From a Maryland Racing Media Association release
The Maryland Racing Media Association will honor three members of the state’s Thoroughbred racing community at its annual Crab Feast, November 8 at Laurel Park. The event is open to the public.
The Crab Feast also serves as a fundraiser for the organization’s scholarship fund.
Harold Snyder, chairman of International Sound Corp., will receive the organization’s highest honor, the Humphrey S. Finney Award, given in recognition of lifetime contributions to the Maryland horse racing industry. Snyder’s company provides high-quality products and services for the racing and sports industries, including video production, digital graphics, sound, photo finish, and timing systems. The privately held company, now guided by Snyder’s son David, serves dozens of racetracks across the United States and internationally, including Laurel Park, Pimlico Race Course, and Timonium. In addition to his industry leadership through International Sound, Mr. Snyder and his company have been longtime supporters of the Maryland Racing Media Association’s scholarship fund.
Humphrey S. Finney was a charter member of the Maryland Racing Media Association and, while he enjoyed an extraordinarily varied and successful career in racing, is perhaps best remembered for his tenure as chairman of Fasig-Tipton Company.
Victor Carrasco will receive the Dale Austin Newsmaker Award. Photo by Dan Tordjman.
No Marylander made more national news than did jockey Victor Carrasco in the last year, and for that, the Association will award him its Dale Austin Newsmaker Award. The young native of Puerto Rico led the nation’s apprentice riders with 215 wins in 2013 after finishing with a rush, and those efforts earned him the Eclipse Award as top apprentice jockey. Carrasco made an immediate impression when he landed in the mid-Atlantic, finishing second by wins among jockeys at the Pimlico spring meet and then second at Delaware Park’s 2013 meet, one behind meet leader Alex Cintron. Those, however, were merely the warmup for what came next. With a flurry of multi-win days, Carrasco ran away with the Laurel Park fall meet riding title, posting 69 wins, 19 more than his nearest competitor. Carrasco has continued his winning ways in 2014, which opened with him posting his first stakes winner, on January 4.
Dale Austin, who passed away in May, was a longtime racing reporter for the Baltimore Sun and later the Annapolis Capital. An award-winning journalist, he served as president of the Maryland Racing Media association.
Trainer Kieron Magee has risen from virtual obscurity to the top of the Maryland training ranks in a short time, and for that he will receive the Nancy Alberts Achievement Award. Magee, stabled at Pimlico, caught the racing community by surprise when he finished fourth by wins among trainers at the Laurel Park fall meet in 2013, scoring 19 times from just 53 starters; each of the three trainers ahead of him (Hugh McMahon, Jamie Ness, and Juan Vazquez) made at least twice as many starts as did Magee. He proved that was no fluke this year, finishing in a four-way tie for the Laurel winter meet lead, again with 19 wins, and then earning his first training title during the Pimlico spring meet with 18 wins. Through October 27, he has won with 69 of 268 starters this year.
The late Nancy Alberts was a longtime Maryland trainer best known for her work with Magic Weisner, the Maryland-bred gelding who nearly swiped the 2002 Preakness from War Emblem, closing fast to be second at 45-1 odds. Magic Weisner later won the Grade 2 Ohio Derby and finished second in the Grade 1 Haskell Invitation. Alberts passed away in 2011.
Founded in 1937, the Maryland Racing Media Association includes professionals involved in disseminating information about Thoroughbred racing and breeding. The organization runs a scholarship fund, which provides scholarships to people working in the state’s Thoroughbred industry seeking to further their educations; and it was one of the founding organizations, along with the Maryland Horse Breeders Association, of the Maryland Thoroughbred Hall of Fame.
