Archives by date

You are browsing the site archives by date.

Rosie Napravnik poses with her OTTB Old Ironsides, who she calls  Sugar. Photo by

Rosie Napravnik speaks of friends not forgotten

Rosie Napravnik never forgot who her friends were. Especially not those who carried her to victories earned long before she was a household name in racing circles, and before the crew of 60 Minutes trained their spotlight on her, asking how it felt to be among a handful of women ever to race in the Kentucky Derby. Before her 5th place finish at the Derby this year aboard Mylute, and last year’s historic victory at the Kentucky Oaks, as the first female jock to win that race, Napravnik kept an eye out for a dappled gray gelding whose star was […]

Livingston captures the cuteness of a Thoroughbred and donkey. Photo by Sandy Zaconick

Barbara Livingston reflects on storied career

Asked when she knew she’d really made it as a photographer, two-time Eclipse Award winner Barbara Livingston says she’s not sure she really has. Despite the awards, and despite having seen her hauntingly beautiful photographs grace the covers of too many magazines to count—including Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated and almost every major Thoroughbred publication—she humbly replies, “I still sometimes think I haven’t made it.” She adds that she is constantly striving to improve the work she began 35 years ago, when she witnessed Secretariat and Ruffian run in the early 70s. Just a kid at the time, she made it her life’s ambition […]

Dry Martini and James C. Paxton lead the way in a post-track life. Photo by Priscilla Godsoe

Millionaire racehorse is Mr. Cool off the track

Nothing could shake Dry Martini. Not the dogfights of horse racing, where he won $1.3 million dollars, and certainly not foxhunting and jumping, where he dashed through the wilderness of the Pennsylvania foxhunting territory with the cool-headed aplomb of James Bond. “When he first came off the track, just about anybody could have sat on him,” says Priscilla Godsoe, who, along with James C. Paxton of River Hills Foxhounds, re-schooled Dry Martini. “All the credit really goes to the horse. It’s a hard thing to explain unless you’ve ridden a horse like him. I’ve ridden a lot who are special; I’ve […]