Esteemed writers Edward L. Bowen and Ray Kerrison and pioneering photographer Charles Christian “C. C.” Cook dinner have been chosen to the Nationwide Museum of Racing and Corridor of Fame’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.
Edward L. Bowen (1942-2025), who was inducted into the Corridor of Fame this 12 months as a Pillar of the Turf, loved a prolific profession as a racing journalist and historian for greater than 60 years. An editor-in-chief of The BloodHorse journal and the writer of twenty-two books on horse racing, Bowen additionally served 24 years as president of the Grayson-Jockey Membership Analysis Basis, historically the main supply of funding for veterinary analysis particularly to advertise horse well being and soundness. He was the chair of quite a few committees on the Nationwide Museum of Racing and Corridor of Fame, together with the modern nominating committee for 38 years, starting in 1987.
Bowen was born in West Virginia however grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the place he developed an early curiosity in horse racing from studying the “Black Stallion” books by Walter Farley and watching domestically televised races from Hialeah Park and Gulfstream Park. Bowen spent post-high college and school summers working for the native Solar-Sentinel newspaper, on the broodmare crew at Ocala Stud in Central Florida, and as a scorching walker and groom at Monmouth Park in New Jersey. In 1963, he secured a writing job at The BloodHorse in Lexington and transferred from the College of Florida to the College of Kentucky.
From 1968 to 1970, Bowen was editor of the month-to-month Canadian Horse journal in Toronto, then returned to Lexington to turn into managing editor of The BloodHorse. In January 1987, he succeeded his mentor, Kent Hollingsworth, as editor-in-chief. Bowen held that put up for 5 years, was transferred to senior editor in 1992, and left the publication in 1993. He was employed as president of Grayson-Jockey Membership Analysis Basis in 1994.
From 1994 till his retirement on the finish of 2018, Bowen’s function at Grayson included help of the board’s elevating adequate funds to offer $22 million for analysis tasks. That complete was important in elevating to $32.1 million, which was supplied to 45 universities to fund 412 tasks since 1983.
Each throughout and after his employment at The BloodHorse, Bowen was lively in writing books commissioned by that agency in addition to different publishers. Along with authoring 22 racing books, he contributed chapters, forewords, or prefaces for 18 further volumes on racing and two books on pure points of interest open to the general public.
Bowen gained the next writing awards: Eclipse Award (journal division), Nationwide Turf Writers Affiliation’s Walter Haight Award, Kentucky Thoroughbred Homeowners and Breeders’ Charles Engelhard Award, Pimlico’s Previous Hilltop Award, ForeWord Journal’s Gold Degree designation (Sports activities Class), and the Ocala-Marion County Chamber of Commerce Journalism Award.
Honored as a Kentucky Colonel, Bowen was a previous president of the Thoroughbred Membership of America and a board member of the Thoroughbred Retirement Basis. He served six years within the U.S. Military Reserve and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. Bowen was the Thoroughbred Membership of America’s 2022 Honor Visitor and was introduced the inaugural Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Award for Meritorious Service to the Nationwide Museum of Racing and Corridor of Fame in 2023.
“Ed contributed to the betterment of racing in so some ways and the historic document of his excellent writing will reside on endlessly,” stated Brien Bouyea, the Nationwide Museum of Racing’s Corridor of Fame and communications director. “Ed constructed a repute on integral reporting and charming storytelling. He liked horses and horse racing and that zeal shined by means of in his vivid work.”
Charles Christian “C. C.” Cook dinner (1873-1954) was considered one of American racing’s first and most influential photographers. A local of Carmi, Unwell., Cook dinner labored as a photojournalist for newspapers in Chicago earlier than turning into a freelancer round 1900. His photographs of animals within the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus attracted huge consideration. Cook dinner started his affiliation with racing images at Washington Park in Chicago within the late Nineties.
Cook dinner was one of many first photographers in america to concentrate on horse racing images, in addition to portraits and scenic photographs at varied racetracks. When racing was banned in his house state of Illinois, Cook dinner relocated to New York.
Starting in 1906, Cook dinner labored for New York’s Globe newspaper and later as a workers photographer for The Morning Telegraph, the sister publication of Day by day Racing Kind. Throughout World Warfare I, he served as an aerial photographer for the U.S. Military. For many years, Cook dinner was a industrial photographer at tracks in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, and New York, amongst others. He additionally hung out because the official observe photographer at Florida’s Hialeah Park.
Cook dinner’s racing images included topics equivalent to Corridor of Fame racehorses Suave, Quotation, Exterminator, Gallant Fox, Man o’ Warfare, Remorse, and Twenty Grand, in addition to 1000’s of photographs of notable jockeys, trainers, homeowners, racing officers, and observe scenes spanning the late Nineties by means of the primary half of the twentieth century.
A group of greater than 18,000 glass plates and negatives shot by Cook dinner was bought within the Nineteen Fifties by horse proprietor Arnold Hanger and donated to the Keeneland Library in Lexington.
“Cook dinner was a prolific photographer who established tendencies in U.S. racing images as each an artist and as a pioneer of observe images tools that developed closely within the early many years of the twentieth century,” Keeneland Library Director Roda Ferraro stated. “The Cook dinner Assortment stays a pillar of Keeneland Library’s huge images collections, and Cook dinner’s seminal physique of labor is alive and influential as we join folks each day to his captured race-day moments to be used in worldwide articles, books, movies, reveals, social media, and observe and farm advertising and marketing campaigns.”
Ray Kerrison (1930-2022) was considered one of racing’s most revered writers and had few friends as an investigative reporter. A local of Australia, Kerrison wrote for the New York Put up from 1977 by means of 2013, serving the paper as each a information and horse racing columnist. He coated 32 editions of the Kentucky Derby and quite a few different main races, together with Breeders’ Cup occasions.
Kerrison started his profession in journalism in Australia and joined Information Restricted in 1963 in its New York bureau. He moved on to edit the Nationwide Star, Rupert Murdoch’s first U.S. publication, within the early Seventies, then was employed by The Put up in 1977 to cowl horse racing. In his first 12 months at The Put up, Kerrison uncovered a racing scandal by which one horse raced below the title of one other at Belmont Park. The betting repair concerned the switching of the identities of the horses Lebon and Cinzano. The latter, a champion in Uruguay, raced below the title of Lebon, a nondescript horse who additionally got here out of South America. Operating below the title of Lebon, Cinzano gained a race at Belmont at odds of 57-1. For this reporting, Kerrison was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
A few years later, Kerrison and fellow racing author John Piesen broke the story of the largest race-fixing rip-off in New York historical past. “Racing’s Darkest Hour” was The Put up’s headline. Kerrison’s reporting performed a key function in uncovering the scandal that led to expenses being introduced towards jockey Con Errico, mobster Anthony Ciulla, and greater than 20 others.
Alongside along with his racing writing, Kerrison reported on many different the foremost information occasions throughout his profession, together with Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, the primary moon touchdown in 1969, and the Munich Olympics tragedy in 1972.
“Ray was sensible, sort, dryly witty, and as dedicated to his craft as any journalist I’ve ever identified,” Bob McManus, The Put up’s retired editorial web page editor, stated after Kerrison’s dying in 2022. “He was a person of unshakable precept, which was apparent in his writing, but in addition a fellow who revered his readers’ intelligence. His purpose was to influence, to not lecture, and whereas his work could possibly be controversial, it at all times was trustworthy.”
“I used to check with him because the Fred Astaire of Thoroughbred racing as a result of he was one of the best,” former Put up Sports activities Editor Greg Gallo stated. “He was the classiest man who ever labored that beat. Nobody was higher as a journalist.”
Concerning the Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor
The Nationwide Museum of Racing’s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor was established in 2010 to acknowledge people whose careers have been devoted to, or considerably concerned in, writing about Thoroughbred racing (non-fiction), and who distinguished themselves as journalists. The factors has since been expanded to permit the consideration of different types of media.
Sometimes called the dean of thoroughbred racing writers, Hirsch gained each the Eclipse Award for Excellent Writing and the Lord Derby Award in London from the Horserace Writers and Reporters Affiliation of Nice Britain. He additionally acquired the Eclipse Award of Advantage (1993), the Large Sport of Turfdom Award (1983), The Jockey Membership Medal (1989), and was designated because the honored visitor on the 1994 Thoroughbred Membership of America’s testimonial dinner. The annual Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Traditional Invitational at Belmont Park is known as in his honor. Hirsch, who died in 2009, was additionally a former chair of the Nationwide Museum of Racing and Corridor of Fame Nominating Committee and the founding father of the Nationwide Turf Writers Affiliation. He was inducted into the Corridor of Fame in 2024 as a Pillar of the Turf.
