Want more?

“I met Ruth, the woman who ran this track for the Ellis’s for three decades when I was a green kid in 1978. My upgrade from groom to trainer was so recent that the Polaroid snapshot on the license hadn't fully developed.  But Ruth was already an icon. 

  I had a stable full of cheap claiming horses with me and I had shipped the horses from a training center in Lexington, Kentucky. It was hot. I was exhausted from the strain of trying to do everything right. The security guard told me no stall space had been reserved for my stable and I couldn't unload. The horses were sweating and thirsty. They stomped and snorted, rocking the van, while I stomped and snorted around the guard shack. I prayed none would throw themselves down and injure a leg. 

A golf cart, groaning under the weight of a huge woman, careened around the corner. There she sat, like a Tahitian queen on her throne, reading the Coggins tests and past racing results on my thoroughbreds.  The guard seemed to shrink inside his uniform as she barked, "Let him unload stupid. We’ve got room and we sure as hell can’t run a race meet without horses." When she spoke, her hand caressed the only other rider I ever saw on that cart, a .357 magnum with an extended barrel. Ruth never once looked in my direction.”—Jim McGarrah, OFF TRACK
Jim's new book, Off Track: Or How I Dropped Out of College and Came to Be a Horse Trainer in the 70's When All My Friends Were Still Doing Drugs is for sale today.