Where it All Began: Four Former Jockeys Share Their Stories

At the inaugural Thoroughbred Owners Conference in Kentucky in October of 2014, Rosie Napravnik, Pat Day, Chris McCarron and Donna Barton Brothers told their origin stories.

Retired Hall of Famer Pat Day said it was his inability to ride bulls that not only led him to become a jockey, but also helped him avoid serious injury in over 40,000 races over 32 years in the irons.

“I was raised in a ranching community in Colorado. There was no horse racing. The closest racetrack was in Denver, 150 miles away… From the time I was nine I was involved with rodeos. In high school, I was on the rodeo team and when I graduated I had the desire to be a professional bull rider. So, I was pursuing that career with a very limited amount of success, but I realize today that my time in the arena played monumentally toward my career because I learned how to fall,” Day said.

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Though Day had little exposure to horse racing as a child, the rodeo circuit introduced him to people who suggested he try being a jockey due to his “small size, obvious competitive nature and inability to ride bulls.”

In January of 1973, Day took a job at a thoroughbred farm in Colorado where he was told to be a jockey he would first have to learn the business from the ground up on the farm for two to three years. Then, he would be sent to a racetrack to work with a trainer for a year before he started riding.

Day said that is “absolutely the correct way to go,” but in 1973 he quickly soured on the plan.

“After a month of daylight-to-dark work, minimal pay, not knowing what I was trying to become, I said, ‘I’m out of here. I don’t want to be a jockey.’ But I realize today, God had other plans in store. In July of that year I found myself in Prescott, Arizona, at a little racetrack called Prescott Downs.”

The rest is, well you know…

Being a lawyer sounded more exciting

Racing reporter, analyst and former jockey Donna Barton Brothers said the last place she expected to find herself was behind the starting gate.

“If my mother was here she would tell the story — and she often does — that she had three children and only one with no interest in horses or horse racing,” Barton Brothers said.

Yet, from the age of nine, she found herself at the racetrack on a regular basis for a purely practical reason. “If I wanted to make money in the summer or on the weekends to go to the movies I had to go to the racetrack and make some money,” she said.

“I guess I was just so immersed in (racing) that I was never enamored by it. My brother wanted to be a jockey and my sister wanted to be a jockey, so I went to high school and I thought, ‘I want to do something interesting, like maybe be a lawyer or something.’ I thought that would be exponentially more interesting than being a jockey.

“I graduated from high school a year early and I went to the racetrack to make money to pay my way through college. Long story short, a couple of years later, I finally rode in my first race because I was going to eliminate being a jockey as a career option and then decide what I was going to do. It was the most exciting and challenging thing I’d ever done in my life. I grew up thinking it has to be easy if my brother, sister and mother all do it. How hard could it be? I rode in my first race and found out it’s not easy and it’s very exciting. I was enamored from then on.”

Napravnik inspired by her sister

After winning the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Distaff with Untapable, Rosie Napravnik announced she was seven weeks pregnant and retiring from race riding. She finished the year ranked seventh in the United States for jockey earnings.

Lifetime, she’s ridden the winners of over $71 million.

Napravnik said she knew from a young age that horses would be part of her life.

“I was riding before I could walk and competing in little shows on ponies from by the time I was four years old. So, I had an excellent foundation of horse background, horse parents, horsemanship. No involvement in racing, but just horses in themselves,” she said. “Ever since I was introduced to the idea that there was horse racing and jockeys was when I wanted to be a jockey. I knew barely anything about it. I think I knew Pat Day, Jerry Bailey and Julie Krone. I had no exposure to it, but as soon as I was introduced to it, that’s what I wanted to do from that point forward and actually worked from that point forward to get there. My sister was my inspiration. She had become a little bit interested in it… She was the one that kind of introduced me to the idea.”

Taking the train to see his brother

Hall of Famer Chris McCarron also had a sibling that introduced him to the sport. When his brother, Gregg, started riding at Suffolk Downs in 1969, Chris was a freshman in high school.

“I would get out of school about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and get on the train and go three stops to a train station right behind the track. I would have to climb the fence to go over and watch him ride. At that time, they didn’t let anybody in under 18 years of age,” Chris said. “That pretty much set the hook in my mouth. I got very excited about it at that time. Between my junior and senior year in high school, Gregg got me a job walking horses at Rockingham Park in Salem, New Hampshire. From that point on, I was hooked. When I went back to school, I went from being a C student to a D student. I couldn’t think of anything but horses and I couldn’t wait to get back to the track. I’ve been there ever since.”

FIRST LADY OF RACING MAKES SURPRISE APPEARANCE

Secretariat’s 92-year-old owner Penny Chenery made a surprise guest appearance at the inaugural Thoroughbred Owners Conference in Kentucky.

One of the biggest hits of the inaugural Thoroughbred Owners Conference was when Secretariat’s 92-year-old owner and breeder Penny Chenery made a surprise appearance Oct. 14 on the Keeneland Sales Pavilion stage.

Wearing a white and blue zip-up sweater befitting her Meadow Stable colours, Chenery smiled broadly as she received a standing ovation and sat down to be interviewed by retired announcing great Tom Durkin.

Chenery said she knew early on that Secretariat was special.

“I saw Secretariat at about three days old and what I wrote down was, ‘He’s too pretty to be a good horse,’” Chenery said. “He knew he was big stuff. There’s something interesting. There’s a herd mentality in horses and his dam was the leader of the pack, Somethingroyal. Secretariat sort of inherited his way of going from his mother’s self-esteem.”

Despite producing and campaigning what many consider to be the greatest thoroughbred in racing history, Chenery said turning out champions is a difficult process.

“We bred 680 horses and we came out with two Derby winners. You go through a lot of bad horses refining your bloodlines,” she said.

Chenery also shared some advice for prospective horse owners.

“Don’t listen to what they tell you about the trainer, listen to what they don’t tell you about the trainer because nobody’s going to bad-mouth somebody else,” Chenery said. “Another tip I picked up, hang around people who are successful. If you see an owner or a trainer and you want to know more about them, go down to the paddock, see their horse, watch them with their horse, with the jockey, with their fellow trainers. You get an idea of their reliability.”

Chenery said owners should not only be excited when their horses do well, but share that excitement, as well.

“What I learned as an owner, and I feel very strongly about it and that’s why I’m still here, is that as owners we’re ambassadors for racing,” she said. “In my day, the old established racing families were very buttoned up. They didn’t yell or scream. They weren’t jumping people in the winner’s circle. So, the show off that I was (when Secretariat won the) Belmont was done on purpose. I feel we have the obligation to share our excitement, our pride in our horse, our devotion to the industry with the fans, so they don’t feel alienated. They will become shareholders in the industry with us.”