Esteemed authors Edward L. Bowen and Ray Kerrison and pioneering photographer Charles Christian “CC” Cook dinner have been named to the Nationwide Museum of Horse Racing and Corridor of Fame’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.
Edward L. Bowen Inducted into the Corridor of Fame this 12 months as a Pillar of the Turf (1942-2025), he had a prolific profession as a horse racing journalist and historian spanning greater than 60 years. The editor-in-chief of blood horse Mr. Bowen is the creator of twenty-two books on horse racing and served for twenty-four years as chairman of the Grayson Jockey Membership Analysis Basis, historically a significant supply of funding for veterinary analysis that particularly promotes the well being and integrity of horses. He chaired quite a few committees on the Nationwide Horse Racing Corridor of Fame and Museum for 38 years beginning in 1987, together with the trendy nominating committee.
Bowen was born in West Virginia however grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the place he developed an early curiosity in horse racing by studying Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion and watching native tv races at Hialeah Park and Gulfstream Park. Bowen spent the summer time after highschool and faculty working for his hometown. solar sentinel She was featured in newspapers as a broodmare crew member at Ocala Stud in Central Florida and as a sizzling walker and stablehand at Monmouth Park in New Jersey. In 1963, he secured a writing job at. blood horse After finishing his doctoral research in Lexington, he transferred from the College of Florida to the College of Kentucky.
From 1968 to 1970, Bowen was the month-to-month editor. canadian horse After working for {a magazine} in Toronto, he returned to Lexington and have become the journal’s editor-in-chief. blood horse. In January 1987, he succeeded his mentor Kent Hollingsworth as editor-in-chief. Bowen held the place for 5 years, shifting to senior editor in 1992 and retiring from publishing in 1993. In 1994, he was employed as chairman of the Grayson Jockey Membership Analysis Basis.
From 1994 till his retirement on the finish of 2018, Mr. Bowen’s position at Grayson included serving to the board increase sufficient funds to supply $22 million for analysis initiatives. This whole amounted to $32.1 million, which has been offered to 45 universities to fund 412 initiatives since 1983.
Each throughout and after employment blood horseBowen was energetic in writing books commissioned by that firm and different publishers. Along with writing 22 horse racing books, he contributed chapters, prefaces, or forewords to a further 18 on horse racing and two on pure points of interest open to the general public.
Bowen has acquired the next writing awards: Eclipse Award (Journal Class), Nationwide Turf Writers Affiliation’s Walter Haight Award, Kentucky Thoroughbred Horse House owners and Breeders Charles Engelhardt Award, Pimlico’s Outdated Hilltop Award, preface Recipient of the journal’s Gold Degree Certification (Sports activities) and Ocalamarion County Chamber of Commerce Journalism Award.
Bowen, who was honored as a Kentucky Colonel, was a previous president of the Thoroughbred Membership of America and a board member of the Thoroughbred Retirement Basis. He served within the U.S. Military Reserve for six years and was commissioned a second lieutenant. Bowen was the Thoroughbred Membership of America’s 2022 Visitor of Honor and was awarded the inaugural Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Award for Distinguished Service to the Nationwide Horse Racing Corridor of Fame in 2023.
“Ed contributed to the development of horse racing in so some ways, and the historic document of his excellent writings will dwell on endlessly,” mentioned Brien Bouie, Nationwide Museum of Horse Racing Corridor of Fame and Communications Director. “Ed constructed a fame for built-in reporting and fascinating storytelling. He cherished horses and horse racing, and that keenness shined by means of in his vivid work.”
Charles Christian “CC” Cook dinner (1873-1954) was one of many first and most influential photographers of American horse racing. Mr. Cook dinner, a local of Carmi, Illinois, labored as a photojournalist for a Chicago newspaper earlier than going freelance round 1900. Pictures of animals from Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, Ringling Bros., and Barnum & Bailey Circus have garnered widespread consideration. Cooke started his involvement with race images within the late Eighteen Nineties in Washington Park, Chicago.
Cook dinner was one of many first photographers in the US to specialize not solely in horse racing images, but additionally portraits and panorama images of varied racetracks. When horse racing was banned in his dwelling state of Illinois, Cook dinner moved to New York.
From 1906, Cook dinner labored for an organization in New York. glove Labored at a newspaper firm after which as a employees photographer Morning Telegrapha sister publication of each day racing type. Throughout World Conflict I, he served as an aerial photographer for the U.S. Military. For many years, Mr. Cook dinner labored as a business photographer on circuits together with Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland and New York. He additionally served because the official truck photographer at Hialeah Park in Florida.
Cooke’s racing images included topics equivalent to Corridor of Fame racehorses Artiful, Quotation, Exterminator, Gallant Fox, Man O’ Conflict, Remorse, and Twenty Grand, in addition to 1000’s of photographs of notable jockeys, trainers, homeowners, racing personnel, and racetrack scenes from the late Eighteen Nineties to the early ’20s.th century.
Cook dinner’s assortment of greater than 18,000 glass plates and negatives was bought by horse proprietor Arnold Starvation within the Nineteen Fifties and donated to the Keeneland Library in Lexington.
“Cook dinner was a prolific photographer who established tendencies in race images in the US, each as an artist and as a pioneer of monitor images gear that vastly developed within the early many years of the twentieth century.th “Cook dinner’s seminal physique of labor is alive and influential because the Cook dinner Assortment continues to be a pillar of the Keeneland Library’s huge images assortment, connecting individuals on daily basis with the race day moments he captured to be used in worldwide articles, books, movies, reveals, social media, and monitor and farm advertising and marketing campaigns,” mentioned Keeneland Library Director Rhoda Ferraro.
Ray Kerrison (1930-2022) was one in all horse racing’s most revered writers and an investigative reporter with few friends. Kerrison is from Australia. big apple put up He labored for the paper from 1977 to 2013 as each a information and horse racing columnist. He has lined 32 Kentucky Derbies and quite a few different main races, together with Breeders’ Cup occasions.
Kerrison started his journalism profession in Australia, becoming a member of the New York bureau of Information Restricted in 1963. he moved on to enhancing nationwide starRupert Murdoch’s first U.S. publications have been printed within the early Nineteen Seventies; put up Began reporting on horse racing in 1977. Within the first 12 months of becoming a member of the corporate put upKerrison uncovered a horse racing scandal at Belmont Park wherein one horse was racing beneath the title of one other horse. The wager modifications included switching the identities of horses Lebon and Cinzano. The latter was a Uruguayan champion who raced beneath the title Lebon, a nondescript horse additionally from South America. Cinzano, who was operating beneath the title Le Bon, gained the race at Belmont at odds of 57-1. This reporting earned Kerrison a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
Years later, Kerrison and fellow horse racing author John Peasen uncovered the story of the most important racial match-fixing rip-off in New York historical past. “Racing’s darkest hour” The Put up’s Heading. Kerrison’s reporting performed a key position in unraveling the scandal that led to expenses towards jockey Con Erico, gangster Anthony Ciulla and greater than 20 others.
Along with writing about race, Kerrison additionally reported on many different main information occasions in his profession, together with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the primary man’s moon touchdown in 1969, and the 1972 Munich Olympics tragedy.
“Ray was good, type, dry and witty, and extra keen about his job than any journalist I’ve ever recognized,” mentioned Bob McManus. of the put up mentioned the editorial web page editor who retired after Kerrison’s dying in 2022. “He was a person of unwavering ideas, evident in his writing, however he additionally revered the intelligence of his readers. His purpose was to not preach, however to influence. His work might be controversial, however it was all the time trustworthy.”
“I used to name him the Fred Astaire of thoroughbred racing as a result of he was the perfect.” put up Sports activities Editor Greg Gallo mentioned: “He was the classiest individual to ever do a job like that. You could not have requested for a greater journalist.”
About Joe Hirsch’s Media Honor Award
The Nationwide Museum of Horse Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Honors Award was established in 2010 to acknowledge people who’ve devoted their careers to, or have been considerably concerned in, writing about Thoroughbred horse racing (nonfiction) and have achieved excellent journalistic achievement. This criterion has since been expanded to think about different types of media.
Often known as the Dean of Thoroughbred Horse Racing Writers, Hirsch acquired the Eclipse Award for Excellence in Writing and the Lord Derby Award from the British Society of Horse Racing Writers and Press in London. He additionally acquired the Eclipse Achievement Award (1993), the Massive Sport of Turfdom Award (1983), the Jockey Membership Medal (1989), and was named the visitor of honor on the 1994 Thoroughbred Membership of America Awards Dinner. The Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Basic Invitational, held yearly at Belmont Park, is known as in his honor. Mr. Hirsch, who handed away in 2009, was a former chairman of the Nationwide Museum of Horse Racing and the Corridor of Fame Nominating Committee and a founding father of the Nationwide Turf Writers Affiliation. He will likely be inducted into the Corridor of Fame in 2024 as a Pillar of the Turf.
