Wendy Wooley of EquiSport Photos landed the highest honor in US racing photography for her image of a controversial finish to the $500,000 Lukas Classic at Churchill Downs in October 2022. Here she reflects on her success in an interview with Ken Snyder.
USA: A whim meant a win for photographer Wendy Wooley back on October 1. And it was a big one. “We were on assignment for the Ack Ack,” explains Wooley, as she reflects on her day’s work at Churchill Downs.
Following the Ack Ack, a Grade 3 ‘win-and-you’re-in’ qualifier for the 2022 Breeders’ Cup, came the Lukas Classic. In one of those ‘since-we’re-here …’ moments, Wendy and her husband Matt – also a photographer in their company, EquiSport Photos – decided to stay to shoot the $500,000 contest, which is the main Kentucky prep for the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
It proved to be a good move. The Lukas Classic ended in a controversial finish, and Wooley’s image, carried on the Paulick Report website, won her the Media Eclipse Award for Photography for 2022.
“Winning an Eclipse Award felt surreal to me,” says Wooley, 58. “How do you put it into words? As a horse racing photographer, it’s something that everyone strives for.
“To win it is like the highest honor that anyone can have,” she adds. “For me in photography, the Eclipse Award in horse racing is the top honor. It’s amazing. What’s the word I’m looking for? It is mind-boggling.”
The Lukas Classic was expected to be a duel between Hot Rod Charlie and Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike. ‘Duel’, as it turned out, was something of an understatement.
Wooley was the lone photographer shooting at the end of the stretch for a head-on shot of the horses running to the wire. What she shot had the US racing world buzzing for weeks: her photo captured Sonny Leon on Rich Strike elbowing Tyler Gaffalione aboard Hot Rod Charlie. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says.
Neither could anyone else after the race in the media center when Wooley returned to review her photos. In fact, she and perhaps a race-replay videographer shooting head-on (and maybe jockeys following the two horses in the race) may have been the only people to see what had transpired.
“Since I shoot with big glass (600mm lens) I usually like to shoot head-on,” explains Wooley, who set up her shot using a Canon R3 camera. “So that’s where I went, down at the clubhouse turn going around the turn enough so that I get them running straight towards me, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing through my camera while shooting.”
The result was a clear photograph of Leon leaning over into Gaffalione, his left arm cocked at an angle in front of his rival jockey in what appeared an obvious attempt to obstruct him. In the end, the manoeuvre earned Leon a 15-day suspension; the photograph, titled ‘Elbow Room Please’, earned Wooley her first Media Eclipse Award for best photograph in 2022. “It’s so rewarding because you put in so much work towards it. We’ve been working for years and this is my first one. To be recognized for my work is an absolute honor.”
Going back to the Churchill Downs media center after the controversial race, Wooley had quickly reviewed the shots of the stretch drive. To her surprise, nobody in the media center was saying anything about what she had witnessed.
The reason, of course, was that everyone else saw the race from across the track and not head-on. Leon and Rich Strike were on the outside of Hot Rod Charlie, and the jockey’s right arm probably obscured what he was doing with his left.
Wooley found multiple Eclipse Award-winning writer Jennie Rees and said: “You’ve got to see this!” and showed her the whole sequence of images. “We both chalked it up to some rough race riding,” says Wooley. “I sent the image to the Paulick Report and Ray [publisher] wrote me back with ‘this is a heckuva shot.’”
According to Wooley, Paulick almost always reacts impassively – but not this time. “When he said it was outstanding, that’s when I knew it was a special image,” she says. “I realized I was the only one with that angle too. No one else shot the head on that day. I thought, ‘This is a pretty good shot!’”
At that moment, thoughts of a Media Eclipse Award entered the photographer’s mind - and this image certainly met the qualification requirements. “They have criteria,” she explains. “It’s gotta be a ‘meaningful moment in the sport.’”
Wooley, though, also had her own standards to meet. “I have my own criteria,” she says. “I don’t want to send them an image of anyone getting hurt or anybody coming off a horse in a big race. But in this one, nobody got hurt. There was controversy around it for sure, but nobody fell off.”
That was perhaps good fortune smiling down on not just Wooley but Leon and Gaffalione as well. From her viewpoint, Wooley wasn’t as concerned about Gaffalione getting unseated as she was for Leon’s welfare. “It looked to me like Sonny was going to fall off,” she says. “He was leaning over so much; he was putting his horse into the other horse.”
A Michigan native, Wooley says she “grew up in the Detroit area as a typical horse-crazy girl”, adding:“I always watched racing on television and I’ll never forget when Affirmed won the Triple Crown but I got out of racing when my life had me going in a different direction – but then Barbaro reignited my interest.”
Wooley’s immersion in horses and horse racing photography began to take proper hold with a business trip to Muskegon for the Michigan native in 2007 where she decided to take in the night races at the now-defunct Great Lakes Downs.
“I saw this horse run and I thought he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” she recalls. “I wrote the trainer and said: ‘If you ever want to retire him, let me know.’”
Later that year the trainer, Bob Gorham, contacted her with a surprising message: “You can have him.” For “next to nothing,” Wooley says, it was a done deal.
That horse, Jaguar Hope, became instrumental in elevating photography from a hobby to a career for Wooley “I really wanted to take better pictures of him,” she says. “That’s what got me more into photography.”
From images of her own horse, she began shooting races and horses on the backside at Great Lakes Downs and progressed from there to Chicago racetracks. Scott Serio, the owner and managing editor of Maryland-based Eclipse Sportswire, began using her work.
Future husband Matt was then a full-time photographer for Eclipse. “It was fun and photographing horse racing is how I eventually met my husband Matt and moved to Lexington,” she recalls.
Based in prime Kentucky horse country, Matt and Wendy set up EquiSport Photos in 2009. The couple primarily shoots racing at the various Kentucky tracks, plus the Preakness, but the Breeders’ Cup is their biggest event. However, conformation shots for stud farms around Lexington and sales videos provide the bulk of their work.
If horses offer a livelihood, they have also become objects of love and passion – and Wooley firmly believes racehorses have egos easily inflated or deflated depending on their finish. “If they win, they know it,” she says. “They don’t like to lose. People don’t see this – you have to be around them all the time to understand that.”
Wooley certainly spends plenty of time around horses: she learned of her award success via a call on her cellphone from NTRA official Jim Gluckson, the event’s executive producer, while she was (to use her own words) “knee-deep in horse shit” tending to the three horses on her small family farm.
And when it comes to winning an Eclipse Award, you also have to be in the right place at the right time, as Wooley admits. “If I’m really lucky, something spectacular will happen that I can’t plan on,” she grinned. “Like Sonny Leon deciding, ‘I’m going to elbow Tyler Gaffalione!’”
• Visit the EquiSport Photos website and the Paulick Report website
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