Martha Claussen has spent 29 years championing racing at Sam Houston Race Park since the track brought her on as publicity director in 1997. On Saturday, her efforts will be lauded during the Texas Champions Day card in Houston. Claussen is being honored after the fourth race. It’s the first time in a long while she’s not actively promoting the program. Claussen stepped away from her duties this meet for two reasons. She and her husband, Don, moved four hours away when he retired in 2024. The second reason is highly personal. Claussen has spent 60 years silently battling rheumatoid arthritis. Now at the age of 71, she “health-wise” is limiting her travel and work obligations. Racing gained a high-profile sports-marketing professional when Claussen, as a tournament manager for the tennis division of the International Management Group, or IMG, brought both sports together at an event in which she met Bryan Pettigrew, current vice president of Texas racing operations for Penn Entertainment. “It was very prestigious getting to work for IMG, and I loved tennis,” said Claussen, who managed major tournaments with sponsors like Virginia Slims. “I had done a promotion where I brought some of the girls from Virginia Slims over to meet the jockeys, and Bryan was the marketing director, so we got to know each other and that’s how I kind of ended up [in racing]. “I said, ‘Any possibility we could do something together?’ I just know fate brought me to Sam Houston.” :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Claussen grew up riding horses at summer camp. The native of Buffalo, N.Y., was introduced to racing at 17. “My senior year in high school I dated a baseball player, and his mom liked to go to the track,” Claussen recalled. “They said, ‘You want to go to the track?’ Fort Erie is in Ontario, and it’s literally 10 minutes from where we lived in Buffalo. We’d go Sunday afternoons, and I remember how much I loved it. And then when I went to the University of Miami in Florida, I got to see Hialeah in its glory.” Claussen attended college in a warmer climate due to her rheumatoid arthritis. The symptoms first hit at age 10. “It was a shock,” she said. “I had been at summer camp and one of my fingers, my index finger, was swollen. Nothing else. But within months, I went into a severe, acute onset. But they didn’t know what it was and they ran all kinds of tests. All I knew is that I was burning up and in terrible pain and nobody knew what it was.” A blood test revealed juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. “It’s an autoimmune disease, so between medication and lifestyle, you have to be able to take care of yourself,” Claussen said. “I never wanted anybody to know about it. I thought, ‘They’re going to see that as a weakness.’ So I never talked about it.” Claussen experiences most of her pain in her hands and wrists, a particular challenge for one constantly typing. At times, she needs cortisone injections to open up cases of “trigger finger.” “I had to probably go a little slower than maybe other people could type,” she said. “And sometimes, any kind of an autoimmune disease, you are going to be more tired than a normal person if something in their body isn’t fighting off something. It was a challenge, but I was kind of just relentless. “As I got older and felt I didn’t have anything to prove anymore, all of the sudden, I said, ‘Why don’t you give yourself credit that you silently battled for 60 years with chronic disease and very few people ever knew you had it?’ ” Claussen, who has been married for 42 years and has an adult daughter, Lindsay, is a longtime fan of jockeys. They embraced her from the start at Sam Houston. “One of the first events that we wanted to do was to take the jockeys to Shriners Hospital and meet some kids,” Claussen recalled. “I was sweating bullets about asking jockeys if they’d come. I went into the jocks’ room and said, ‘I have a very special request, if you don’t mind. Would anybody be interested?’ And they said, ‘Sure! When do you need me? Do you want me to wear silks?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ “My first introduction was that they were so generous with their time and the second thing was, and this will stay with me forever, is that they have always been such underrated athletes.” Claussen also loved working closely with breeders, owners, and trainers, and in 2020 was named the Texas Thoroughbred Association’s member of the year. Other fond memories include being on the Sam Houston team led by the late track executive Bob Bork. “I’ve never worked with anybody who worked harder than Bob Bork,” she said. “He was a great mentor, but also he just set such a great example for everybody. For me and my career at Sam Houston, there were so many highlights. It was just really something I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.” These days, Claussen serves as the Quarter Horse analyst for Horseshoe Indianapolis and does publicity for the Louisiana Quarter Horse Breeders Association – work she can mostly do from home. She has a special goal for 2027. “I’ve always dreamed of qualifying for the NHC,” she said of the National Horseplayers Championship. “You can play online regional tournaments and then advance to the big stuff. I hope I can get to go to the NHC.” A new challenge for a resilient member of the racing community. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.