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Across The Board With Andy Serling: Horacio DePaz

Following an extended hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Across the Board with Andy Serling podcast returns this week featuring an interview with trainer Horacio DePaz.

The 35-year-old DePaz, who grew up watching Quarter Horses as a teenager in his native Texas, discusses his life in racing including working on the backstretch of Louisiana Downs; serving as an exercise rider and assistant for Kentucky Derby-winning trainers John Servis and Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas; as well as assisting Todd Pletcher, where he looked after accomplished runners Rags to Riches, Devil May Care and Quality Road.

DePaz went out on his own in 2015 setting up shop on the Mid-Atlantic circuit training horses for Kevin Plank's historic Sagamore Farm.
Now based in both Maryland and New York, DePaz also discussed training horses for owner Barry Schwartz and making an impact on the NYRA circuit with Sharp Starr, winner of the Grade 3 Go for Wand in November at the Big A, and stakes-winning New York-bred Amundson, who is entered in the Hollie Hughes on Monday at Aqueduct.

The episode is now available for download via https://soundcloud.com/acrosstheboardwithandyserling

About Across the Board with Andy Serling

Launched in April 2017, Across the Board with Andy Serling is a podcast presented by the New York Racing Association. New episodes of the show will be released in regular installments throughout the year, providing fans and horseplayers with access to the most interesting personalities in racing.

To access the complete ATB episode library please visit: https://soundcloud.com/acrosstheboardwithandyserling

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‘Team Deal’: Aidan Green Celebrates First Training Win At Oaklawn Park

Aidan Green was holding her 4-month-old and pushing a stroller through the grandstand early Thursday afternoon at Oaklawn. Less than an hour later, Green was strolling into the Larry Snyder Winner's Circle following her first career training victory recognized by Equibase, racing's official data gathering organization.

Green achieved her personal milestone with Kristo ($18.20), who won the fifth race, a starter-allowance route, by 3 ¾ lengths under Elvin Gonzalez. Kristo marked the 21st recognized starter for Green, who saddled her first horse in 2020, according to Equibase. Green's husband, Ike, is a former trainer who now assists his wife and Robertino Diodoro, Oaklawn's leading trainer in 2020. Aidan Green said she has seven horses on the track in training.

“Like Ike and I, we've won a lot of races, it's just the first time it's been under my name, so, it doesn't really feel like a first win,” Green said. “But it's cool to have it under my name now. We've always been a team. We've run Cody Autrey's barn in the past and we've run Robertino's in the past.”

Green, 33, grew up in Canada around the Quarter-Horses and draft horses her family owned. A star volleyball player, Green signed with Texas Tech before transferring to Texas-El Paso, where she was a four-year letterman (2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009). Green, also an aspiring photographer, said she met her future husband in 2010 when he was training at Sunland Park in suburban El Paso. They married in 2013 and have three children, 5, 4 and 4 months.

“Team deal, you know,” Aidan Green said. “With three kids and all the horses, Ike and I kind of rotate around, wherever we're both needed. We do it as a team, everything we do. I'm not a full-time photographer. I'd like to be. Full-time mom and then, I guess, second is horse trainer after that.”

Green owns Kristo, a 10-year-old Distorted Humor gelding, with sister-in-law Delinda Green. Ike Green's brother, trainer Greg Green, had claimed Kristo for $8,000 early last year at Sunland Park.

Kristo was exiting a third-place finish in a starter-allowance sprint Jan. 22 at Oaklawn.

“He ran really good his last start,” Green said. “Elvin just gave him a good ride. He kind of picks his certain riders and likes them. He ran really good for Elvin, so we were excited to get in this spot. Thought it was a good one.”

Kristo's victory came roughly seven years after Green said she won a race as an owner/trainer at a weekend fair meet in Fargo, N.D. That victory, Green noted, isn't recognized by Equibase.

“When we were at Canterbury, we shipped over with one that we owned ourselves,” Green said. “They had like tents set up. It was so much fun. This was my first real recognized one, as me as trainer.”

Ike Green unearthed and broke multiple Grade 1 winner and 2018 Triple Crown hopeful Bolt d'Oro when working for former business partner Mick Ruis. Green has 98 career training victories, according to Equibase, the first coming in 2001.

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Trainer Val Brinkerhoff Suffers Minor Injuries In Pre-Race Incident With Restrainedvengence

Veteran trainer Val Brinkerhoff suffered minor injuries in a pre-race incident with stable star Restrainedvengence on Saturday, reports the Daily Racing Form. The 6-year-old gelding was entered in the afternoon's G3 Thunder Road Stakes at Santa Anita Park, but was scratched after he reacted poorly to a pre-race blood draw and sent his trainer to the hospital.

Brinkerhoff, 64, said he was transported to the hospital because he takes blood thinners and doctors wanted to be sure he hadn't suffered internal bleeding. He was diagnosed with a cracked elbow, broken finger, and separated shoulder.

“I was more worried about my horse,” Brinkerhoff told drf.com. “He just don't like that needle. When he blows up, you might as well forget it.”

Racing Pioneer Sylvia Bishop Featured In New Book

A chance meeting, an exchange of pleasantries in Virginia with a stranger while waiting in line for a cup of coffee, led Vicky Moon on a 15-year journey that has resulted in “Sylvia Rideoutt Bishop Had a Way With Horses.”

The book tells the story of Bishop, a pioneer in sport who became the first Black woman to win a Thoroughbred race as a licensed trainer, according to Moon's book, while training horses at Laurel Park, Timonium and Charles Town, as well as former tracks Hagerstown Race Course, Shenandoah Downs and Cumberland Race Track.

Moon, an author of several books including the “The Private Passion of Jackie Kennedy Onassis” and “Equestrian Life,” was fortunate to spend time with Bishop before she died in December of 2004.

“After the chance meeting with one of her relatives waiting for coffee, I was able to spend one day a week with her from August of 2004 until December of that year when she passed away,” Moon said. “She knew the impact of what she did, but in a very unassuming way. She would sit on her couch and say, 'I was the first Black woman to do this.'”

There was probably no one better to tell Bishop's story than Moon, who grew up in Fort Lauderdale, learned to ride in nearby Davie, and watched her family's horses run at Gulfstream Park, Hialeah Park and Calder as a child.

“My mother would let me skip school to go to Hialeah,” recalled Moon, a resident of Fort Lauderdale who spends summers in Virginia.

Moon's chance encounter in the coffee shop and the time she spent with Bishop led to her 15-year study of Bishop's life as well as her determination to break stereotypes and segregation in Thoroughbred racing over the past century.

Born in West Virginia, Bishop, one of 17 children, worked as a groom at Charles Town at the age of 14. While many of the horses she trained ran under her husband's name, she became the first licensed Black woman to train the winner of a Thoroughbred race in the United States on October of 1959 with a horse named Chalkee.

Bishop, who left racing for financial reasons between 1973-1987 to work at Doubleday publishing, trained some horses for Nelson Bunker Hunt as well as Fasig-Tipton President Tyson Gilpin. It was Gilpin's Bright Gem who afforded Bishop one of her biggest victories, winning the Iron Horse Mile at Shenandoah in 1962. Eddie Arcaro presented the winning trophy and Carl Gambardella was aboard. She returned to training in the 1980s and saddled her last winner in 2000, visiting the Charles Town winner's circle with Lone Wolf in February of that year.

“Sylvia Rideoutt Bishop Had a Way With Horses” is available as a book and on Kindle at Amazon.com. Autographed hardback books are available at vickymoon.com.

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