How did we get hooked on this sport? We all have stories about how our love affair developed and blossomed. The TDN will be reaching out to numerous notable people in the industry to get their stories to find out how they got hooked and stayed hooked on the sport.

Brian Spearman, Chairman, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners

Growing up in Saratoga, it’s pretty inevitable that you’re going to fall in love with horse racing if you love horses and you love the whole atmosphere.

As a young adult, I went to the track quite a bit. I wound up working at the track a couple of summers as a Pinkerton. And my love for the sport and the animals just grew. Fast forward, I went to work for Pepsi for 33 years and right around maybe 14 years ago I decided I wanted to try to make this lifelong dream of horse ownership happen.

I didn’t know who to contact and I didn’t know where to begin but a friend of mine said you ought to give this gentleman Cot Campbell a call. I met Cot and was a Dogwood partner for a number of years and he was fantastic. He taught me a ton and he introduced me to Aron Wellman of Eclipse Thoroughbreds, and Aron and I have been partners now for a decade.

My love of the sport just keeps growing. Keeneland is fantastic, Del Mar is fantastic. Santa Anita is a wonderful place. But, of course, Saratoga has always been special in my heart. When you’re a young man and you are introduced to it up there, it’s pretty hard not to have it in your blood.

Saratoga is a place where you can introduce people to racing in a venue that allows you to be up close and personal and has a family atmosphere to it. That was the key. Back then, the paddock wasn’t even fenced in. You could get pretty close to the horses. The horses are just so majestic and I think the fact that the horse is really what’s being displayed at Saratoga and not so much the gambling and everything else, I think that’s what drew me to it. Just watching these magnificent animals. It’s pretty hard not to fall in love with it.

My dad worked as a Pinkerton, too. He actually guarded Secretariat when he was in Saratoga. As a young man he took me over there to see him. There was another horse, one some people might not remember named Jaklin Klugman. Jack Klugman owned him and my dad took me to see him, too. He worked nights so he could sneak me onto the backstretch to see these famous horses.

As a young man getting to watch Affirmed and Alydar was pretty exciting, pretty amazing. In the last 10 years being associated with some of Eclipse’s standard bearers, like Tapwrit, who won the Belmont, Feathered and Nest. Those things were all very special to me.

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This story was posted in Shared News and tagged Affirmed, Alydar, Aron Wellman, Belmont Park, Brian Spearman, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, fans at Saratoga, Feathered, Hooked on Horse Racing, Horse Racing, Jack Klugman, Nest, NYRA, Pinkerton, Secretariat, thoroughbreds.