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Murray Smith

Posted: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 2:27 PM

MURRAY SMITH

PhotosByZ.com/Thoroughbred Times

Murray Smith Training Stable

Murray Smith failed to make the U.S. equestrian team for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, but if they awarded medals for pinhooking Thoroughbreds, Smith would have a trophy case full of gold, silver, and bronze.

Smith’s gold medal winners include 1997 champion sprinter Smoke Glacken and 2001 Kentucky Derby (G1) winner Monarchos.

For Smith, there is nothing like buying a diamond-in-the-rough yearling and developing it into a beautiful racehorse.

“I love buying raw athletes, finding talent,” said the Ocala-based pinhooker. “It’s like an artist grabbing a lump of clay and working with it and kneading it and in the end it comes out an exquisite work of art.”

Smith’s highest price came from a horse that, initially, she could not find a buyer for. Smith bought back Wild Fit for $240,000 as a two-year-old. Co-owned by Smith and Brewer Racing Stable, Wild Fit won the Del Mar Debutante Stakes (G1) and ran second in the ’05 Alberto V05 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (G1). Wild Fit later sold for $3-million at the 2005 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky selected fall mixed sale.

Smith built Murray Smith Training Stables in Ocala from the ground up and has been based there since 2004.

Smith said she learned to train and condition a horse during her riding days at Ocala Stud in the early 1990s, when her mounts included eventual champion three-year-old male Unbridled.

Date of birth: August 9, 1961
Birthplace: Pensacola, Florida
Residence: Ocala
Title: Owner, operator
Company: Murray Smith Training Stables
Education: Attended the University of Alabama
Family: Single
Career: Worked as assistant trainer and manager at Indian Prairie Ranch; yearling and sales manager at Warnerton Farm; exercise rider at Ocala Stud; helped found, build, and operate Jigsaw Lane Farm for Richard Spoor
Favorite horse: Secretariat
What book are you currently reading? Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, by Michio Kaku
Favorite television show: “Arrested Development”
Outside interests: Cosmology, physics, astronomy, ancient artifacts, art, golf
What advice would you give other women interested in the racing industry? “To be successful, you have to be prepared to give up everything.”
Personal motto: “Can’t is not in my vocabulary.”

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