Hi.  My name is Walter Lazary. Some of you may remember me as LAZMANNICK, which was my handle when I posted on blogs such as BloodHorse and Horse Racing Nation back in the days of Curlin, Zenzatta, Shared Belief, and California Chrome.

I first became interested in horse racing when I visited Woodbine in 1964 with my brother and a boyhood friend.  We were still teenagers, with our only exposure to thoroughbred horse racing when we watched the Triple Crown races on our black and white television set.  My first visit to Woodbine blew me away.  The colorful infield and lush turf course made me think that I was in a different world, and when I visited the paddock and could see these majestic horses up close, it changed my entire perspective of a sport that I thought I knew a lot about but actually knew very little.  I loved the enthusiasm that sprang from the crowd, the way that races would set up in the backstretch and around the far turn, and I was thrilled at the sight of these magnificent animals, their jockeys in brightly colored silks, as they charged through the stretch in a frantic effort to reach the wire first.  In my mind, there was nothing like it, and after just that one visit to Woodbine, I was hooked.

When I first became involved with horse racing, it was to bet.  I was too young to know much about pedigree, and being isolated in Canada, I didn’t know much about the sport’s major stars, icons such as the mighty Kelso and the great Bold Ruler.  Then, just a few weeks after my first visit to Woodbine, along came Northern Dancer.  He was the dominant three-year-old early in 1964, winning the Flamingo, the Florida Derby, and the Blue Grass Stakes while preparing for the Triple Crown.  His Kentucky Derby and Preakness victories captivated a nation, but none more so than me.  This outstanding colt created a much deeper interest in the sport and made me realize there was a lot more to racing than watching the tote board and making a bet.

When it comes to life, history is important.  So be it with sports, whether it’s baseball, football, basketball, soccer or hockey.  The past matters, and I quickly found that I could not read and discover enough about the great horses, trainers, jockeys, and owners of the past.  That is when I began my life-long, 24/7 journey into studying, researching, and collecting.  I have been to other race tracks and was thrilled by many of this sport’s greatest stars.  I have also witnessed the rising and declining periods that thoroughbred horseracing has experienced over the years, and I am often saddened by how this sport has fallen behind others.

By creating this blog, I hope to bring back a little of the past, enlighten the newbies to the sport, and rekindle historical interest for those who have lived through it.  Hopefully, I can play a small part in reviving racing’s colorful past because it is so important that these precious memories do not die and fade away forever.