Joubert wins first career race

Apprentice Jenna Joubert won her first career race last Thursday on the Minnesota-bred maiden Marina Nolan.

Joubert, 22, piloted Marina Nolan to victory in a statebred contest for 2-year old fillies. The mount was the seventh of Joubert's career and her second aboard Marina Nolan, a Red Rarick trainee who finished fourth in her career debut last month.

A native of New Prague, Minn., Joubert was introduced to racing by her parents, who are owners and breeders. Following stints in pony club and dressage events, Joubert made her way to Canterbury Park, where she worked one summer for trainer Noel Hickey and spent the following spring learning to gallop at Hickey's farm in Florida.

A senior captain of the New Prague volleyball team that ended its season in the state championship game, Joubert then attended school at the University of Oklahoma, where she worked mornings at Remington Park. After graduating with a degree in economics, Joubert galloped horses this past winter at Oaklawn for D. Wayne Lukas and Steve Asmussen. Joubert is represented by agent Richard Grunder.

* The Brooks Fields Stakes that was run here last Saturday offered an occasion for the race's namesake to visit the track he founded in 1985. Fields, now 88, was feted at a party that featured former racing commissioners Carol Connelly and Larry Gross, and Nat Wess, a track official when Canterbury first opened.

Fields has penned a book about his life entitled "I Married an Angel," a volume that spans the Yale graduate's experiences as a Chinese interpreter with the U. S. Army, his career as a grain merchandiser for Pillsbury, and his days in the Army's cavalry school at Fort Riley, Kan.