DAILY RACING FORM PRESS RELEASE

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LEGENDARY DAILY RACING FORM COLUMNIST JOE HIRSCH, 74, TO RETIRE IN LATE NOVEMBER

NEW YORK, Nov. 1, 2003 – Joe Hirsch, 74, Daily Racing Form’s award-winning executive columnist and the most accomplished turf writer in the history of thoroughbred racing, will end his legendary 55-year career when he pens his final DRF column on Saturday, November 29.

The announcement was made by Steven Crist, chairman and publisher of Daily Racing Form.

"Everyone at the Daily Racing Form family, where Joe has been the patriarch for decades, hoped and even assumed that Joe would keep writing for us forever," said Crist, in a publisher's note in the Sunday, November 2 issue of Daily Racing Form. "But when Joe decided a few months ago that he wanted this to be his last season, he came into the DRF offices, closed the door and said simply, 'It's time.'"

"I'm packing it in," Hirsch admitted from his home in Manhattan. "I have to do it. I can't do any more work."

"As his countless friends and colleagues in racing will attest, Joe's contributions to the sport he genuinely loved go far beyond the columns he began writing in 1954," Crist continued. "He has been a teacher and mentor to generations of writers, and a tireless advocate for racing on an international scale. His absence from these pages will be will be devastating, but we all look forward to years of his continuing counsel and friendship."

After graduating from New York University with a journalism degree in 1948, Hirsch was hired by The Morning Telegraph, then the companion paper of Daily Racing Form, after a short stint with the New York Times. He has tirelessly covered thoroughbred racing, throughout the U.S. and Europe, ever since. His long association with Daily Racing Form began in 1954, and he has served as the executive columnist since 1974.

The "dean" of thoroughbred racing writers, Hirsch has been accorded a myriad of honors in his career, with the most recent being in July 28, 1999 when the New York Turf Writers’ Association christens the “Joe Hirsch Press Box” at prestigious Saratoga Race Course.

In addition, Hirsch was the founder and first president of the National Turf Writers’ Association and is the only American writer to win both the Eclipse Award for outstanding writing and the Lord Derby Award from the Horse Race Writers of Britain.

His other honors include the Eclipse Award of Merit, the Jockey Club Medal, and the Walter Haight Award and the Joe Palmer Award from the National Turf Writers. He was also awarded the William May Award from the Association of Racing Commissioners International.

He is the author or co-author of five books and serves as a member of the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame selection committee.