A Good Bet
Racehorses, even top performers, retire with three-quarters of their life left to live. What happens to these horses after the races is often a gamble. WRITTEN BY MEGIN POTTER | PHOTOS BY SHARON CASTRO
If you want to make a good bet (consistently) in horse racing, you don’t gamble. You combine information with instinct. When these same qualities are used to pair-up a trained equine with an enriching second career, it’s almost a sure thing that they will have a good life after the races. “We combine a horse with the right rider so they get along together. A horse can be a best friend but can also be very competitive and be very successful in a different way,” said Anna Hollander. She is a former exercise rider and assistant trainer who started After the Races, a boutique Thoroughbred retirement program near Saratoga Springs. TRANSITIONING TO THE NEXT CHAPTER Even before moving to Swedish Hill Farm in 2017 (and starting After the Races there a couple years later) Anna Hollander’s life always included horses. 64 | EQUICUREAN | JULY/AUGUST 2021
She grew up on a 150-acre horse farm in Sweden, then spent 25 years riding and working with horses in highstakes competitive events with other well-known trainers in Saratoga. In 2002, during her recovery from a crushing accident at Belmont, a friend gave Hollander a grey ex-racehorse. She named the horse Dr. Yelon (after the doctor who saved her life after the accident). Hollander noticed that Dr. Yelon was a naturally elegant horse who had a mind for dressage, so she began training Dr. Yelon to have a second career as a show horse. It was an endeavor that would launch Hollander into her own next chapter – which now includes After the Races, a charitable mission to transition horses from their lives on the raceway onto the pathways of their future.
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