You could frame it like this: Nicolle Neulist might have the most unusual “blank” in North American racing? What is, “career trajectory.” Neulist, 38, fulfilled a nearly lifelong ambition to appear on the television quiz show “Jeopardy!,” when they appeared on an episode that aired Aug. 13. Their desire to become professionally enmeshed in horse racing arose more recently, but Neulist has done that, too. Equibase offered Neulist work as a chart caller in 2017. The answer was “yes,” and Neulist, who now calls charts at Arlington and Hawthorne, for the second time left an established career path. Neulist, who has publicly identified as gender non-binary since about 2013 and prefers the personal pronoun “they,” graduated from the University of Chicago law school at 24, was recruited hard, and went right to work in 2007 for a high-powered firm. “I didn’t last very long in the law at all,” Neulist said. “My last year of law school, I felt that’s not where I belonged, but I had the job lined up, and I needed to see if actually working in it was any better. It was a very bad fit for me. Everyone makes stupid decisions when they’re 22; going to law school was my stupid decision.” Neulist quickly pivoted, becoming a full-time computer security consultant. You might be getting the idea – correct! – that Neulist is especially bright. After graduating high school in North Carolina, Neulist applied to two universities, MIT and University of Chicago, and quickly was admitted to both. And while lawyering didn’t suit Neulist, it was while working as a summer associate that they went on a group outing to Arlington, their first trip to a racetrack. In 2013, Neulist decided to attend the Arlington Million. “I just kind of got to soak it all in. I thought, ‘This is super-cool, and I’m not used to being up this close to horses, and it’s something I need more of,’ ” Neulist said. “I started gravitating more toward horses and got really into Palace Malice in the Triple Crown races in 2013.” :: Get Daily Racing Form Past Performances – the exclusive home of Beyer Speed Figures Neulist has relished the gathering and processing of information since they were a young child. Horse racing, with its endless troves of data, offered fertile ground for mental exercise. “Horse racing really does satisfy that aspect of my brain – satisfies research brain, trivia brain, research and synthesis, and figuring things out, both the handicapping and pedigrees,” Neulist said. “Two-year-old races are my favorite races to handicap. It scratches that same itch as trivia and research.” Neulist has tried to get on “Jeopardy!” for many years, a process that requires passing an online test, then being called for a personal audition. They took the test more times than they can remember and had auditions in 2009, 2014, 2017, and 2019. At the last audition, which came amidst a spate of breakdowns at Santa Anita, Neulist was asked what they did professionally; the mention of “horse racing” triggered a cringe from a contestant coordinator. Nevertheless, 20 months later, Neulist was invited to appear. “When I was a kid, I would watch ‘Jeopardy!’ and I’d be adding up and subtracting my score on my calculator. I played Trivial Pursuit and as soon as I was old enough to get into bars, I was into pub quiz. I’ve been playing trivia games forever,” they said. A week’s worth of “Jeopardy!” shows are recorded during a period of a few hours, and Neulist wound up waiting until the session’s final game. By then it had become clear they were facing one of the show’s great champions, Matt Amodio, who had won 17 games in a row when Neulist took him on. Neulist gave Amodio the sternest challenge he has faced, leading him after the first round of the competition before her luck ran out later in the game. In the second round, Neulist uncovered a Daily Double, a chance to amass greater earnings, but could not produce the correct answer. And the Final Jeopardy question stumped Neulist. “There were two Final Jeopardy questions that week Matt got wrong that I knew cold, but I just didn’t know this one,” they said. Amodio had dominated the run of play by pressing his buzzer before his rivals, giving him greater opportunity to express his breadth of knowledge; Neulist, playing for the first time while Amodio was in his 18th game, came closest to matching him on the buzzer. You get one shot on “Jeopardy!” and now Neulist is back to calling charts and freelance racing writing, which forms the entirety of their professional life. That’s caused a shift in the ceaseless deep pedigree dives, visits down racing’s abundant rabbit holes, the intense application of capacious brain space to the sport. “Sometimes when I have spare time now, I’ll occasionally want to do something that isn’t horse racing, and that actually still feels very weird,” Neulist said. “It’s been this strange process of me coming around to horse racing is what you do professionally now, and it’s okay to do other things in your spare time.”