DEL MAR, Calif. – It was the weekend between the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, May 1989. Sunday Silence had exited the Derby with a foot bruise. His status for the Preakness was in jeopardy. I was working for the Los Angeles Daily News, which had sent me to the Derby and was prepared to send me to the Preakness, but not if the Derby winner was out. I left a message for Charlie Whittingham at his hotel. This was an era when there were no cell phones. Couldn’t call him any other way. Couldn’t text him either, not that he’d have been into texting. He called me back. I explained my predicament. He said he wasn’t sure Sunday Silence would run, but he’d know better the next day, when I was scheduled to take a red-eye flight to Baltimore. That next day, at the agreed-upon time, I called Whittingham’s hotel and was put through to his room. “Charlie, it’s Jay Priv. . .” He interrupted me. “Son, get on the plane.” That Triple Crown season, Sunday Silence and Easy Goer, was quite the ride. I’ve been on quite a ride for decades, but now I’m coming in for a landing. After stints with the Los Angeles Daily News and The Racing Times, as a correspondent for The New York Times and several racing-related publications, some of which are long gone, plus nearly 24 years at Daily Racing Form, I’m retiring from this job effective with the end of Del Mar’s meeting. Del Mar holds special meaning. It’s where I first attended the races, on Aug. 19, 1971, on a family driving vacation from our home in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles. This track was part of the Animal Trifecta. We went to the zoo, Sea World, and the races. I was 11. And I was hooked. From that day forward, I made picks out of the paper, checked the results each day, found friends in junior high and high school of similar mind whose parents we made take turns driving us to the track, devoured books on racing, learned to read the Form. Then a series of lucky breaks took hold. While I was in college, working as a part-timer at the Daily News, no one was regularly covering racing for the paper when Spectacular Bid came west to start his 4-year-old campaign in the Malibu on Jan. 5, 1980. I volunteered, and the paper sent a 20-year-old college junior to Santa Anita to cover the best horse in the country. A year later, I was full-time. Two years later, I covered my first Derby. More good luck. The race was won by Gato Del Sol, ridden by Eddie Delahoussaye and trained by Eddie Gregson, both of whom I already knew. At an overwhelming event like the Derby, that was comforting. “How does it feel to have achieved your life’s goal at 22?” Roger Wetherington, the faculty adviser of my old college newspaper, who loved racing, said when I visited the campus the next week. The best horse in training during that era was John Henry, whose trainer, Ron McAnally, had family that lived in the paper’s circulation area. His barn was a regular stop on my morning rounds, and his kindness, and those of John Henry’s exercise rider, Lewis Cenicola, matched that of Gregson’s. It was a great time to cover racing in Southern California, when giants roamed the stable area. Whittingham – whom I’d rank as the best trainer of my lifetime – Gregson, and McAnally were particularly impactful, as were Bobby Frankel, two generations of Proctors, and a newcomer from Britain named John Gosden. I didn’t grow up around horses. My family had no connection to the sport other than my dad being a $2 player who went a few times a year with his friends. So there was a learning curve. All those trainers were great, but another stood out, the now-retired Jerry Fanning. One day I was at his barn when he told me Desert Wine might miss a race owing to a popped splint. “What’s that?” I asked. He took me to Desert Wine’s stall, and Fanning allowed me to run my hands down the front legs of the previous year’s Derby runner-up to feel the difference between a clean leg and one that had a popped splint. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match and FREE Formulator PPs! Join DRF Bets. It will be a fool’s errand to name all the people who were so helpful over the years, but at the risk of knowing I’ll probably accidentally leave out someone significant I’ll do it anyway. Owing to their success, Hall of Fame trainers Bob Baffert, Laz Barrera, Neil Drysdale, Gary Jones, Jerry Hollendorfer, and Richard Mandella were regular stops locally, as were Bob Hess Jr., David Hofmans, Doug O’Neill, John Sadler, and Art Sherman. On trips east, Hall of Famers Steve Asmussen, Mark Casse, Allen Jerkens, P.G. Johnson, Shug McGaughey, Bill Mott, Carl Nafzger, and Nick Zito were standouts, as were Christophe Clement, Larry Jones, Graham Motion, and the person whose integrity set the standard, Rick Violette Jr. A constant in my career has been D. Wayne Lukas, who won the first Santa Anita Derby I ever covered, with Codex in 1980. It’s been fun watching people I knew as young assistants go on to have outsized success, most notably Chad Brown, Michael McCarthy, and Todd Pletcher. The jockeys’ room when I started out was an all-star cast, with the mischievous Bill Shoemaker the ringleader of a group that included, among others, Delahoussaye, Chris McCarron, Darrel McHargue, Ray Sibille, Alex Solis, Gary Stevens, Fernando Toro, Patrick Valenzuela, and the best I ever saw, Laffit Pincay Jr. But no one helped me understand the craft of race riding, and had more insight into a horse’s aptitude in the mornings, than the veteran Terry Lipham, best known as the rider of Eclipse Award winner Bates Motel and early on the rider of my favorite horse, Precisionist. Ron Anderson and Scotty McClellan taught me how to look at a race through an agent’s eyes, Gary Young has been unparalleled as a daily sounding board for clocking information, and the late Dr. Jack Robbins was the go-to man for anything veterinary-related. I was incredibly lucky on the media front, too. At my first Derby, Dan Smith, the longtime publicist for Del Mar, was there assisting and helped show me the ropes. Joe Hirsch, the dean of racing writers, took me under his wing – as he did many writers of my age group who had a passion for the sport but needed a ring bit and blinkers – and helped guide me. Hirsch, the executive columnist at Daily Racing Form, was great company, always inviting people to dinner, frequently in the company of trainers like Jimmy Jones, who would captivate with tales of Citation. That’s what made joining the Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame last year so meaningful. The brilliant columnist Jay Hovdey has been a terrific friend and a graceful writer one always tries to emulate, I continue to marvel at the passion of Jennie Rees, and there’s no more encyclopedic source than Jon White. Early on, I met Steven Crist, at the time the writer for The New York Times, who later hired me in 1991 at The Racing Times, and again in 1998 at Daily Racing Form. He goes on a Mount Rushmore of racing journalists with Andy Beyer, who made his way to Santa Anita for an entire winter meeting in the early 1980s and was assigned a press box seat next to me, allowing me to learn the science and art of making speed figures. At my third Derby, I met Dick Jerardi, whose friendship and handicapping expertise have been invaluable. Equally impactful in terms of learning how to handicap was Jeff Siegel, whose Siegel Seminars in the Santa Anita press box in the 1980s were graduate-level academia. The best race-watcher I know is Kurt Hoover. My knowledge of pedigrees was enhanced by Leon Rasmussen and then Dan Liebman. And no one helped me understand the finer points of wagering and betting value more than Roxy Roxborough. At Daily Racing Form, I’ve been fortunate to travel the Triple Crown trail with David Grening and Mike Welsch, do the Derby Watch with Mike Watchmaker and then Marty McGee, be part of a Southern California staff that includes the tireless duo of Steve Andersen and Brad Free, and be advised by talented editors like Irwin Cohen, Ira Kaplan, Rich Rosenbush, and Mark Simon. Barbara Livingston has been a joy to work with, always finding a gorgeous shot to enhance my copy. Dave Johnson, the racecaller at Santa Anita when I started, remains a loyal friend, matched now by Michael Wrona, the best racecaller of his generation. Dozens of publicists have been gracious with their time, including Jim Gluckson, a frequent guest at those Hirsch dinners, where dessert was a must because “it wouldn’t hurt a baby.” I was lucky enough to do television work for years, with Randy Moss unquestionably my most passionate supporter. Over the years, I worked most with Jerry Bailey, Caton Bredar, Jeannine Edwards, Hank Goldberg, Kenny Mayne, Laffit Pincay III, and Kenny Rice, and after meeting Eddie Olczyk when he played hockey it was fun to also end up working with him on telecasts, too. My radio partners Bob Ike and Jon Lindo have been upstanding, steadfast friends. I’ve been lucky even when seemingly unlucky, all owing to racing. When I was diagnosed last year with aggressive bladder cancer, my connection to City of Hope came about because television producer Steve Nagler alerted our mutual friend, the marketing whiz Allen Gutterman, who knew someone there, and eventually got me to the right people. Racing officials Dan Eidson and Martin Panza, and TVG’s Simon Bray, were invaluable resources. While I was recovering, trainer John Shirreffs would walk his shed row while taking video of his horses, and send it to me, so “you’ll feel like you’re here,” he said, and Jenine Sahadi, who heads up the Gregson Foundation, brought over food. Daily Racing Form could not have been more benevolent during my absence, particularly editor in chief Jody Swavy and chief executive Itay Fisher, who gave me all the time I needed to recuperate and get back in time to cover last fall’s Breeders’ Cup, my 37th out of 38. And this year I was able to go out the way I wanted, covering a final Triple Crown – meaning I’d covered 39 of the last 41 Derbies – and finishing up at the track where my interest was first piqued all those years ago. Working at Daily Racing Form has allowed me to see every top horse of the past quarter-century, travel the country, and, after many near misses, witness two Triple Crown sweeps, by American Pharoah and Justify. Those races stand out as favorites, along with Zenyatta’s Breeders’ Cup Classic victory at Santa Anita. It was, as Trevor Denman said, “un-be-liev-able.” Working in this sport afforded me interactions with business people and celebrities I’d never have met otherwise. Of those many moments – riding in an elevator with Cary Grant, hanging out at Clocker’s Corner with B. Wayne Hughes, etc. – one stands out. Marje Everett, the mercurial owner of Hollywood Park, got upset once at a column I wrote for the Daily News. To hash it over, she invited me a week later to lunch in the Turf Club and said there would be a couple guests joining us. I arrived at the table to find Mrs. Everett awaiting me with her friend Elizabeth Taylor. Now that was a time when I’d have wished cell phones, and cell phone cameras, existed. My passion for racing impressed the most important person in my life. Nearly a dozen years ago, I reconnected with an old high school friend who, not knowing what my career had become, remembered me most as “the guy who used to bring the Racing Form to Spanish class.” Anne Warner is now my wife, and she’s been a rock star, especially through the tumultuous past year. This job has changed in ways I couldn’t imagine when I started out. The cell phone has made it easier to reach people, but the Internet has made deadlines ever present. Having a scoop that lands exclusively in the morning paper, as I had when Shoemaker told me when he would retire, would be a tweet these days. Some things haven’t changed. I still marvel at the beautiful, fragile, brave creatures who burst out of the gate, an innate desire willing them forward. The bettors still fuel the game, breeders hope the stars align, backside personnel work tirelessly, and often anonymously, owners put up incredible sums of money to chase their dreams, jockeys and trainers try to help them realize those dreams. I got to live my dream. I’m too big to be a jockey, but it’s been a hell of a ride.