The $10,000 Dr. Tony Ryan E-book Award celebrates its nineteenth anniversary in 2024. Inaugurated in 2006 by the late philanthropist and world government Dr. Ryan, and sponsored by the Ryan household’s Castleton Lyons farm close to Lexington, Ky., the competitors has historically honored the perfect writing associated to the Thoroughbred business printed in 2023.
As all the time, the award, which is open to all genres, drew a robust and eclectic subject of entrants. Among the many submissions had been biographies, histories, works of fiction, a ebook of poetry, a photograph essay, and young-adult volumes. The six semifinalists synopsized beneath emerged from an distinctive group of authors that included three previous winners of this competitors, an 11-time Sovereign Award winner, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a celebrated author/photographer, a famous school historical past professor, a Kentucky Derby-winning jockey, and a former felony protection lawyer.
For the primary time, and reflecting the general high quality of this 12 months’s competitors, the judges additionally selected to launch an Honorable Point out class.
Three finalists shall be revealed this summer season, with the winner to be introduced throughout a reception at Castleton Lyons later within the 12 months.
The semifinalists are (in alphabetical order, by creator title):
Writer: Avalyn Hunter
In “Dream Derby,” Hunter peels again the veil of long-ago historical past in telling the unlikely story of the fiftieth Kentucky Derby winner Black Gold. The ill-fated colt’s life was considered one of goals and prophesies foretold, supreme victory and heart-breaking loss. A small colt with an outsized coronary heart, Black Gold was bred and raced by Rosa Hoots, a member of the oil-rich Osage Nation. This was on the top of the Twenties reign of terror when quite a few members of her tribe had been murdered for his or her wealth, however fortuitously Hoots’s household was not amongst these and her fortune was not underneath guardianship. Story has it that years earlier on her husband’s deathbed, he had predicted that his hard-raced mare Useeit would at some point produce a Kentucky Derby winner. Mrs. Hoots introduced his dream to fruition in 1924, with the black colt she named for the oil beneath the Oklahoma soil. Jennifer Kelly caught up with Avalyn Hunter to debate demystifying the Legend of Black Gold.
Writer: John Paul Miller
A compelling piece of racing fiction, “False Riches” is a thriller and a love story set largely at a fictional Texas racetrack. It depicts the darkish aspect of horse racing, together with doping and race-fixing, in addition to the bodily risks inherent within the sport. The ebook’s protagonists are an assistant coach/rider who’s an ardent advocate for security measures to guard each horse and rider, and a non-public investigator busy monitoring crimes within the racing business. “False Riches” is hard-hitting, but it surely additionally presents hope — that in any case, our sport has a future value following.
Writer: Katherine C. Mooney
An achieved racing historian herein tells the story of a legendary Black jockey born throughout slavery, who en path to glory as a rider, handled virulent racism and ever-worsening well being points. Isaac Murphy received three Kentucky Derbys and compiled an unmatchable 44% win-rate earlier than his premature passing at 35. Practically 60 years later, in 1955, he grew to become the primary jockey inducted into the Racing Corridor of Fame. Regardless of his diminutive dimension, Murphy was a larger-than-life character, identified for integrity and scrupulous honesty — at a time when corruption flourished in racing — in addition to an virtually surreal talent within the saddle. Arguably racing’s first celebrity, he stays revered even in the present day as among the finest jockeys of all time. Learn extra in regards to the concept and execution of Katherine Mooney’s ebook.
Authors: Sarah Maslin Nir and Raymond White Jr.
This young-adult work of historic fiction was impressed by the very actual lifetime of the late Cheryl White, a jockey who blazed trails on the racetrack within the Seventies on behalf of girls and African-People. White was fearless, gutsy, and gifted. In opposition to all odds, as a 17-year-old highschool pupil, she burst on the racing scene like a bolt of lightning, changing into the primary Black feminine rider to win a North American Thoroughbred race. A barrier-breaking pioneer, Cheryl’s story was nonetheless erased from historical past. In writing “The Jockey and Her Horse,” New York Occasions’ Pulitzer Prize-finalist Sarah Maslin Nir joined forces to inform her necessary story as soon as once more with somebody who knew White effectively — her brother, Raymond White Jr. Do not miss Jennifer Kelly’s characteristic on “The Jockey and Her Horse.”
Writer: Curtis Inventory
Those that have adopted racing for some time will probably recall Ron Turcotte because the jockey who guided Secretariat to his electrifying 1973 Triple Crown sweep, and who later was completely paralyzed in a racing accident. What they could not know is that Turcotte led a household of achieved jockeys, all with tales to inform, and that the 5 race-riding brothers collectively received greater than 8,200 races. Curtis Inventory — an 11-time Sovereign Award winner for writing—penned and researched this story of one of many sport’s greatest dynasties. It’s a biography and oral historical past, largely based mostly on many years of interviews, and it illustrates how typically triumph and tragedy go hand-in-hand on the planet of racing. Study extra about creator Curtic Inventory and the inspiration for this ebook.
Writer: Kim Wickens
This skillfully researched work tells the story of considered one of America’s biggest, most influential Thoroughbreds. In portraying the lifetime of mid-19th century champion Lexington, Kim Wickens reveals simply what racing meant to America in the course of the pre-Civil Struggle period … how epic races and heroic racehorses dominated the scene, drawing huge crowds to tracks. Within the 1850s, Lexington was the most important crowd pleaser of all, a charismatic colt of record-breaking pace and untold stamina, whose Corridor of Fame profession Wickens traces, together with the colourful solid of human characters round him. After encroaching blindness took him off the monitor, Lexington entered stud in Kentucky, the place he endured the hazards of the Civil Struggle earlier than changing into a 16-time main American sire. Even 160 years later, he can nonetheless be discovered within the far reaches of the pedigrees of numerous prime racehorses. Learn extra about Kim Wickens.
Three books had been acknowledged within the first Honorable Point out class of the Dr. Tony Ryan E-book Award. The titles chosen for that distinction are: “Secretariat’s Legacy: The Sons, Daughters, and Descendants Who Maintain His Legend Alive,” by Patricia McQueen; “Mare’s Nest,” by Holly Mitchell; and “Unnatural Means: The Historical past of Efficiency-Enhancing Medication in Thoroughbred Racing,” by Milton C. Toby, a former winner of the E-book Award who handed away in July 2023.
For additional info, contact Kerrie Cahill at kcahill@castletonlyons.com
