peb bellocq | Horse Racing Free Tips

Remi Bellocq Part 1: Keeping it Light at the TDN

In just less than a week, thousands of Derby-goers will pass under a 36 foot-long mural in the heart of the clubhouse at Churchill Downs depicting every jockey to win one of the first 130 editions of the GI Kentucky Derby.

The hand behind this Churchill Downs fixture may be unknown to many passers-by, but generations of racing fans quickly recognize the inscribed signature–Peb.

Artwork from Eclipse winner Pierre 'Peb' Bellocq is displayed at racetracks across the country, from Churchill Downs and Keeneland to Arlington, Del Mar, Oaklawn, Belmont, Aqueduct and the Meadowlands. Last year, the cartoonist was selected for the National Museum of Racing's Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.

While the renowned artist-and author of several books- has stepped away from his sketchpad for the most part at the age of 95, his son Remi Bellocq, former CEO of the National HBPA and the current executive director of Bluegrass Community and Technical College's Equine Program, is now following in his father's footsteps.

“It's kind of like the family business,” the younger Bellocq cartoonist said. “I always joke, it's kind of like if you want to be a standup comedian and having Richard Pryor or Jerry Seinfeld as a parent because, you know, how can you live up to that? So I try to kind of carve out my own style.”

Soon, Bellocq will partner with the TDN to share his work with the racing community. His first piece will appear as a prelude to Kentucky Derby weekend.

“I've got some fun ideas for Derby-themed cartoons,” he hinted. “But I'm not going to share those yet because I want to keep them a surprise.”

Bellocq said he hopes to bring a bit of lightheartedness via his new platform, even on some of racing's more sensitive subjects.

“My father taught me a really good lesson,” Bellocq shared. “He said, 'Listen, there's an envelope and you want to push the edge of that envelope. You want to make it memorable and poignant, but stop short of where it gets to be crass or insulting.' So I've tried in my work to take a position and maybe push the envelope a little, but always with the idea that if you have 10 people and five people love it and five hate it, at least everybody chuckled.”

Hailing from several generations of skilled horsemen, the Bellocq family left their home in France in the early 1950s when demand for Pierre's work was first taking off. The two eldest sons of Pierre's five children were born in France while Remi and his two sisters were born in the U.S., but Bellocq said the family still spoke French at the dinner table.

He remembers growing up in Queens watching his father's fame grow in his role as the editorial cartoonist for the Morning Telegraph and its sister paper, Daily Racing Form.

Pierre and Remi Bellocq on the evening Pierre received The Jockey Club Metal in 2016. | photo courtesy Remi Bellocq

“Growing up watching him draw, my siblings and I all kind of doodled a bit at school, and I guess I kind of followed in his footsteps,” Bellocq said.

While the younger Bellocq did enjoy drawing as a hobby during childhood, he said his true passion was always for the horse.

“My first horse came over from a trainer named John Russell,” Bellocq recalled. “He was the very first person to start really worrying about where his horses went after their careers, before it became a big issue. I had my backyard horse in central New Jersey and I kind of taught myself to ride. Every day I would come back with branches in my helmet because he would just take off with me.”

Bellocq caught on quickly though, and by the time he was a teenager, he was up early in the mornings galloping horses at Belmont Park before school began. During the summers, he traveled to Normandy to work for owner, breeder and trainer David Powell. While overseas, he had an opportunity to become an amateur rider.

After traveling throughout North America and Europe as a jockey, Bellocq founded the Amateur Riders Club of America with his father while attending the University of Arizona's Agriculture Racetrack Management program.

“My first job was at Garden State Park in New Jersey,” Bellocq recalled. “Then from that point it's like working for a ball club. You move with ownership changes and all that. So I've had jobs at Garden State Park; Longacres in Seattle, where I met my wife; Hollywood Park; and Santa Anita. Then fast-forward to 2000, I was offered the job to run the National HBPA.”

Bellocq served as the National HBPA's CEO for a decade before stepping into his current role as the executive director of the equine program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC).

“Our program has been around since 2006,” he explained. “We're formerly known as the North American Racing Academy, but in the last couple of years we've purposefully shifted from being known as a riding school to more of a workforce preparation and training program for all different jobs on the racetrack. Now we've officially changed our name to BCTC Equine. We're a full service-type program and as far as I know, we're the only career and training program on a community college level of its type in the country.”

Popular Remi Bellocq cartoon feature for the Florida Horse. | courtesy Remi Bellocq from Florida Horse

Bellocq said that as the program has grown in recent years, his role has morphed to help get the word out on what their training has to offer to the next generation in the sport.

“I kind of focus on advocacy and industry relations,” he said. “I also work on grant applications and things like that, but it's really outreach as much as anything.”

When he's not in his office at BCTC or on the ground at The Thoroughbred Center in Lexington overseeing students in training, Bellocq can be found in his home office wearing a different hat as he puts the vision for his next cartoon down on paper.

He said that readers should not expect to see the same thing from him every day. While most of his features are aimed to put a smile on the viewer's face, others may be a bit more thought-provoking.

“I'm not afraid to draw a cartoon on something that's maybe a little controversial,” he said. “But at the same time, you have to mix that up with other content, like if you see something super funny that happens on a day-to-day basis on the racetrack, you've got to do those as well. So that's the balance that I'm going to try to strike and hopefully the readers will respond.”

But in each and every piece, he said he hopes to conserve the timelessness that was often noted of his father's work.

“I admire what he did for all those years with the Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form because I can pull out some of his older drawings and they're still funny today. So that's what I aspire to do someday and hopefully in the TDN, I can bring a lot of laughter to folks.”

Watch for part two of our conversation with Remi Bellocq on his hand in the growth of BCTC's Equine Program.

The post Remi Bellocq Part 1: Keeping it Light at the TDN appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Bellocq, Leggett Selected to Hall of Fame’s Joe Hirsch Roll of Honor

Renowned Eclipse Award-winning cartoonist Pierre “Peb” Bellocq and the late Eclipse Award-winning writer William Leggett have been selected to the National Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.

Bellocq, 94, was born in France in 1926. At age 19, the French racing journal France Courses gave him national exposure by publishing one of his cartoons of a jockey. Bellocq signed the drawing as “Peb,” a signature that became his lifelong moniker. By 1954, Bellocq’s work had achieved international acclaim and he was contracted by Laurel Park owner John D. Schapiro to do drawings for the prestigious Washington, D.C. International Stakes. Bellocq decided to relocate to the United States and in 1955 accepted an offer to work as the staff cartoonist for the Morning Telegraph and its sister paper, the Daily Racing Form, a job he held until December 2008.

“My father was a jump jockey in the south of France and my grandfather was a trainer. His father was a breeder. I was among horses right from the start,” Bellocq said.

Along with his work for the Form, Bellocq has been commissioned by numerous racetracks to produce vibrant murals capturing the flavor of the sport. His large-scale cartoon collages became fixtures at tracks such as Churchill Downs, Del Mar, Arlington, Oaklawn, Aqueduct, and The Meadowlands.

Leggett, who was born in Saratoga Springs, NY in 1931, became one of racing’s most celebrated and respected writers during his 30-year career at Sports Illustrated. He spent time as president of both the National Turf Writers Association and the New York Turf Writers Association and won an Eclipse Award for his racing writing in 1979.

“He had a tremendous knowledge of Thoroughbred racing,” said the late Whitney Tower, who worked with Leggett at Sports Illustrated for nearly 20 years. “He was an exceptional man, a great talent, and he contributed a lot to the success of Sports Illustrated. He knew his way around. The trainers respected him. He was very popular.”

In 1993, Leggett was one of the eight inaugural members of the Saratoga Springs Sports Hall of Fame. He died in 1996 in New York City at the age of 64.

The post Bellocq, Leggett Selected to Hall of Fame’s Joe Hirsch Roll of Honor appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Source of original post

Peb Bellocq, Bill Leggett Selected To National Museum Of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll Of Honor

Renowned Eclipse Award-winning cartoonist Pierre “Peb” Bellocq and the late Eclipse Award-winning writer William Leggett have been selected to the National Museum of Racing's Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.

Bellocq, 94, was born in France in 1926. At age 19, the French racing journal France Courses gave him national exposure by publishing one of his cartoons of a jockey. Bellocq signed the drawing as “Peb,” a signature that became his lifelong moniker.

By 1954, Bellocq's work had achieved international acclaim and he was contracted by Laurel Park owner John D. Schapiro to do drawings for the prestigious Washington, D.C. International Stakes. Bellocq decided to relocate to the United States and in 1955 accepted an offer to work as the staff cartoonist for the Morning Telegraph and its sister paper, the Daily Racing Form, a job he held until December 2008. Early in this career, Bellocq also produced political cartoons for the Philadelphia Enquirer while simultaneously working for the Form. Bellocq eventually transitioned his primary focus to thoroughbred racing.

“My father was a jump jockey in the south of France and my grandfather was a trainer. His father was a breeder. I was among horses right from the start,” Bellocq said.

Along with his work for the Form, Bellocq has been commissioned by numerous racetracks to produce vibrant murals capturing the flavor of the sport. His large-scale cartoon collages became fixtures at tracks such as Churchill Downs, Del Mar, Arlington, Oaklawn, Aqueduct, and The Meadowlands.

Bellocq has also produced several books; his first, published in 1957, consisted of 150 cartoons and was titled “Peb's Equine Comedy.” Bellocq also illustrated the 1969 Joe Hirsch book “A Treasury of Questions and Answers from the Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form.” In 2004, he created drawings for author Ed Hotaling's book on Hall of Fame jockey Jimmy Winkfield, whom Bellocq had known personally when the rider was living and racing in his hometown of Maisons-Laffitte.

Bellocq has received numerous awards for his work, which has been exhibited extensively. In 1980, he received an Eclipse Award for his contributions to racing and he was presented The Jockey Club Medal in 2016. Bellocq also received the National Cartoonists Society 1991 Sports Cartoon Award and their 1999 Newspaper Illustration Award. In 1998, the Daniel Wildenstein Art Gallery in New York held an exhibition of Bellocq's work titled The Racing World in Sketch and Caricature. From July 2004 through December 2005, the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame put on a special exhibition of his works titled Peb: The Art of Humor, which celebrated his 50th anniversary of horse racing artwork in the United States.

Leggett, who was born in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1931, became one of racing's most celebrated and respected writers during his 30-year career at Sports Illustrated. After graduating from Saratoga Springs High School, Leggett earned a degree from Seton Hall University. He then had a brief stint in the Army before being hired by Sports Illustrated as a researcher and football writer.
It didn't take long for Leggett to get expanded assignments, as his role increased to also include covering baseball, college and professional basketball, and both thoroughbred and harness racing. Leggett also covered the Olympics, including the U.S. hockey team's 1960 upset of the Soviet Union. He was eventually named Turf Editor for Sports Illustrated.

Leggett, who spent time as president of both the National Turf Writers Association and the New York Turf Writers Association, won an Eclipse Award for his racing writing in 1979. After retiring from Sports Illustrated in 1986, Leggett continued his coverage of the sport as the New York correspondent for Thoroughbred Times and as a columnist for The Saratogian's racing supplement, The Pink Sheet.

“He had a tremendous knowledge of thoroughbred racing,” said the late Whitney Tower, who worked with Leggett at Sports Illustrated for nearly 20 years. “He was an exceptional man, a great talent, and he contributed a lot to the success of Sports Illustrated. He knew his way around. The trainers respected him. He was very popular.”

In 1993, Leggett was one of the eight inaugural members of the Saratoga Springs Sports Hall of Fame. He died in 1996 in New York City at the age of 64.

Previous selections to the Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor are Steven Crist (2010), Bill Nack (2010), Red Smith (2010), Charles Hatton (2010), Dr. Russ Harris (2011), Joe Palmer (2011), Jay Hovdey (2012), Whitney Tower (2012), Andrew Beyer (2013), Kent Hollingsworth (2013), George F. T. Ryall (2013), Jennie Rees (2014), Jim Murray (2014), Steve Haskin (2015), Raleigh Burroughs (2015), Maryjean Wall (2016), Jim McKay (2016), Michael Veitch (2017), Jack Whitaker (2017), Barney Nagler (2017), Joe Burnham (2018), Tom Hammond (2018), Charlsie Cantey (2019), and Billy Reed (2019).

The National Museum of Racing's Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor was established in 2010 to recognize individuals whose careers have been dedicated to, or substantially involved in, writing about thoroughbred racing (non-fiction), and who distinguished themselves as journalists. The criteria has since been expanded to allow the inclusion of other forms of media.

Often referred to as the dean of thoroughbred racing writers, Hirsch won both the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Writing and the Lord Derby Award in London from the Horserace Writers and Reporters Association of Great Britain. He also received the Eclipse Award of Merit (1993), the Big Sport of Turfdom Award (1983), The Jockey Club Medal (1989), and was designated as the honored guest at the 1994 Thoroughbred Club of America's testimonial dinner. The annual Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Invitational at Belmont Park is named in his honor. Hirsch was also a former chairman of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Nominating Committee. He died in 2009.

The Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor Committee is comprised of Edward L. Bowen (chairman), author of more than 20 books on thoroughbred racing; Bob Curran, retired Jockey Club vice president of corporate communications; Ken Grayson, National Museum of Racing trustee; Jane Goldstein, retired turf publicist; Steve Haskin, Secretariat.com; G. D. Hieronymus, retired Keeneland Director of Broadcast Services; and Dan Smith, senior media coordinator of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.

The post Peb Bellocq, Bill Leggett Selected To National Museum Of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll Of Honor appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Source of original post