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As a young boy I won a few dollars in 1972 when Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby. I had overheard someone say he was going to win, and I guess that made an impression on me.

In Dortmund, they say the derby is more important than the championship. You can feel it around the game.

When I was in high school, my uncle, who went to the races quite a bit, got me interested. Then when I went to college at Southern Illinois University, just a few hours from Louisville, we used to go to the Kentucky Derby, and I got to see Secretariat and Riva Ridge win.

Derby born and bred, mate.

I loved the world of roller derby because I thought it was such an empowering metaphor, that you get out there and do it. It's such a rocker, athletic, capable, cool exhibitionist sport; it's about this great sort of camaraderie.

I'm just so lucky - my office is a racetrack. That is something I'm very thankful for. It's exciting, and it's challenging, and there are a lot of emotions and nerves that come with it, but right there before the gates open, before that minute and a half or two minutes of the race, it just hits you.

I crossed paths with a horse that happened to change my life. That horse is Game On Dude, and what a horse! He's a soldier. Together we traveled the world. We won the Santa Anita Big Cap, Goodwood, almost won the Breeder's Cup Classic; we won the San Antonio, Hollywood Gold Cup and the Californian.

You know yourself, once you've had the excitement of riding thoroughbreds, it's not very interesting riding anything else. But I still love horses; I just don't have one any more.

I find the education I got from living in Derby and being streetwise and knowing the people that I know, the lessons that I had to learn growing up, have set me in good stead for this kind of working life.

My love of horses began in College Park, with me and 10 friends on two couches and a keg of beer in the back of a truck, heading to Pimlico at 6 A.M. to mark our place in the middle of the Preakness infield, where we never saw a horse run.