Kentucky is the place I ought to be

Unlike the lead character in Flatt & Scruggs’ Ballad of Jed Clampett, it was not black gold that led me to load up a truck and move my life.

Rather, it was the personal discovery of a sport – Thoroughbred racing.

My first ever visit to the track – unless you count my family’s drive-by to see the orange glow of Arlington Park burning down in 1985 – came at the rebuilt and renamed Arlington International Race Course in the summer of 1991.

I was taken by the palatial grandstand, lush turf course, bright silks, and majestic horses (and then there was that betting thing). It didn’t take long to learn the rhythm of my local circuit. Arlington, located in the posh northwest suburbs, was book-ended by cold weather and a slightly different class of racing on Chicago’s gritty southside.

Hawthorne Race Course and Sportsman’s Park sat next to each other along Cicero Avenue, an area Chicago’s most famous gangster Al Capone once called his base but now is the heart of an industrial district.

Hawthorne ran through December and was followed by a six-week dark period. Smoke stacks and refineries are hardly horse country, but by the time racing resumed at Sportsman’s seven-furlong oval in the third week of February, the combination of horse smells, pounding hooves, and even the slightest melting of snow felt like horse heaven.

When I went to the track I was always armed with clippings of Dave Feldman’s selections from the Chicago Sun-Times and Dave Surico’s picks in the Chicago Tribune. Feldman, the former owner, trainer, track announcer, and one-of-a-kind public handicapper died in 2001. Surico was first moved off the horse racing beat and eventually a victim of Tribune downsizing.

At one time or the other both newspapers replaced their human selections with heartless, soul-less computer picks. For a budding journalist who dreamed of being a public handicapper, opportunities seemed limited.

While covering local politics, courts, and cops, I begged the editors of any newspaper who would listen to let me expand their racing coverage. A couple said yes, but most said no.

So in 2005 when Thoroughbred Times was looking for a new staff writer, I knew it was the opportunity I was waiting for. And now this blog presents another chance.

As sales editor I cover all the auctions here in Lexington – the center of the breeding universe – in addition to travelling to another half dozen major sales around the country. I am a certified race-watching junkie, and I have had the good fortune of covering the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Breeders’ Cup on a yearly basis.

I’ve learned so much about the horse industry in these three-and-a-half years, and I have so much more to learn. This blog will be a chance to share my experience and learn from you too.