Win a free breeding to Creatine — for real — by entering this poetry contest.

by Trey Nosrac

Let’s say that Adam Bowden of Diamond Creek Farms has a moment of insanity and induces me to abandon my promising career as a Lyft car driver to help him sell bookings for his band of stallions.

Let’s say that I accept this unusual offer of employment on the condition that I do not have to leave my Prius, answer to an alarm clock or take a urine test.

Despite his serious lapse in judgment in associating with the likes of me, Adam is a clever guy with new ideas in the harness racing world, a world where new ideas go to die. He realizes that multitasking will be a stretch for me, so he assigns me just one stallion to promote – Creatine. What if this weren’t a hypothetical question?

Thus begins a winding road to who knows where. The first stop is a search of Creatine on the Internet, watching race videos and looking at his pedigree. I am happy to learn that he is an interesting stallion, a serious player, new to the market, raced with the best and has a bit of international savoir faire.

Creatine – 2010 brown stallion by Andover Hall out of Berry Nice Muscles

• 2015 Breeders Crown open trot
• $368,900 Kentucky Futurity
• Upset victory in the $173,000 Allerage open trot over champion trotters, including Sebastian K, in his mark time of 1:51.2
• Success in Europe with wins in both the Hugo Abergs and St.Michel Ajo
• Other wins include Carl Erskine Trot, American-National open trot and the Colonial invitational trot

My job is straightforward — creatively fill as many of the 140 seats on the Creatine bus as possible. Despite his modest ticket price of $6,000, competition is strong. It appears his bus will have seats available.

Designing magazine and website layouts is not my game plan. You will not find me among schmoozers, insiders, old hands or in public unchaperoned. My specialty is the theater of the absurd. Adam wants different. He found his man. We shall travel odd roads fueled by madness in search of methods.

My first step as semen salesman will be to suggest that Diamond Creek immediately raise the Creatine stud fee to $12,000. Without a doubt, there will be a plethora of algorithms, modeling and statistics that will demonstrate that only four human beings on planet earth will purchase a Creatine shipment at this exorbitant price.

Excellent! We will embrace these four wonderful customers and send each a gigantic fruit basket plus an invitation to an all-expense paid trip for a weekend at Diamond Creek Farm.

Now the games will begin. There will be dealing. From now on, negotiations with every potential customer will begin at $12,000. If we close a deal at half price, again, excellent. If word reaches our original fab four Creatine customers that others may not be paying the full price, our four early buyers may a tad discontented, but that’s life. Besides, they have the fruit bowl and invitation.

For my next act, we will be giving away a completely free breeding to Creatine (worth $12,000 – wink wink).

Pricing most customers out of my market and giving away a free product – how do you like me so far?

Okay, I stretched the facts a little. This happens in business. Technically, my giveaway will be a contest. The contest will not be challenging but it will be interesting. Let’s use an acrostic poem. They are easy and fun, at least they were for my poetry students (yes, Trey once roamed the hallways of academia).

For this activity, you list a word down and make a poem, usually about a theme, by using the first letter to begin each sentence. For example, if the word is PONDER and the theme racing, a possible poem would be…

Puddles dappled the dirt.
Over-checks were adjusted
Nosebands rested across velvet coats

Draw gates were opened
Eyes grew misty

Racing was back

Not bad, Huh!

(Editor’s note: The author, HRU and Adam Bowden are completely serious about this contest. It’s real and the prize is a free breeding to Creatine.)

Official Contest Entry.

(Again, this is an absolutely legitimate contest)

Our winner will be crowned — Standardbred Poet Laureate.

You will learn that writing a poem is kind of scary, but kind of fun.

A few rules apply to be eligible:

• You must own (or at least, partially own) a trotting mare. The reason for this rule may surprise you:

There are a lot of hopeful poets. Poets want to be published. There are few places to publish poetry. This means that poets are constantly on the lookout for contests to enter. When possible, poets find a contest, they swarm like thousands of locusts. Poets are so desperate to see their poems published that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that one of them might quickly purchase a trotting broodmare just to become eligible for this contest.

At any rate, to avoid a stampede of non-harness poets, we must restrict our little poetry contest to owners of trotting mares. This rule will prevent Diamond Creek from a tsunami of entries and sending a valuable parcel of Creatine semen to a yoga instructor in Taos, New Mexico who has never heard of the sport of harness horse racing.

• One entry per mare

• Entries must be received by midnight (E.S.T.) on Monday – January 23, 2017

You cannot be wrong because, well, few people are sure what the hell a poem is. Your words have as good a chance as any of falling sweetly on the ears of a judge. Send in your poem, your name and the name of your trotting mare and you will be eligible to win a free breeding to Creatine.

How many will be brave enough to enter this contest remains to be seen. But, unless there is a secret hotbed of harness racing poets, your odds of winning this contest should be very favorable. In fact, you might win in a walkover.

Yes, this valuable breeding is transferable.

No, poems do not necessarily need to rhyme.

Use the word CREATINE. The theme is, of course, harness racing.

Winner will be announced in HRU on Sunday – February 5, 2017.

Email to – [email protected]

Put the word “Contest” in the subject.

Include the following:

Your name:

The name of your registered trotting mare:

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