Xtra Heat. Photo by Laurie Asseo.
From a Maryland Racing Media Association release
The Maryland Racing Media Association has selected a quartet of honorees, including two national Hall of Famers, to receive the group’s three major annual awards which will be distributed at the annual MRMA Crab Feast in the Carriage Room at Laurel Park on November 7.
The Crab Feast also serves as a fundraiser for the organization’s scholarship fund, which assists backstretch, farm, and veterinary workers in furthering their educations. It has helped scores of Marylanders and is the only program of its kind in the Free State.
“The Crab Feast is a great party that supports a great cause,” said Maryland Racing Media Association president Ted Black.
Headlining the event will be the presentation of the Humphrey S. Finney Award for lifetime achievement.
Receiving the association’s highest honor is Northview Stallion Station owner Richard Golden, with a special designation to longtime stallion Not For Love, who was pensioned earlier this year. Golden and Not For Love will receive the Humphrey S. Finney Award for lifetime achievement, the group’s highest honor and longest running award.
Golden helped guide Northview Stallion Station to national prominence thanks in part to the emergence of Not For Love, whose progeny have won more than 600 races and earned nearly $70 million. Though just modestly successful on the racetrack, Not for Love, a son of Mr. Prospector out of the Northern Dancer mare, Dance Number, would eventually emerge as the mid-Atlantic region’s dominant sire, and he leads all Maryland sires by lifetime progeny earnings. For eight straight years, he was the nation’s leading sire located outside of Kentucky.
Longtime local leading trainer King T. Leatherbury and the talented filly Xtra Heat both entered the National Racing Hall of Fame earlier this month in Saratoga Springs, New York, and they were named co-winners of the Dale Austin Newsmaker Award.
Leatherbury, who ranks fourth all-time among trainers with over 6,400 winners, is still active on the Maryland circuit and best known recently for the exploits of his ageless homebred Ben’s Cat.
Based at Laurel Park, Xtra Heat won 26 races, 25 in stakes company, and earned nearly $2.4 million during her career and took home the Eclipse Award for champion three-year-old filly in 2001 when she won nine of 13 races. She was trained by John Salzman, Sr., and owned by him in partnership with Ken Taylor and Harry Deitchman.
Bruce Quade, chairman of the Maryland Racing Commission, will receive the Nancy Alberts Achievement Award. Quade has spearheaded the Commission’s efforts in recent years, which have helped to achieve the 10-year agreement between the tracks and horsemen; create the enhanced program to bolster breeding in Maryland; position Maryland as a national leader on medication reform; and bring unity to the once-fractious industry.
“We are pleased to honor such an outstanding group of award winners,” Black commented.
Founded in 1937, the Maryland Racing Media Association represents those who communicate with the public about Maryland racing and breeding. The organization manages a scholarship program to help those working on the backstretch, on farms, and in vets’ offices to further their educations; was co-founder of the Maryland Thoroughbred Hall of Fame; and names an annual Maryland-based Horse of the Year.
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