Ellis Park has announced three new team members for their historic 100-year race meet: Vince Gabbert as interim Director of Racing, Megan Devine as Paddock Analyst and Simulcast Host, and Allie Sclafani as Race Marketing Coordinator. The 100-year race meet runs from July 8 to August 28 in Henderson, Kentucky.
Vince Gabbert is a 14-year veteran of the industry, having served as Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Keeneland Racecourse from 2009 to 2022. Gabbert had previously worked as Deputy Chief of Staff to the governor and a Regional Director of Public Finance for Ross, Sinclaire & Associates. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science and government from the University of Louisville in 1998 and studied at its Louis D. Brandeis School of Law from 1998 to 2001.
“The opportunity to work at Ellis Park and be a part of the continued momentum for Kentucky racing is extraordinary. I am very much looking forward to being a part of the 100-year celebration and working with the horsemen and staff to help deliver a wonderful race meeting,” said Gabbert. “We're excited about this year and the product we're offering. The track has made several improvements to benefit the horses, the horsemen, and the fans. With the horseplayers in mind, we're also dropping the Pick 5 takeout to 15%.”
Megan Devine, a native of Long Island, graduated from the University of Louisville's Equine Industry Program in 2014. Devine previously worked as On-Air Talent for TVG, Santa Anita Park, XBTV, America's Best Racing, Horse Racing Radio Network, TwinSpires, ESPN Louisville, Turfway Park, Kentucky Downs, Sky Racing World, and Ellis Park.
“Ellis Park was one of my first On-Air positions in horse racing back in 2016. Since then, I've had the great pleasure of working for several television channels, racetracks, and other media outlets worldwide,” said Devine. “I'm excited to take what I have learned over the last 6 years and bring it back to my position at Ellis Park. Being around the horses has always been my favorite part of the job. That's part of the reason I moved back to Kentucky in 2020. I'm thrilled for the opportunity to be an On-Air Paddock Analyst at a race meet once again.”
Allie Sclafani has worked with TVG and three racetracks in Kentucky. She returned to Ellis Park in June of 2022 to help manage all race-related marketing efforts, including Admissions, Sponsorships, Simulcast, Advertising, Events, etc.
Sclafani has already spent time at the “Pea Patch” track,
“I was at Ellis in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that point, we were just trying to keep her doors open. We came together then just like we're coming together now for her 100th year of racing. That's what small tracks like Ellis do. Despite all odds, we make it out together,” said Sclafani. “We're grateful to be moving forward, without restrictions, for the historic 2022 meet.”
Ellis Park will conduct live racing Friday through Sunday, from July 8 to August 28. First post will be 12:50 PM Central Time.
Jimmy Quinn, 55, is Britain's oldest professional jockey and he enjoyed a day to remember at Newmarket Thursday when he partnered Lethal Levi (16-1) to victory in the £100,000 Bet Boost At bet365 Handicap (six furlongs).
The 3-year-old Lethal Force gelding went into a clear lead after the first furlong and was never in any real danger of being caught thereafter in the 19-runner contest as he kept finding more and more for Quinn. At the finish, he had 1 1/2 lengths to spare over runner-up Admiral D (20-1).
In years gone by Quinn, who rode his first winner in 1985 and has over 1,300 successes to his name, was among the very busiest jockeys in Britain. In 2002 for example, he clocked up a remarkable 1,108 rides. While life may be slightly more sedate nowadays, the Cheveley-based jockey revealed after today's success that he has no immediate plans to hang up his boots.
Jimmy Quinn said: “This is my 38th season with a license. It was 1985 that I had my first winner and I can see it in a photograph at home. You don't get these winners when you get to my age. Somebody said to me when are you going to retire and I said Saturday, I don't know which Saturday but I can promise you it won't be this Saturday!
“It was fairly straightforward. Karl gave me plenty of confidence and Clifford Lee, who has been riding him, gave me plenty of confidence. I was a little bit worried I had stall 14 but I made myself go to the middle of the track. He popped the lids not very good as he was rocking in there, so he didn't hit them on an even keel. It took me about a furlong to get my foot in the iron properly.
“From halfway I'm thinking I've got a lot of horse here. I gave him a squeeze past the three and he has just ran on all the way to the line. I don't know what the time was like. He has been carrying a lot of weight in lesser races and he is only a small handy horse. I've never ridden him before and I will probably never ride him again but he has done everything right for me today. I've got a lot of friends in there (weighing room). I've been around a while and it is nice to have a winner on television and it is nice to have a winner here.”
Winning rider Karl Burke added: “I was thinking of stepping this horse up to seven but I thought it was too good a prize not to have a go at. I thought my other horse (Aasser, who finished eighth) had the better chance if I'm truthful.
“I've known Jimmy a long time. He texted me at the entry stage. I had two out of the weights and him low in the weights and he said don't forget me! I nearly did and put someone else on but Jimmy has given him a great ride.
“This horse is on an upward curve. They travelled down last night and I went over to the stables this morning and took the rugs off all of them including him and I said to the lads he looks fantastic.
“He never runs a bad race and that was probably a career best for him. Jimmy said he was travelling so I don't know if it was rope they were giving him or if they couldn't travel with him. I don't think it was any fluke anyway. I'd say the handicapper won't be too kind with him today but we will see what he does. He probably deserves an easy week. We will possibly step him up to seven next time.”
Jockey Barry McHugh said of the second Admiral D: “It was a great run and I was just a bit out of my ground early.
“He sort of warms up to the race but I think if it comes up a deluge somewhere he's a very good horse.”
Louisiana Downs is pleased to announce that Matt Crawford has been named Racing Secretary, effective July 18. He will oversee racing office operations for both the current Thoroughbred racing season and the 2023 Quarter Horse meet at the Bossier City, La., track.
Crawford, 65, began his career in horse racing as an assistant trainer. His association with Louisiana Downs began in 1980 with one of his trainees, Big Sturgeon, named 1987 Horse of the Meet.
Crawford made the transition to numerous racing office roles, beginning at Louisiana Downs, where he was employed as assistant racing secretary from 2008-2013. He has served as racing secretary at Delta Downs, Canterbury Park, Sam Houston Race Park, Ruidoso Downs, Zia Park and Hialeah Park. Most recently, Crawford was racing secretary for the Lone Star Park Fall Meet of Champions and assistant racing secretary for their 2021 and 2022 Thoroughbred live racing seasons.
The native Texan is looking forward to returning to the Bossier City racetrack, encouraged by the dedication to racing by new owner Kevin Preston and Mitch Dennison, Louisiana Downs General Manager of Racing.
“I know so many horsemen in this region who are thrilled with the direction of Louisiana Downs,” said Crawford. “As someone in the industry who began training racehorses, I share the commitment of Kevin and Mitch in creating energy and enthusiasm for our sport. They have a great racing office team in place, led by Jennifer Sokol, Racing Operations Manager and assistant Racing Secretary, Tammy Peck. I am looking forward to this opportunity.”
In turn, Dennison knows that Crawford's expertise as a racing secretary coupled with his long term associations with Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas horsemen, will make for a smooth transition.
“Matt has a noted tenure in our industry and knows our region very well,” said Dennison. “We are fully committed to serving our horsemen at the highest level and know that Matt shares that goal. He joins an established racing office team, well-coordinated by Jennifer Sokol. There is no doubt that Matt will be a great fit as he returns to Louisiana Downs.”
The 2022 Thoroughbred meet at Louisiana Downs began on Saturday, May 7 with live racing each Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Louisiana Cup Day, featuring six stakes for Louisiana-breds is set for Saturday, August 6. The purse for each has been raised to $67,000 with nominations closing on July 23. The 84-day live racing season will conclude on September 27.
Here's something you don't often hear coming from a jockey's lips:
“I can't push it too hard because if I ride too many, they're going to take away my Social Security.”
Then again, Kim Sampson isn't the kind of jockey you come across every day. She hopes to soon be recognized as a Guinness World Record holder.
In April of this year, Sampson returned to the winner's circle for the first time in 38 years. According to the online Guinness Book of World Records, the longest period of time between jockey wins previously was 12 years and 260 days. Sampson rode her last victory in October 1983 at Fairmount Park and hung up her tack the following year. She'd grown tired of struggling to make weight, and while she was growing burned out on racing, Sampson said she never totally ruled out the idea of getting into the starting gate again.
If you look Sampson up in Equibase, as she says, “you can't find me.” The first phase of her career as a jockey started at the end of 1980, and she rode her best season as a bug in 1981. In 1982, she gave birth to a son and returned in 1983. All told, she believes she has won 83 races.
Sampson came to horses through her family. One of nine children, Sampson had a Quarter Horse she rode alongside a racehorse her father bred from the family of Man o' War. Sampson and her brother would often be tasked with colt breaking their father's training stock. Both of them wanted to learn to gallop, and Sampson said her brother would often get the first shot. Sampson would watch what he did wrong, take mental notes, and swing aboard for the next workout, shining by comparison.
“I'd see where he got thrown off and say, I know what to do now,” she said.
Her skills with difficult horses caught the eye of Jerry Lee Sampson, who was training horses at the same facility. Jerry hired Kim to gallop for him in the mornings before school, and when Kim turned 18, the two were married. Kim said it was her husband who convinced her to begin riding races after he grew frustrated with a few rides given to his horses by professional jockeys.
The life of a jockey was different in the early 1980s, Sampson said. Even at Fairmount, fields were often full with AEs ready to draw in if a horse scratched. The jockey colony could be 30 or 40 riders, and riding through traffic was an everyday occurrence.
“It wasn't like racing today,” she said. “It was always a ten-horse field, so it was nothing like riding today. If it was riding like back then, I'd say the heck with it. You were in tight on a regular basis, but you kept control of your horse.”
Sampson said she was among the first female jockeys to succeed at Fairmount, and did so despite not being given the same quality of horses as her male competitors. She kept her own book and wasn't afraid to stick up for herself. She didn't know it at the time, but she said Jerry, who remained an active owner/breeder/trainer, was sticking up for her too.
[Story Continues Below]
“There was times I felt like I was boxed in,” she said. “But they were fearful of my husband. He threatened one of them one time, and I didn't even know he did it. I think it was one of the other people in the grandstand who'd bet on me and said something to him [about rough riding].
“I feel like in a sense, they respected me. It was just the trainers, they weren't giving me a shot back then.”
Weights were also lower in those days, which was a struggle for Sampson even before she took time away to give birth. When she walked away in 1984, she was relieved to stop dieting.
She took a small string of her husband's horses to Chicago and found some success in the late 1980s, but she and Jerry had gotten frustrated with the expense involved in breeding and racing and sold their horses.
When Sampson left the track, she took jobs at a bottling plant, ran the couple's Bonanza Campground, and eventually settled into Jerry's profession of iron working. It was hard work; Sampson's job usually involved working on bridge decks and metal buildings, assembling steel pieces on the ground and sending them up into the air for a crew to apply to a structure. Then, Sampson would come along and finish bolting them together. She spent 28 years in the profession until she broke her hand on a trail ride in 2019.
True to the gritty attitude of professional horsewomen, Sampson saw the injury as an opportunity.
“I could tape my fingers together and still gallop,” she said. “So I did that and I'd just get on a few a day, just for [Eddie Essenpreis]. I just kept doing it through the winter. This winter here, the other guy never showed up, so I just kept doing it.”
Sampson had worked for Essenpreis early in her career and felt she could trust him to put her on horses who would help her regain her fitness. She soon began working horses for Dennis Higgins, also, and now gets on at least 15 each morning.
When her hand healed and she was cleared to return to work, Sampson gave it some thought. She was approaching 60 and thought it was time to retire from iron work … but not from racehorses.
Higgins and others on the backstretch talked her into race riding again at the age of 63.
Sampson aboard Lonesome Dream, with trainer Dennis Higgins at their side
“They bought my helmet and stuff,” she said. “My stuff was dry rotted!”
Sampson made her first start back on April 19 and picked up her first win on April 30 with Higgins' Lonesome Dream. She teamed up with the gelding again in June for an allowance win. Sampson said it's easy to look at Lonesome Dream in the paddock and doubt he's got the goods (perhaps not dissimilarly to the mistake an observer may make about her skills due to her age), but it's all about attitude.
“He's a pretty cool horse,” she said. “He's laidback. When they have him in the paddock, one rider was laughing at him saying, I hope he runs faster than that. You take him to the racetrack, he just wants to stand there for a minute. I just kind of let him have his way and we click pretty good.”
Much like Lonesome Dream, Sampson has the guts for the job but is in no hurry for the next step. She said fellow riders were a little suspicious of her appearance in the jocks' room, fearing she was aiming to take food off their tables. As someone who's retired, she said, she isn't interested in riding races in such volume as to create a threat to them.
“I wish I could say I'd go for my 100 wins, because I've won 83 now, but I'd lose my Social Security if I did that,” she said. “The meet here ends in September and I'll probably finish out this. I won't be back next year. Come this fall, I'll be back trail riding.”
