2024 Media Eclipse Award Winners Include TDN’s Sue Finley and Chris McGrath

[Wandering Eyes]

The Thoroughbred Daily News's Publisher and CEO Sue Finley and Columnist Chris McGrath both won 2024 Eclipse Media Awards from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), Daily Racing Form, and the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters (NTWAB), according to a release from the NTRA on Wednesday.

The 2024 Media Eclipse Award winners across six categories are as follows:

• Multimedia – Sue Finley, Thoroughbred Daily News, “After Saving Two Horses from a Kill Pen, Stewart Aims to do More to End Slaughter,” July 15, 2024.

Sue Finley produced a multimedia piece entitled “Saving Two Horses from a Kill Pen, Stewart Aims to do More to End Slaughter,” an interview combining video and text with quickly emerging owner/breeder John Stewart. The entry, posted last July, explored the issue of saving horses from kill pens and furthering industry efforts to prevent horse slaughter. The video portion of the piece was edited by Anthony and Alia LaRocca at BridleVision.

Last spring, Finley, Publisher and CEO of Thoroughbred Daily News, noticed a social media feed posted by Stewart about his purchase of racehorses My Lil' Dude (First Dude) and Drive For Fun (Distorted Humor) from a kill pen in Louisiana, and was going to bring them to Resolute Farm to live out their lives. Stewart believed that these horses could serve as a catalyst for the industry to start talking about the slaughter problem, including placing the main responsibility on the breeder and the original owner of the horse.

“This is an issue I have been passionate about for a long time,” said Finley, who served for 12 years on the board of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. “The slaughter issue is one that troubles me deeply. I thought this story could help the industry to have a much-needed conversation about slaughter.”

Sue Finley | TDN Photo

Finley reports that more than 20,000 American horses every year are still transported for slaughter, “an unknowable number of them Thoroughbred racehorses, who are slaughtered for human consumption in foreign countries.”

She called Stewart after seeing his post, and while the horses weren't at the farm yet, she was welcome to come out and interview him when they arrived. She interviewed Stewart during the Fasig-Tipton July sale, and while there they learned that he had not only saved these two, but that he had also rescued a Saddlebred and a mini who had also been saved from a kill pen. All the rescues were together in a beautiful barn with a staff dedicated to nursing them back to health. “It was very inspiring,” she added.

“I would like to thank our talented producers, Anthony and Alia LaRocca at BridleVision, for their beautiful work on this piece, and Katie Petrunyak, who served as a second camera on the story. But really, this award belongs to John Stewart for not only rescuing these two horses, but for provoking a conversation in the industry about the need to solve the very real problem that we have with slaughter.”

The winning entry can be accessed here.

Honorable mention in the Multimedia category went to Petrunyak, for “Jeramie Fennell Finds Redemption on Horseback,” which was published on October 18, 2024, in Thoroughbred Daily News.

 

• Writing–Feature/Commentary – Chris McGrath, Thoroughbred Daily News, “Lunching with Legends at Lil's,” Mar. 26, 2024.

Chris McGrath, from Oxford, England, has developed a great passion for American racing and for its remarkable personalities. Last year, he brought it home with “Lunching With Legends at Lil's,” a lunchtime gathering with venerable racing stalwarts Ercel Ellis Jr., Arthur Hancock III and veterinarian Dr. Robert Copelan. The article, which appeared last March in Thoroughbred Daily News, is the first Eclipse Award for McGrath.

Chris McGrath | Sue Finley

Having made several trips to the U.S. over the years, McGrath visited Hancock at Stone Farm, and got into a conversation about weekly luncheons at Lil's Coffee House in Paris, Kentucky with Ellis, a pioneering racing radio broadcaster and the renown Copelan, a leader and innovator in the veterinary community for more than 65 years. Hancock and McGrath came to the luncheon one afternoon. Total ages among the three racing men at the time of publication of the luncheon was 189, with Copelan the leader at 97.

While letting the trio at the table do the talking, McGrath pulls the reader into a solid gold history of racing tales going back more than 100 years, with the trio swapping stories on connections to Man o' War, Nasrullah, Citation, Forli (Arg), and Sunday Silence, to name a few racing icons. Among them was young Copelan telling the time one late afternoon at Darby Dan Farm when he rode a pony inside a paddock and spooked two yearlings to jump the fence, and the horses winding up in Big Darby Creek; and then having to fish them both out with the use of flashlights.

Or Ellis relaying a tale on Man o' War's early days when a clocker sought his groom one morning at Saratoga.
“What's the name of that big red colt?”
“Man o' War.”
“Who's he by?”
“By himself, mostly.”

Hancock and Copelan went back and forth on memorable moments and passionate outbursts about Arthur's father, Arthur “Bull” Hancock, Jr., the scion of Claiborne Farm.

The luncheon adjourned after about one hour of revelry.

“I'm enormously grateful to Sue Finley, Gary King and the rest of the guys at TDN for providing such a great platform to share these wonderful experiences,” said McGrath. “I have been on their team since 2018 and, while my desk remains closer to Newmarket, my heart has meanwhile been won by the horses of America and the people who raise and race them.”

Born in Cambridge, McGrath wrote for prominent English mainstream daily newspapers, including The Times, The Independent, Sporting Life, and the Racing Post. He is most proud of a social history of the Thoroughbred, Mr. Darley's Arabian, shortlisted for William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2016.

The winning entry can be viewed here.

 

• Live Television Programming – NBC Sports, “The 150th Kentucky Derby,” Lindsay Schanzer, Senior Producer, May 4, 2024.

NBC Sports has won its fifth consecutive Live Racing Programming Eclipse Award for its coverage of the GI Kentucky Derby.

The broadcast was produced by Schanzer and Billy Matthews, and directed by Kaare Numme and Tim Nelson. Amy Zimmerman was senior associate producer, Jeff Burriesci was associate director, Jack Felling was coordinating feature producer, and Ron Vacarro, VP of Editorial. Sam Flood is Executive Producer and President, NBC Sports Production.

The commentators were:  Host Mike Tirico; analysts Jerry Bailey and Randy Moss; handicappers Eddie Olczyk and Matt Bernier; host/reporter Ahmed Fareed; reporters Britney Eurton, Donna Brothers, Kenny Rice, and Nick Luck; race caller Larry Collmus; features host Rebecca Lowe; insights analyst Steve Kornacki; fashion and lifestyle correspondents Dylan Dreyer and Zanna Roberts Rassi, and Tim Layden, who wrote and narrated an essay on his perspective of the 150th “Run for the Roses.”

 

• Feature Television Programming – NBC Sports, “The Impossible Dream” – Rachel Goodman, Producer, May 4, 2024.

NBC Sports has won the Television – Features category for “The Impossible Dream,” a profile on the improbable and courageous life of Larry Demeritte, trainer of West Saratoga (Exaggerator), who he saddled in the 2024 Kentucky Derby. The feature, which aired on NBC on May 4, 2024, was produced by Rachel Goodman.

In addition to Goodman, the Coordinating Producer of “The Impossible Dream” was Jack Felling; Editor, Kevin Carcich; Cinema Photographer, Taylor Morrison; and Field Producer, Max Rahamin. Sam Flood was Executive Producer and Lindsay Schanzer, Senior Producer.

The winning entry can be viewed here.

 

• Writing–News/Enterprise – Sean Clancy, The Saratoga Special, “Two for the Show,” Aug. 28, 2024.

Sean Clancy earned this third Eclipse Award, and his second consecutive honor, for writing with “Two for the Show” a stirring recap of the GI DraftKings Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course last August, punctuated by the dramatic finish of Fierceness (City of Light) holding off the fast-closing filly Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) at the wire.

The article appeared in The Saratoga Special, as did his 2023 News/Enterprise Eclipse award winner, “The Worst Test,” on the tragic accident of Maple Leaf Mel (Cross Traffic) in the GI Test Stakes. Clancy won his first Eclipse Award in 2009 in News/Commentary writing in The BloodHorse for “Life's Work,” about his recollections of the late Hall of Fame Trainer Sidney Watters Jr.

The winning entry can be viewed here.

 

• Photography – Scott Serio, “Night Rider–Skippylongstocking wins the Charles Town Classic,” Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, Oct. 2024.

For Scott Serio, Founder and Chief Photographer of Eclipse Sportswire, winning his second Eclipse Award for Photography for “Night Rider–Skippylongstocking Wins The Charles Town Classic,” was as harrowing as it was rewarding.

While preparing to place his remote cameras on the inside rail near the finish line in the late afternoon for the Aug. 23 GII Charles Town Classic at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town, Serio bumped into the cushion on the rail and unleashed a swarm of bees, which stung him five times in the left arm.

“I'm on the ground in pain and the National Anthem starts, with two of my friends standing over me,” he said.

Rushed in an ambulance to a local hospital, Serio received an injection in his right arm. Undaunted, he felt well enough to take an Uber ride back to the track. With his left arm immobile, Serio operated his remote camera to capture Daniel Alonso's 5-year-old Skippylongstocking (Exaggerator) just after crossing the wire to win the Charles Town Classic.

The winning photo can be viewed here.

 

Media Eclipse Award winners will be presented their trophies at the 54th Annual Eclipse Awards Ceremony and Dinner at The Breakers Palm Beach in Florida on Thursday, Jan. 23.

 

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