Day One: Media Day

June 3 marked my first day as an intern at Colonial Downs, and it was a pretty exciting one.

After getting lost for a few minutes (and somehow ending up on the roof instead of the top floor), I ran into my internship coordinator, Darrell Wood, and he led me to the Press Box that I share with the other intern, Molly. He went over a few details about the day and then set us free so Molly could show me around the top floor (which has an amazing view of the track) and go over what she'd done since she'd started about two weeks ago.

Around 10:30, we had to leave to meet Darrell at the Virginia Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association building for Media Day. After setting everything up and getting a decent turnout of about twelve news stations and papers, we watched some of the interviews being done outside. Darrell (Director of Marketing), Tyler Picklesimer (Director of Racing), and Ferris Allen (leading trainer at Colonial) were all interviewed by several different people, and Darrell mentions in this video most of the talking points we stressed to the writers that day. He pointed out that it was alright to tell everyone the same things this time since they were looking for general footage on opening day, but that we needed to uncover different stories to sell individually to news stations. Molly and I have a few ideas started and are trying to track down some facts on them.

Throughout this time, Molly and I took four different media groups to the backside to get footage of the racehorses. Since it was about 2pm and training ends at 10am, the barns were pretty dead and we weren't sure we'd be able to find anyone to pull a relaxing horse out for us. Molly had encountered some people who didn't want to deal with the media at all, but we eventually found a nice married couple shoeing some horses for Hamilton Smith's barn and we repeatedly went back to them for video. Mr. Paulk of the Richmond Times Dispatch spent a lot of time with us at the barns and seemed to be enjoying Molly and I's discussion with the farrier on the way the media views the sport and incidents like Barbaro's breakdown. His video can be seen here.

After all the media left, we went back to the Press Box and waited for a call from Equibase to tell us how to send entries and results to different newspapers daily. Apparently, the guy who used to be in the Press Box was laid off last year and he was the only one who knew how to do this. However, we got that all figured out and sent Friday's entries to the papers before going home.
Because none of the Hampton Roads news stations showed up for Media Day, Darrell asked me to go to four different stations and drop off an informational packet and video footage of last year's VA Derby. Since it was after hours, it was difficult to get this to people working there, but I got it done.

I realized early on that it's going to be a bit difficult for me to change my mindset during this internship. It was announced during my orientation that Rachel Alexandra wasn't going to run in the Belmont, which I think is fantastic because there's no way she would have lasted 1 1/2 miles, but Darrell was so disappointed because that would have meant the colt vs. filly rivalry that brings people to the track. It's also a bit weird that the only person on the business side I've encountered who knows anything about racing is Darrell.

I'll be going back on Saturday to hopefully do a test run of the Inside Track, a $300 tour that lets fans go on the backside, see some of the offices, stand next to the starting gate as a race starts, etc. I can already hear all the interesting and weird questions I'll have to answer...