Reid Targets NY-Breds to Begin Her New Career

By Bill Heller

Horse identifier Janet Reid, who retired in July after 34 years plying her craft with the New York Racing Association, turned to New York-breds to jump-start her new career on her own this fall. Her idea is to offer her services privately to take care of all the details involved in properly registering new foals with The Jockey Club, a vital though unglamorous task. Following a suggestion by Joe Spadaro, the retired Deputy Executive Director of the New York Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund, to target New York farms just a few days after she decided to start her new business, she rushed to print business cards to hand out on New York-Bred Showcase Day, October 24th. While doing so that afternoon, it was suggested by trainer Jim Bond and his wife Tina that she attend the New York-Bred Mixed Sale two days later. She did, giving out nearly 100 cards. “I’m trying to reinvent myself,” she said. “There’s a hole in the industry. I’m trying to start a new business for farms to take care of all the paperwork. I know there are a lot of people who hate the paperwork. It takes a lot of the burden off them.” She will likely be very good at doing that. “She’s an excellent worker and takes the job seriously,” Spadaro, who worked with Reid for years, said. “She was very helpful to me and she has the upmost integrity.” Her entrance into horse racing was serendipitous. Though she grew up and still lives in Belmont Park’s shadow in Floral Park, she fell in love with horse racing when she visited her uncle, Jim Belotti, in rural Louisiana. Belotti, 86, is a native of the Bronx who played 556 games in six seasons in minor league baseball as a first basemen under the name of Jim Bello. Though he never got higher than Class B, his career batting average was .295. Playing for Independence, Kansas, in the Class D Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League in 1949, he had a teammate of note. “I played first base, and my shortstop was ,” he said. “We played on the same team with Harry Craft as .” Craft, who played center field for the from 1937 to 1942, became the first manager of the Colt .45s, an expansion team in 1962 that has since become the Astros. Realizing he wasn’t going to make it in the major leagues, Belotti opened a business selling mobile homes. “Big Jim’s Mobile Homes,” he said. “I was the biggest thing in Lafayette, Louisiana. My wife and I got lucky and made some money.” That allowed them to act on his wife Wanda’s life-long passion: horses. They bought their first horse in 1980. “Before I knew it, I had 30 horses,” he said. “Won 400 races from 1980 to 1992. We had a lot of fun. I had a hell of a life. I was dealt a good hand.” Reid remembers her visit to his farm fondly. “We used to come down here when we were kids,” said Reid, now 57. “He had a stable at Evangeline Downs. He’d back up a pickup truck to the fence so we could watch the horses down the stretch.” Reid decided to study veterinary science when she went to college at the State University of New York at Canton in northern New York State. After graduating, however, she couldn’t find a job and wound up working for a phone company. “I had a neighbor, Mike Kay, who was an assistant trainer for Elliott Burch,” she said. “I arrived at the barn one morning and he handed me a horse to hot-walk at Belmont. I walked a horse around the shed once. I handed the horse back and said, ‘I didn’t go to school for that.’ So he introduced me to Doc Gilman.” That was the break of a lifetime. Manuel “Doc” Gilman, who died in 2011 at the age of 91, was perhaps the most influential veterinarian in Thoroughbred racing history. After working for The Jockey Club for four years identifying horses, he was hired as the Chief Examining Veterinarian for the New York Racing Association in 1949, a position he held for 32 years. His standards became industry-wide standards, especially with horse identification. “Doctor Gilman had a girl on maternity leave, and I was hired,” Reid said. “She didn’t come back, and I never left. That was 1981. I was 23. I was a clerk with the examining veterinarian. I started moving up.” It was literally a different world. “Nothing was computerized, so I learned the vernacular. Fred Burlew was the horse identifier. His father trained Beldame. Buddy Bishop was his assistant. When it came time for them to retire, I started going out and identifying horses on my own.” She explained the procedure: “When a mare gets bred, they send the notification to The Jockey Club. Then The Jockey Club sends an identification kit. There’s a form to fill out, photos are needed, and a hair sample is pulled and sent to a DNA facility in California. There used to be blood-typing, but that wasn’t as good as DNA. They started doing DNA in 2002. Then the Jockey Club gives a foal certificate. Each foal gets a tattoo number on the upper lip, which is the foal registration number.” Reid truly enjoyed her career. “I had a great 34-year-career,” she said. “It was always changing. It was never static. The cast of characters change. The horses you root for. I was truly blessed in my career with a Crown winner this year. You had to root for him. You had to love him. He had amazing poise.” Now she’s ready for a new career. “I’m very hopeful,” she said. “I’m hoping to get a few good farms.” Her uncle is sure she will. “Janet is my jewel,” he said. He added, with considerable pride, “She’s been identifying horses for 34 years.”