Harold Washburn

The Equine Man of Kentucky

With over 60 years of experience...

Harold Washburn Equine Man of Kentucky

...in the equine industry it's no wonder that Harold Washburn is known as the "Equine Man" throughout Kentucky and the world!

This website is established with Harold's love for horses and the horse racing community in mind and serves as your portal to information on "everything horses". This site provides an index of various equine related sites, where one can find just about anything of interest in relation to horses...

If you have a web site and would like to have it listed in the database please click here..

Learn more about racing with Harold's free online book!

 

Harold Washburn Horseracing Guide

About Harold Washburn

Harold was, you might say, born into the thoroughbred industry. His father, Ira (Buck) Washburn was adopted by a family in 1904, working for John E. Madden, and grew up on Madden's Hamburg Place as did Harold. Five Kentucky Derby winners were bred and raised on the Hamburg Place.

Harold left Hamburg Place in 1937, to work and become a jockey for (Derby Dick) Thompson, and a trainer for E.R. Bradley who had already by then won four Kentucky Derbies.

Harold grew fast in those years and got too heavy to ride but a very few races. He then turned to exercising horses in the mornings and worked for numerous racing stables, including Calumet, Dixiana, Louie B. Mayer and many others. He soon earned a reputation of being able to handle horses with bad reputations and received top pay wherever he worked.

In the mid 1940's, he went to work for Tom Smith, who had just taken over the Ada L. Rice stable. He worked as Tom's assistant for a few years, and then went on to manage Ada L. Rice's Danada Farm in Wheaton, Illinois.

Harold left the horse business in 1950 and went to work for a large food manufacturing company. He worked his way up to Maintenance Supervisor of the plant. He retired after 25 years and moved back to Kentucky, where he could not resist getting involved with horses.

In 1983, he met Peter Kules and they formed a partnership, doing seminars for numerous racetracks about horseracing for racing fans. Some of the tracks they did seminars for are:

D.R.C. in Detroit, MichiganHorse race in kentucky by bill straus

Thistledowns in Cleveland, Ohio

Finger Lake in Farmington, New York

Lationa in Kentucky

Aksarben in Omaha, Nebraska

Birmingham Turf Club in Alabama

Harold and Pete also put together a radio talk show on horseracing, "From the Backstretch to the Winner’s Circle" which airs on WLXG AM in Lexington, Kentucky.

Harold stayed with the show for 8 years before retiring. Peter is still doing the show which can be heard on Saturdays from 8 - 10 a.m. , EST, on WLXG ESPN Sports Radio 1300 AM in Lexington, in partnership with the Lexus Store of Lexington.

Biography: <Click here to read more about Harold Washburn's life...>