{"id":7854,"date":"2015-04-16T20:56:27","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T20:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/georgethomasclark.com\/?p=7854"},"modified":"2015-04-16T20:56:27","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T20:56:27","slug":"famished-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgethomasclark.com\/famished-horse\/","title":{"rendered":"Famished Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is more than a challenge. They want me to fail. That\u2019s why they demanded: take Francisco Goitia\u2019s dirty gold horse to your complex and make him a Triple Crown winner. Preposterous. The horse is several times three-years old and shows more ribs than a skeleton. When I introduce myself as the world\u2019s greatest scientist, he\u2019s too tired to respond.<\/p>\n
\tLet\u2019s start by christening you Hercules, I say, and motion for my assistants to wheel in nuclear wheat and atomic hay. While the starving equine eats, and drinks hormone-enhanced water, I inject him with pulverized testicles of cheetahs and lions and other fearsome felines. <\/p>\n
\tIn a week he\u2019s ready to run but I swear I can beat him for a hundred years, and I\u2019m no Jesse Owens. We increase his nutrients and keep running, a furlong, then two, half way around the track, three quarters, and by week eight all the way around, and he\u2019s almost doubled his body weight.<\/p>\n
\tAstonishing, Hercules, you\u2019re seventy percent as fast as most stud horses, I tell him. Now we must put a jockey on your back.<\/p>\n
\tI summon a fine rider, twice a third-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby, and explain our challenge. Soon after he mounts, a lasso envelopes his neck and jerks him onto the stinking soil of the track.<\/p>\n
\tNo one rides his bones anymore, says Francisco Goitia.<\/p>\n
\tWhat did you do for this poor creature besides paint him?<\/p>\n
\tThat\u2019s my job. <\/p>\n
\tMine\u2019s to make him a sleek running machine. Leave at once. <\/p>\n
\tAs I dig for my cell phone, Goitia twirls another lasso.<\/p>\n