The Beginning.

I remember the first day I fell in love with horse racing.  I don't remember the first time I fell in love with horses, that goes back too far.  All I know is that I was eight years old and watched Thunder Gulch win the Kentucky Derby and decided then and there that I was going to be a jockey.  At eighteen I pretty much ran away to Kentucky, got lucky, and landed a job with a major international racing stable with no experience.

For whatever reason, it worked.  I did become a jockey.  I rode my first race at Churchill Downs, I traveled the world.  I got hurt (MANY times), I became sick from the weight restrictions, I made the most perfect friends and the worst enemies.  Then three years in, I fell in love with this ridiculous grey beastie and came to peace with the reality that... I. Could Not. Do This.  Any. More.

Grey horse came from a trainer I rode regularly for, and went to farm which belonged to an owner I rode race for as well.  I was warned off from him initially by the jockey who rode him in races but the moment I sat on him for the first time I knew he was mine.

His registered name was Delux Deelite, he was an almost white five-year-old gelding when I met him, he won his last race ever and I was the first to sit on him since his official retirement.  He squealed, bucked, and bounced around the shed row of his barn at the track, dragging me but maintaining a lovely frame and throwing his legs out like a fancy dressage horse.

I named him Lux immediately.

This is our diary of our new adventure together.  I'm not sure where we are going but I see a few events this spring...

Always,
S2