How I Got Hooked On Racing: Sarah Andrew, Photographer and Photo Editor

[Wandering Eyes]

For the past two weeks, we have been telling you how some of racing's biggest names fell in love with the sport. Now it's our turn. Here are some of the stories behind the bylines you see every day in the TDN.

Marguerite Henry's King of the Wind was my hook. My dog-eared copy of the acclaimed children's novel about the Godolphin Arabian made my young imagination run wild. As an adult, I can still see Wesley Dennis's vibrant illustrations in my mind's eye.

If reading King of the Wind was the hook, then watching Sunday Silence's races on television made me fall hook, line, and sinker. Everything about the son of Halo intrigued me. My 11-year-old self scanned the Asbury Park Press for tidbits of news about Sunday Silence and I lovingly taped newspaper clippings of his racing triumphs to my bedroom walls.

I became a student of the horse and learned everything I could. While absorbing the hands-on basics of horsemanship, I also got my hands on as many books as possible. On my childhood quests to libraries and bookmobiles, I particularly prized illustrated volumes like Twenty Gallant Horses by C.W. Anderson. Anderson's sketches of Thoroughbred heroes like Heatherbloom, Exterminator, and Troublemaker leapt off the page. In my college years, I plagued my professors at Rutgers with papers about Xenophon, Kelso, and the symbolism of the horse in 17th-century Restoration poetry.

Publications like Equine Images and Equus provided me with inspiration and a tantalizing glimpse into the sport of racing. I drew, painted, and sculpted until I saved up enough money for a camera. I trekked to Monmouth Park to learn more about the sport while earnestly photographing local horses like Poppa's Favorites and Frisky Spider. As an outsider looking in, Monmouth Park was fascinating. When I wasn't at the track, I traipsed around old farms in search of another favorite subject, horse graves.

Local horse people like Jeanne Vuyosevich opened the door to the racing world and welcomed me in. Each trip made me want to learn more. My racetrack adventures expanded to other states and within a year of purchasing my first SLR camera, my work was published in the New York Times. Although my first full-time day job was not in the racing world, I worked at night on Bill Denver's Equi-Photo team at the Meadowlands during the Thoroughbred meets and on summer weekends at Monmouth Park. In 2007, I joined the staff at the TDN, where my tireless equine and photographic studies continue to this day.

Although my family has no racing background, they encouraged my riding and sat through countless lessons and horse shows. My mom is a lifelong horse lover and my grandmother was an avid trail and dressage rider. I admired all breeds but I knew that the most talented riders at my lesson barn rode Thoroughbreds. Those riders were quick, light, and smart, just like their mounts. My current horse, a 28-year-old Thoroughbred named Doctor's Secret, teaches me new lessons every day and is the embodiment of the breed in so many ways.

Just as Marguerite Henry's King of the Wind wove a literary path from the Godolphin Arabian to Man o' War, we can connect equine art all the way from the Chauvet Cave paintings to modern-day masters like Barbara Livingston. For those who are hooked, there is always more to learn about horses, racing, and photography.

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