“Jane Austen is 2-for-2 entering her stakes debut,” I read last month in an online publication I don’t usually consult. “Trained by Mark Glatt, Jane Austen earned her diploma going seven furlongs April 21 at Santa Anita.”
I wish I could report that I had just stumbled across the existence of a previously unsuspected cutthroat competition for supremacy in the literary world. I mean, I have so many questions! How did Tolstoy fare at Santa Anita? Who was Shakespeare’s trainer? What was Hemingway’s record entering his stakes debut?
Alas, however, the reality is more mundane: Apparently, somewhere in Kentucky lives a three-year-old thoroughbred racehorse named Jane Austen. (“It would be a novel ending to the June 8th Summertime Oaks for this racer to pen a winner's circle appearance,” one online commenter snarked. Alas, she only came third.)
Why was this filly named Jane Austen? A cursory Google search yields no explanation beyond a hint that someone involved in the matter may have a bent for Georgian literature: The equine Jane Austen’s maternal grandmother was School for Scandal.
Equine Jane may not be quite as distinguished as her human namesake, but she’s no slouch. She has finished in the money in all three of her starts and sold at auction two years ago for $750,000, a price that appears to be well above average.
The explanation for the relatively high value that the market seems to have placed on Jane Austen the filly is one that Jane Austen the writer would recognize: It’s all about family. This Jane Austen’s father is the equine equivalent of Mr. Darcy--a stallion named Tapit who has sired four winners of the Belmont Stakes, the third leg in horseracing’s fabled Triple Crown.
Presumably, the buyers who shelled out a high-six-figures price for Equine Jane Austen are expecting her to become, in time, the mother of champions. Lady Catherine de Bourgh would demand no less.
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