Good day, belated Happy Thanksgiving to all. It was great to see many of you out in California for the Breeders’ Cup and our successful 51st annual Awards Dinner at The Brigantine in Del Mar. The minutes from our pre-Breeders’ Cup meeting are attached for your reference.

As you can see, we discussed several topics and welcomed two new members and changed another from Associate to Regular Writer. We also formed a new committee to look into ways to fund a scholarship/internship program independently or with industry organizations/publications. That committee will hopefully be meeting soon to get the ball rolling and have something to present at our Kentucky Derby Week meeting. 

If you’re interested in working on the committee, or have any ideas, feel free to send me a note at tom@thisishorseracing.com. Any and all help is appreciated. 

Speaking of help and back to our Awards Dinner, another hearty round of applause for the team that pulled everything together and made the night special. Julie Sarno, Loren Hebel-Osborne, Jay Hovdey, Jay Sarno, Byron King and Dick Downey took the lead and we can’t thank them enough for their efforts. Thanks as well to all who bought tickets and tables and to our emcee Peter Lurie. Great work by all. 

Other items of note:

• Voting for the Eclipse Awards will commence soon. A committee with representatives designated by the three voting groups – NTWAB, NTRA and Daily Racing Form – will meet next week to discuss horses to include in the voting supplement and voting will begin Friday, Dec. 17 and run through Monday, Jan. 10. 

• Regular or tenured members in good standing are eligible to vote for the Eclipse Awards. If you have not paid dues you are not in good standing and will not receive a ballot. 

• The NTWAB board and the Eclipse Award Steering Committee over the past year has discussed the issue of conflicts of interest by eligible Eclipse Award voters. Please remember that if you have a direct or even indirect conflict of interest in any of the categories to please recuse yourself from voting. The integrity of the voting process is important, so please do the right thing. 

• If you have a question about whether there is a conflict or not, feel free to reach out to me at any time to discuss. 

Hopefully your coverage of the Breeders’ Cup went off without any issues. If you did encounter any problems with access, credentialing, etc., feel free to let me know and we can discuss it with Jim Gluckson and his team. 

I wish you all a safe and enjoyable holiday season and a Happy New Year. See you soon,

Tom Law

NTWAB President

December 3, 2021