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She's a Riding Giant
Anna Napravnik, an apprentice jockey at Laurel Park, is one of the best jockeys at the track.
(Toni L. Sandys - The Washington Post)
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Her parents divorced when Napravnik was 16 and she followed her sister into the home of Robinson, who had hired Jazz as an assistant.
"Jazz worked for me and said, 'You need to meet my sister; she's a great rider,' " Robinson recalled. "I said, 'Yeah, yeah,' I hear that all the time, but I sent her over to Dickie [top trainer Richard Small]. He's good with young riders and has good horses.
"I get up very early in the morning," Robinson said. "I'm at the barn at 4 a.m., and Rosie didn't have to be there until 5, but she'd be up with me and there at 4 a.m. working with Dickie."
In Small's barn, Napravnik galloped racehorses from 5 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. before heading off to Hereford High School. "Then she'd ride the bus home and then go to night school three nights a week," Robinson said.
Riding for Small and living with Robinson gave Napravnik a trainer's perspective on horse racing, and, by all accounts, the young rider absorbed everything.
"When I tell her something, she gets it," Robinson said. "There are people that come and go, and you give them instructions and you think you are talking to a wall."
Stepping Up
Napravnik's skills were so apparent to Small in the spring of 2005, he knew there was nothing left to do but turn her pro. They got her a license, and she won her first race. The winning has never stopped.
Beginning Thursday, Napravnik will ride at the prestigious spring meet at Pimlico Race Course, moving up to Delaware Park on dark days. Faltynski has her on schedule to ride seven days a week.
The jockey colony at Delaware is deeper than in Maryland, and the Pimlico Spring Meet is thick with stakes races that lure top racing stables from around the country. Robinson expects Napravnik to keep right on winning.
"I'm a woman trainer, and I don't ride many female riders," Robinson said. "I want the best rider I can get -- man, woman, beast, no matter what. Rosie, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best riders in Maryland."
Napravnik's long shot winner, Our Peaks, will run Saturday in the Federico Tesio Stakes. If he wins impressively, he might be entered in the Preakness Stakes. Napravnik is well aware jockey Steve Cauthen turned 18 the week before the Kentucky Derby when he rode Affirmed to the Triple Crown in 1978.
She speaks as if the Hall of Famer is a measuring stick for her success, and he got to the top just a little bit quicker. But she appears convinced, not with cockiness but confidence, that the top is where she is headed.
"It's all very exciting, but like I've said a million times before, a lot of people have a minute of fame," Napravnik said. "I want to keep doing well and finding ways how to."
