NEWS
Jerardi wins Media Eclipse Award for Writing for Barbaro series
Posted: Saturday, January 06, 2007 5:46 PM
Dick Jerardi, sports writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and a correspondent for THOROUGHBRED TIMES, has won the 2006 Media Eclipse Award for Writing in the News/Commentary category for his series of articles on the events surrounding the injury and treatment of Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) winner Barbaro in the hours following the 131st Preakness Stakes (G1).
Jerardi’s articles in the Daily News, “A Nightmare, Right from the Start,” and “Maybe Step,” were published on May 22 and “In Barbaro’s Corral” was published on May 24.
In the first of the three articles, Jerardi described the scene at Pimlico Race Course right after Barbaro’s injury and the colt’s journey to the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center that evening. The second article detailed the explanations of New Bolton chief surgeon Dean Richardson, D.V.M., after performing successful surgery on Barbaro. The final story provided comment on the decision of Barbaro’s owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, to move ahead with the surgery and the emotional turmoil of the preceding two days.
“I wanted to give the readers the experience of what it was like at those crisis moments at Pimlico and New Bolton through my eyes,” said Jerardi. “I had never been in a situation quite like this one before. It was one of the biggest stories I’ve every covered, and of course, in those long hours of Barbaro’s surgery at New Bolton, you didn’t know the outcome. My editors gave me a lot of leeway and I appreciated it very much.”
Honorable mention in the Writing – News/Commentary category went to J. Davant Latham Jr., for “Crystal Clear,” a commentary on the life of 2005 champion sprinter Lost in the Fog, which appeared in The Blood-Horse on September 30, 2006; and Joe Clancy for his article “Everyone Wanted to Know About Barbaro,” which was published in The Blood-Horse on June 10, 2006.
The panel of judges for the Writing – News/Commentary category was comprised of Reid Cherner, USA Today; Jim Peden, former vice-president of communications for the Jockey Club, and Fred Klein, sports columnist and journalist.
The 36th annual Eclipse Awards will be held on January 22 at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.
