"Rosie Napravnik is a good bet to become the first woman ever to win the Kentucky Derby. It's going to happen, and probably soon, given the trends in racing and the sport's awakening to gender's competitive insignificance, that a woman rides a horse into the Churchill Downs winner's circle and then gracefully accepts into her arms the famed blanket of roses."

"It's been an amazing ride for the last year. I've been putting my best foot forward and it has paid off."

"... the Amesbury native knows first-hand that life can become derailed when least expected. Having established herself as a solid journeyman rider in a talented jockey colony that included Carl Gambardella and Rudy Baez in the late ’80s while riding under her maiden name as Tammi Campbell, she seemed destined to become a star. However, a recurring case of viral meningitis interrupted that rise to stardom on several occasions while triggering a decade of more debilitating problems that nearly took her life.

"The first thing Patrick Valenzuela did when he left the winner’s circle Sunday after going wire-to-wire to take the 21st TVG Pacific Classic with Acclamation was pay tribute to the man who started the $1 million race for Del Mar.... The second thing Valenzuela did was thank everyone who gave him one final chance to salvage a career that was sidetracked dozens of times because of drug and alcohol abuse. He lost years off his career, serving more than a dozen suspensions or dealing with license revocations."

“I’ve been blessed this year. This is the best decade of my life.”

"Piermarini, 44, originally from Salisbury, began her racing career at Suffolk in 1985 as an apprentice jockey. Over the course of 26 years, three pregnancies, repeated bouts of debilitating spinal meningitis, and upward of $17 million in purse winnings, she diligently has carved out one of the sport’s more impressive careers for a woman. Not that she really considers 'for a woman' to be a necessary qualifier in the overall discussion of her time in the saddle, because she now has exactly 14,206 races and, oh, the odd dustup in the jocks room with some of her brothers is ample evidence that she considers her sport a level playing field."

"Some Hollywood Park racing officials, jockeys and valets had to attend a 'mandatory' sexual harassment seminar earlier this month after an incident involving jockey Chantal Sutherland, Southern California racing steward Tom Ward said."

"Although his business has yet to take off at Suffolk, Rocco has made has a positive impression, both personally and professionally. In the second race June 27, he got every inch of run out of Lily's Goldmine, a 7-year-old Massachusetts-bred making her first start in eight months, against open company in an $11,000 starter allowance. Lily's Goldmine went off at 45-1, but with Rocco aboard, she finished fourth ..."

“Now in saying that, I still get all the time a trainer or maybe an owner that doesn’t really want to ride a girl,” she said. “You’re going up to this person every morning, shaking their hand, trying to get your foot in the door, and you’re just getting no reaction. You can tell it’s a sexist thing. I’ll ask my agent, ‘Is this guy just not going to ride me because I’m a girl?’ And he’ll say, ‘Yeah, probably.’ I never really took offense to it. I know it’s out there. There’s really no other way to deal with it but hope you can beat them in a race and get their attention.”

"Outside the ring of people pressing to get close to her and beyond the insistent clamor of the television cameras, there arose cries of 'Rosie.' And there she stood, in the middle of the turbulence, smiling somewhat sheepishly, as if not entirely comfortable with the attention and the outpouring of congratulatory emotion, horse racing's latest, if somewhat unexpected, star ..."

"Valets (pronounced VAL-its, not va-LAYS) work the four tracks in Southern California, following the jockeys on a seasonal circuit where no task -- whether folding towels, shining boots or buying snacks -- is too small to overlook. 'We're like their butlers,' Castaneda says. The valets are on the job as many as 11 hours a day, 51 weeks a year, and the jockeys come to trust and depend on them."

"When I was riding, I had this trainer who showed up in the paddock with a piece of paper," Sherman said. "He had actually written out where the horse should be every step of the way -- the half-mile pole, et cetera. All the way around, he had it written down. I looked at him like he was nuts. I said to him, 'How in the world can you expect me to ride a horse with a map?'" (Opens with a great story from Angel Cordero.)

"... it is just possible that the purging of a couple of soccer bores has not quite brought an end to British misogyny and I wonder if there might be other sports that should be responding to this development with a bit of introspection. Racing, for example. I dare say I'm a terrible old communist who would be buried alive by a right-thinking society, but it strikes me that there might perhaps be the odd lingering trace of prejudice against women within our little world. At the very least, there are surely some questions to answer."

"In a year, I can count on one hand the amount of times I'll ask a vet to gate-scratch a horse. And I ride anywhere from 700 to 1,200 races in a single season. A lot of these people are really good clients of mine and I'm trying my best to bring them success. I know how much time, effort and money it takes to get a horse to the races. I appreciate the opportunities to partner with them. I don't take the idea of gate-scratching a horse lightly. But let's say I'm wrong and the horse is okay. What's the worst that can happen? He lives to run another day. If I'm right and I ignore that instinct, the potential results aren't pleasant for anyone." For background from Jennie Rees: http://racing.courier-journal.com/2010/10/this-time-gomez-takes-off-makers-horses.html

"Despite all his problems, Pat has always been unbelievably optimistic, and that rubs off on the owners and trainers he works for,” Pedersen said. “Some riders may complain about not being comfortable riding against him, for safety reasons, but the truth is, he is not really a ‘trouble’ rider. Charlie Whittingham said that one of the best things about Pat is that he always knows where his horse was, and where the other horses around him are. For a guy who rides very aggressively, he really doesn’t get in that much trouble."

"Sunday afternoon, 57-year old jockey Josef Vana bagged his seventh Velka Pardubicka title."

"Finishing the season with 71 victories, Baze became the first woman in the 52-year history of the Downs to capture the leading jockey title.... Oddly enough, [Janine] Stianson, who battled Baze neck-and-neck throughout the season, was shut out of the winner's circle yesterday." Stianson finished third. The jockey race almost ended with female riders running 1-2 for the first time in thoroughbred racing history.

This kid is going to be a star at Churchill Downs. "With good looks, youth and talent on his side, Buick's rise has gathered momentum. Twelve months ago he landed a valuable but relatively insignificant sales race at Doncaster. Now he has five Group Ones and the prospect of two tasty mounts on the massive Breeders' Cup stage in November with Arctic Cosmos (Turf) and Debussy (Classic)."

"Buick may never match Dettori for theatrics – few jockeys ever could. But at a time when there are plenty of sportsmen on the front pages for the wrong reasons, Buick is accomplished, dedicated and articulate. The first Classic is often the most difficult to win, and this, surely, will be the first of many." More: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/racing/cool-buick-lands-leger-on-a-horse-nobody-wanted-2077062.html

"Jockey Maylan Studart doesn't have an agent, so instead she used Facebook to help pick up her first career win at Saratoga Race Course."

1974 Sports Illustrated profile of Denise Boudrot. "As soon as the mutuels open there is a quick drop in odds -- the housewife money coming in -- then a leveling off till the very end, and another drop, the smart money. But if the fans are creating false favorites for her, and if the four-letter gutter word for woman ricochets about the grandstand when she loses, Denise remains a most popular rider. 'Go home and have a baby' is about the most pointed remark she ever hears."

Remembering Denise Boudrot. "But more than once she did ride to beat the boys. In 1974, in what was billed as the 'Contest of the Sexes' -- an echo of the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis match of 1973 -- she raced and beat jockey Mike Lapensee at Lincoln Downs in Rhode Island. A week later, the jockeys swapped horses and she beat him again."

A pioneer passes. "She won more than 1,000 races, including the breakthrough 94 victories in 92 days at Suffolk Downs in East Boston in 1974, earning praise as the Longshot Lady and Johnny Longden in Skirts from one handicapper."

Bill Finley has the stats: On the rail, on the turf, away from Churchill, at Churchill. "When it comes to winning percentage, Borel is no better at Churchill than he is overall. Throughout his career, he has more than 4,700 victories and his winning rate is 15 percent. At Churchill, through May 8, he has won 986 races for an identical winning percentage of 15 percent."

"Rubin retired from racing 41 years ago, just one year after she made the record books at 19 years old as the first female jockey to win a race against a man on Feb. 22, 1969, at Charles Town in West Virginia. Her first U.S. race and win was aboard the horse Cohesion." Now 60, she's preparing to ride in the first-ever Retired Female Jockey Legends race at Pimlico on May 14.

"The Louisiana-raised, late-blooming Mr. Borel is a charming quote dispenser, and last year he found himself celebrated, sometimes a bit patronizingly, as a supernatural horse whisperer. But he's not a shaman any more than Peyton Manning is. He's a champion and a pop star in a desperate but irresistible sport that most of us can't be bothered to watch for more five or six minutes a year."

Garrett Gomez on the Belmont: "Stuff like this happens a lot of times in the bigger races. Everybody doesn't ride the same as they normally do. Trainers don't exactly give the same instructions. Sometimes in the bigger races some guys want to be a little more aggressive and some don't, so the combination of the two makes things work out completely different than you think they will." Possibly explains why it was Dunkirk, not Charitable Man, on the lead.

"[Bush] tracks, which once dotted the countryside from Louisiana to Oklahoma, are mostly gone now -- victims of changing tastes and fears of lawsuits and the law itself."

Profile and photos of Barbara Jo Rubin, the first female jockey to win a race, and the first to ride in New York (headline from March 11, 1969 NYT: "Girl Jockeys Are Invading the Big A"). Rubin won seven of her first 10 races.

Numbers deemed unspectacular, but good enough: "The show averaged 594,000 viewers, an increase of 11% compared with the year-ago time slot average." Also noted: Resemblance to MTV docu-soaps not coincidental -- production team used some of the techniques pioneered on "Laguna Beach."

"After a few weeks of being on the cusp of recording his 4,000th career victory, the supremely gifted but oft-troubled jockey Pat Valenzuela finally broke through ... at Louisiana Downs." A remarkable achievement for P Val, a jockey who can't ride anywhere but Louisiana for now due to a lengthy history of drugs, drink, and suspensions.

Documentary, now in production, about women jockeys