MINUTES of a MONDAY #125
Sharing some ideas I came across to get your week off to a flyer.
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Slán - Niall☘️ **
📻REAL LIFE AUDIO 👇🏽🎧
BRAIN FOOD: Cometh The Hour: Cometh the Iceman
“No one had ever seen anything like George Woolf. Right out of the box, he won every prize that wasn’t nailed down. He was something to watch, pouring over his horse’s back, belly flat to the withers, fingers threaded through the reins, face pressed into the mane, body curving along the ebb and flow of the animal’s body. He could learn a horses’s mind from the bob of the head, the tension in the reins, the coil of the hindquarters. Fifths of a second ticked off with precision in his head; Woolf timed his horses’ rallies so precisely that he regulalry won races with heart-stopping, last-second dives. He could, racetrackers marveled, “hold an elephant an inch awy from a peanut until time to feed.” He had an uncanny prescience, as if he lived twenty seconds ahead of himself, seeing the coming trap along the rail or the route of the outside. His commands had the understatement of the ancient calvary art of dressage. He was shrewd and he was fearless, demonstrating such cold unflappability in the saddle that race caller Joe Hernandez gave him the nickname “Iceman.” It stuck.
Woolf’s phenomenal success came partly from God-given gifts, partly from experience, and partly from exhaustive study. He prowled over the heads of his mounts and everyone else’s, scouring the Daily Racing Form for every tidbit of information that could give him an edge, and cracked contests wide open by ruthlessly exploiting his rival’s weaknesses. His memory was a catlaogue of vital notes on horses and men: hangs in the stretch, balks in close quarters, only hits right-handed. He also developed a race-preparation technique that was a half century ahead of his time. Sitting in the jockeys’ room before a race, he would close his eyes and visualize how the race would be run. He would see pitfalls and opportunities develop and run the race in his head until he saw how to win it. He didn’t ride his races, said his archrival Eddie Arcaro, he crafted them.”
Extract from Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit. My top read from my Top 5 of 2024.
SOUL FOOD:
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
Albert Einstein
LOL:
Russell Crowe on how things changed for him in Rome after he played fictitious Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius in the movie Gladiator (2000).
APPENDIX:
“Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand and work with whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.”
Napoleon Hill
A.O.B.
That’s us for #125 my friend. Hopefully there was something there for you this week.
As I mentioned at the top Article #19: My Top 5 Reads of 2024 hit your inbox last Friday.
And, as always, mind how you go out there - Niall