T-minus 46 days. And counting.<\/p>\n
For Matt Hagerty, the clock is ticking \u2013 albeit probably not fast enough for him \u2013 toward his first ride in a horse race at Emerald Downs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am ready,\u201d said Hagerty, who\u2019s now 17, but can\u2019t ride until May 31 when he turns 18. \u201cI\u2019ve wanted to go that fast. But in the morning time, it\u2019s hard to go that fast with the trainers. They don\u2019t want you to go that fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he does get that first mount, Hagerty officially will begin his apprenticeship. However, he\u2019s hardly new to Emerald.<\/p>\n
Hagerty started on the front side of the track, working in Richard Wright\u2019s barn. He left to give wrestling a shot at White River High School, \u201cthen I came back and I wanted to learn to ride.\u201d<\/p>\n
He linked up with trainer Vince Gibson, and took to it fairly quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t fall off too many times,\u201d Hagerty said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
Hagerty says he has looked to jockeys Ricky Frazier and Joe Crispin for guidance. Good choices \u2013 Frazier set a track record with 157 victories in 613 mounts last year, a dozen of which came in stakes races. Frazier\u2019s mounts earned $1,632,102. Crispin racked up 34 wins in 312 rides, and earned purses totaling $373,898.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of think of them as role models,\u201d Hagerty said.<\/p>\n
Regardless of how the season goes, Hagerty plans to stick with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope to be doing it as long as I live,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s in my blood.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
T-minus 46 days. And counting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":23266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23265"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}