled a dispute and landed a contract with the National Hockey League Player’s Association on exclusive use of the Mark Messier model Cooper protective headgear. He built the starting gate that is still in use. He also ran the bookies out of Maine. And in so doing, he put Timmy Brewer I, father to Timmy Brewer Sr., and grandfather of Timmy Brewer out of business for good.

Shelley Shinkle’s father, Sherriff Sean Shinkle arrested the eldest Timmy Brewer and several cohorts, including Giuseppe Giant, reputed mafia link and father of future Maine Hall of Fame rider, Guadalupe Giant. Midway through the trial, Sherriff Shinkle was found dead in his hotel room during a business trip to Sicily. Needless to say, animosity between the Sherriff’s son, Shelley, and Timmy Brewer Sr. was spilling into their professional lives.

It was an afternoon on which the two rivals had traded punches in the not so literal sense, Shinkle winning three of the first eight and Brewer Sr. winning three. As the field of eleven passed the five-sixteenths pole in the finale, Shinkle was on the lead by three parts of a length with Brewer Sr., aboard his mount amidst a pack of four just behind Shinkle and the leader. Drifting off the fence, Shinkle allowed Brewer Sr. to move to his inside momentarily and in an instant, guided his mount back to the rail. Brewer Sr., unable to check his mount, clipped heels and lost his irons, but was tangled in the reins much like a prisoner tied to the railroad tracks in the old films.

Unable to free himself from his wild-running companion, Brewer Sr. looked in horror as he barreled along as an unwilling passenger straight towards the grandstand and several hundred patrons. In a moment’s notice, the two changed their course, straightening down the racetrack towards the outside, safely away from the ongoing contest which appeared to give Shinkle his fourth win on the card. Moments later, captured by the lone outrider, Brewer Sr. felt tremendous gratitude towards the man that he was about to kill for incepting the construction of an outside rail.

Waiting for Brewer Sr. along the outside rail, the rest of the Maine State Mounties assisted Captain Ken Hennessey, also Maine Intercontinental Racecourse’s lone outrider, in detaining the disoriented jockey.

Brewer Sr., indicted on RICO charges relating to the murder of Sherriff Shinkle and stolen trailer loads of Energizer batteries, has spent the last twenty years in Federal prison, sharing a cell for part of that time with J. T. Lund, inspiring his volunteer work with the mentally challenged.

Brewer Sr.’s wife, Pon-Ki, fled with her young son Timmy to Ireland. Shelley Shinkle’s wife, Bo, left him after Shinkle’s two-year battle with track management over recognizing same sex marriages. She left America for Great Britain after her husband actually reaped the benefits of his hard work and married Bruce Bolden, a young apprentice rider that had joined the colony.

So it is of little surprise to learn that the youngest Shinkle and Brewer Sr.’s son Timmy Brewer crossed paths when both arrived at Lingfield within a week’s time, embarking on riding careers. The two young riders from generations of rivalries and family feuds actually formed a heartening friendship quickly. For several years, while never very best friends, Shinkle and Brewer had never so much as a bad word for the other. Until, that is, Timmy Brewer’s mother arrived for a visit.

Pon-Ki Brewer, a native of Hong Kong, traveled to Lingfield from Ireland to see her son Timmy, but as Timmy learned days later, spent much of her time with his friend Curt Shinkle while Timmy was galloping in the morning hours. Reports from fellow riders painted a scandalous picture of Pon-Ki and Curt, but Timmy refused to believe the scuttlebutt until his mom and buddy announced their engagement less than thirty-six hours after her arrival.

Timmy disappeared for two years, exactly the length of Curt and Pon-Ki’s marriage. Curt is now married to Fred Flanagan, fifth leading rider at Lingfield.

Upon hearing that all licensed riders at Techmo-Facto had been incarcerated, it was Ms. Kara T. Chop that sent for her nephew, Timmy Brewer, to ride E Buda. It was the Hong Kong House of Racing that sent for Curt Shinkle and nineteen of his peers at Lingfield to ride the others. Ms. Chop, irate still with Pon-Ki for her indiscretion, has expressed particular disdain towards the connections of Teutonic Terror, and Curt Shinkle in particular.

“He (Shinkle) better hope for an easy lead or even better, five scratches. He never could ride, his dad still can’t ride, and his granddaddy was such a coward that he needed an outside rail so he’d know where he was all the way around the track.”

“The thing about Timmy and Timmy before him and God rest his soul, Timmy, is that he can finish at least a little through the lane. Timmy will have plenty of horse the last third of the race. Curt won’t finish, and he’s going to need to. I shouldn’t say that Curt won’t, per se, more that, well, Curt can’t.”

Ms. Chop’s reference to the different running styles of the two horses, Teutonic Terror a pace-setting or prompting menace from the start, and the casual momentum building, dramatic crescendo approach of E Buda, was interpreted differently by Betoonein Wontoo.

“Tootie (Teutonic Terror) will be eight in front of E Buda on the turn. Why am I the one that needs to fear for my rider and one party’s assessment of his inabilities? I’d say that while her rider is busy looking for his fourth set of goggles, pumping, reaching, smooching, hissing that my boy will be looking over his right shoulder gauging the extent to which he needs to plan on some mild exercise.”

A five-year-old son of Gilded Time, Teutonic Terror has won twelve of thirty-five career starts, earned more than a quarter million American dollars, and done most of it alternately slipping through the claiming ranks and then climbing back towards the top. He has been in career best form over the last six months, running triple digit speed figures in his last five straight, resulting in a pair of wins. Though a pair of forays into stakes company resulted in fourth and fifth place finishes, respectively, both efforts were solid efforts against rivals that would likely be standouts in Saturday’s feature at Techmo-Facto.

“This is a good horse that keeps getting better.” explained Wontoo, “I claimed him for $75,000. The guy before me bought him from a guy that gave twice that for him just a few starts earlier. He had him running as low as $13,500 and wound up winning five straight running for twenty (thousand) or thereabouts. He’s just now getting good.”

“And for Ms. Chop’s benefit, I was just looking at his cut and for your information, he ran here (Techmo-Facto) as a three-year-old and got beat a half length.”

E Buda on the other hand is a four-year-old trying to get back on track, finding a groove to showcase some of the brilliance he displayed from time to time at ages two and three. After winning the first two starts of his life, he ran a strong third in the Grade II High Roller’s Juvenile, beaten just a half length and in the process, defeating future multiple graded stakes winner Adhesive, as well as Lucky’s Capital, winner of the Group II I’m Trying, Grade II Buckeye Derby, and the Grade I I Am Not A Crook Classic.

As a three-year-old, the son of E Dubai took home a pair of minor stakes before capturing the Grade III Bay Horse Stakes. After back to back defeats, E Buda put on perhaps his most visually impressive performance, taking the Prospector Flap Stakes in dramatic fashion after weaving through traffic relentlessly the final three-sixteenths of a mile. The 1:21.3 clocking for seven furlongs earned E Buda his highest speed figure to date and also seemed to vault him into a pattern of wild inconsistency over his last seven since the Prospector Flap. His big races are big enough, his bad races are good enough to still give him a chance for part. For his talent, E Buda is burdened with too many ‘ifs’ and requires disclaimers and caveats that force the handicapper to consider him one of those that could possibly outrun a top selection.

Splinter Cell, the aforementioned recent local starter, is an intriguing alternative to the headline stealers. The six-year-old Dehere horse (he is intact according to BTB stats) made his route debut in his fifth career start and has stayed there since, until recent tries at seven on turf and seven and a half on his preferred dirt surface. It isn’t the two recent transitions in distance that interest as much as the first four in his career. He began his career three for three, including a stakes win, before running third in a stakes race in his fourth career start, the preceding all sprint efforts.

He has a win here at Techmo-Facto, albeit a slow one against weak rivals, but he was routing, and if the theory that he will run considerably better at six furlongs holds true, than perhaps the implication becomes that he can in fact run winning races against better horses.