Perry getting her feet wet as new paddock handicapper
There’s a good reason you don’t recognize the face and voice of the woman appearing on the Monmouth simulcast feed to express her opinions on upcoming races and their participants. This is Samantha Perry’s first job as a public-facing paddock host and handicapper.
Perry graduated from Central Oklahoma University in 2016 with a mass communications degree, she said, and put that degree to good use by . . . becoming a Quarter Horse jockey at Remington Park. Perry, riding at various venues throughout the Southwest, won 13 races from 196 mounts through 2019 while doing some public-relations work at Remington, where she also galloped horses for trainer Steve Asmussen.
For the last 18 months, Perry has been galloping for trainer Brendan Walsh (she was a regular exercise rider for Extravagant Kid, who won the Group 1 Al Quoz Sprint in Dubai on March 27), and while in Florida began working as a camera operator at Gulfstream, where she sought guidance from on-air talent Acacia Courtney and Ron Nicolleti.
“I made a demo reel, sent it out to every track I could think of, and was hired by Monmouth,” Perry said. “I packed my car and drove out.”
Brad Thomas, a longtime on-air Monmouth handicapper, is scheduled to make two on-air appearances per day, one to assess the entire card, the other to talk about a specific race. Thomas still is providing full-card selections and makes the morning line.