Eclipse Photo Winner

Through the Storm: Radosevich-Hernandez Scores Eclipse for Wise Dan Firecracker Image

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), Daily Racing Form and the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters (NTWAB) announced today that Jamie Radosevich-Hernandez of Louisville, Ky., has won the 2013 Media Eclipse Award for Photography for her picture of 2012 Horse of Year Wise Dan and jockey John Velazquez racing to the finish line in an evening rainstorm in the Firecracker Handicap (Gr. II) at Churchill Downs.

The photo appeared on the USA Today website on June 30, 2013, and in the print edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

This is the first Eclipse Award for Hernandez, 28, who is married to Brian Hernandez, Jr., who won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Apprentice Jockey in 2004.

Hernandez will receive her honor at the 43rd annual Eclipse Awards dinner and ceremony, which will be held at Gulfstream Park Racetrack and Casino on January 18. The Eclipse Awards are presented by Daily Racing Form, Breeders’ Cup and The Stronach Group and produced by the NTRA.

“I am truly humbled by winning the Eclipse Award,” said Hernandez, who is from a racing family, the daughter of Jake and Shelly Radosevich, her father a long-time trainer in Ohio. “I grew up in horse racing. As a youngster we traveled a great deal and I developed a passion for the horses. Now I am enjoying my second career.”

Radosevich-Hernandez had previously worked as an assistant to trainers Steve Asmussen and, for 1 ½ years for Steve Margolis while traveling to Delaware and the East Coast with her husband.

The winning photo was taken with a Canon Mark IV with a 70-200 lens.

Radosevich-Hernandez, on assignment for Reed Palmer Photography, positioned herself on a ladder on the inside rail of the Churchill’s Matt Winn Turf Course capturing Wise Dan right before his nose hit the wire. Ironically, Brian Hernandez, aboard the 4-year-old colt Lea, finished two lengths back in second.

“It was the nastiest night of the year,” said Hernandez. “There were lightning bolts around us and the reflections of the grandstand lights in the shot made the raindrops look like snow.”

Honorable mention in the Photography category went to two-time Eclipse Award winner Barbara Livingston for a riderless horse jumping a rail, which appeared in Daily Racing Form on July 27, and to Matt Wooley, who for his picture of Fort Larned in the stretch of the Stephen Foster Handicap, which appeared in the Paulick Report on June 17.

Judges in the Photography category were Michael Lasky of Lasko Photography, Dan Dry of Power Creative Photography and official Breeders’ Cup photographer and Richard Mackson of US Presswire.