River Shannon and I have been together since December 2023, and we’ve had quite the journey so far! “River” is my first off-track Thoroughbred (OTTB), and I adopted him from the Secretariat Center in Lexington, Ky. I explained to Shelley Mann, Director of the Secretariat Center at the time I adopted him, that I had recently retired my heart horse from competition, so my new project horse would have pretty big shoes to fill.

The 97th Academy Awards arrives Sunday, March 2 beginning at 7 p.m. ET, and horse racing aficionados can revel in the implicit recognition the sport of kings annually receives when journalists and film buffs adopt racing’s handicapping lingo to forecast the night’s winners.