After the Preakness Stakes last month, American Pharoah goes for the triple crown Saturday at the Belmont Stakes in New York, but will not be the only horse there with Arizona connections.
Bob Baffert, trainer for American Pharoah, and Todd Pletcher, the trainer for two horses in the Belmont, are both products of the Race Track Industry Program at University of Arizona. It’s the only one of its kind in the country.
Director Doug Reed calls it the educational arm for the horse racing industry. I caught up with him in New York, where he’s getting ready for the Belmont, and asked him how a program like this ended up in Tucson, rather than a horse-racing hotbed like Kentucky.
