About a week ago my Horse Racing Nation Managing Editor, Brian Zipse, sent me an e-mail that said that I might become a voter in the NTRA Top Thoroughbred polls.

Of course I had seen the polls quite often on the NTRA website, in the Daily Racing Form, and in mainstream newspapers. The NTRA polls are racing’s equivalent to the Top 25 polls for college sports.  There is the Top 10 Thoroughbred Poll, which includes horses from all racing divisions, and the Top Three Year-old poll.  The Top 10 Thoroughbred Poll is essentially a horse of the year poll.

My first thought was how many people actually vote in these polls and who are they?  A few clicks later on my laptop and I was at ntra.com/polls looking at a list of 50 people, a veritable Who’s Who of racing. These are people who I have seen on television and even in the movies and they are writers whose work I have been reading my whole life.  I couldn’t help but hear Wayne and Garth whispering in my ear, “You’re not worthy, you’re not worthy.” On the other hand in the past year I have been able to meet several of them at the track and interact with many of them on a regular basis on Twitter.

Read the rest of this blog at HorseRacingNation.com/blogs/NYState.

To view the NTRA polls for March 26, 2012. ntra.com/polls