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.

Eddie Olczyk, former NHL player, T.V. analyst
It goes back to around 1978. I was 12 and in the summertime I was playing spring- and summer-league hockey and a teammate of mine’s dad was our manager, a guy by the name of Tony Kwilas. His son Danny was our goalie. He was a horseplayer and in between our hockey sessions, he grabbed us one day and we went to the track, to Arlington. I knew we were going to go there a couple of days prior. I borrowed $20 from my mother’s purse. That was my introduction at the old Arlington. I loved going there and seeing these incredible equine athletes and these crazy human beings getting on the back of these horses. At that time, I had no clue so far as what I was doing. But being at the track at the old Arlington was just awesome. That was my first introduction to it.

My first few wagers, I just played numbers. I played my hockey number which was 16. I lost my first few races and I was down to $12. I went up and bet a $5 exacta box and sure enough it came in. I hit for something like $153. I went back to the ticket taker, the same one I went to for my first two bets. I was a big kid when I was 12, but I certainly didn’t look like I was 18. More like 15, 16. I see the total, $153. The guy looks at me and says, ‘Hey, kid, how old are you?’ I looked at him and said ‘you didn’t ask me how old I was when I lost.’ Then the guy pulled out a hundred, then some tens and fives. I slipped him a $5 tip and winked at him. You should have seen his reaction when I gave him the $5. He must have thought I was some smart-ass kid.

I kept going to the track with Danny and his dad and they would have the Racing Form. I am a Racing Form guy through and through. I learned to read the Form and I listened to what older people who had been playing the game for a long time had to tell me.  When I would go to the track or tape the races at home, I would always watch the race replays and then go back and look at the Form and go, ‘Ok, how did the puzzle come together after the fact?’ I kind of worked from the end result backward. I evolved as a handicapper over the years. I first heard about track bias toward the end of my career, in the mid-90s. I just started really tracking biases and taking notes. I became real hard-core on that. I realized some days it didn’t matter if you had the fastest horse in the race, he’s not going to win if he’s running on the worst part of the track. Handicapping really challenged me. I had my hockey career but racing and handicapping gave me an opportunity to breathe a little bit and enjoy a passion that’s been with me for 46 years.

Maggi Moss, lawyer and racehorse owner
I got hooked on horses when I was nine years old. I lived in Iowa and my dad had served in the Army and with mounted police horses. He bought me my first show horse when I was nine. I went from having one horse when I was nine all the way to him building a show horse farm and competing on the big horse show circuit. That was until I went to law school. I was going to be lawyer.

In 1997, before I ever owned any racehorses, a girlfriend took me to Prairie Meadows. I started to think this was a beautiful sport. Since I had been judging horse shows, I started marking my program noting who had the biggest, shiniest best-looking racehorse in each race. I went to a trainer and asked him what it would cost to buy a horse. I only knew about show horses and I knew they were really expensive. The trainer told me I could get a really good racehorse for $25,000. That year, the trainer (David R. Vance) claimed a horse for me at Oaklawn named Apak for $25,000. That was my first racehorse.

I always tell people that when I went and watched that horse run, I knew horses really well but I knew nothing about horse racing. How do I get silks, where is the winner’s circle? I had done show horses for 20 years. We shipped Apak over to Prairie Meadows and in his fourth start for me, he won. I still remember who the jockey was–Vicki Warhol. Apak won that day and it changed my life. What would have happened if it didn’t go well with that horse? I don’t know. He won a bunch of races at Prairie Meadows and I thought, I want to do a lot more of this. I want many, many horses . I thought the game was easy.

In 2006, I might have had 50-60 race horses around the country. Someone told me no female owner had ever led the nation in wins. I was right near the top of the standings. I won 211 races in 2006, more than any other owner that year, the first woman to do so in more than half a century.

About two months later, I got a call at my law office, a woman from New Jersey said she had one of our horse that they just bailed out of a kill pen. At that point, I didn’t know anything about slaughter. Then everything changed. I wasn’t so interested in winning owner titles.  I was going to save horses. That’s what happened.