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| DIANE WALDRON With all the success her horses had, it is no wonder that Dianne Waldron won her third Darley in four years for outstanding owner in 2004. "I am totally honored, thankful and proud." That year, Dianne's horses made a total of 44 starts with 16 wins, 6 seconds and 7 thirds. That equates to finishing in the top three 66% of the time. Her horses earned over $412,000, which is double that of the second leading owner. Dianne, who owns Rosebrook Farm in Brooksville, Florida, breeds and raises some of the best horses in the country. She concentrates on French lines and stands the stallions Doran and Calin Du Loup. Her top horses in 2004 were Frynch, TH Richie and Djenius. Dianne has had a love affair with Arabian horses since her youth. "I was at a park watching a parade when I saw these two Arabian horses dressed in their native costumes," she said. "I fell in love with Arabian horses on that day. They were so beautiful and they had just this distinguished look that just captured my imagination. From that moment on I loved anything and everything dealing with Arabian horses." Dianne would own her first horse when she was only 8. "I talked my dad into buying me this old horse that was half Arabian. It took off from there. Years later I got my first full-bred Arabian for $600." In 1983, Dianne attended an owners' seminar at Tampa Downs. "I did it on a whim," she said. "I went ahead and took an Arabian horse to the track and my horse won." Dianne, who is an insurance agent in her hometown of Brooksville, has 60 Arabian horses nowadays including some of the classiest horses in the sports. Dianne has dominated the Drinkers of the Wind Derby at Los Alamitos, winning the prestigious Grade 1 event for Arabians each of the past four years. What makes the feat more significant for the owner is that she her four scores have comes with horses that she has bred.Phil Saxer has trained all of them. "I feel truly blessed with my horses have done," she said. "Of the four, TH Richie's win in 2005 was the most emotional of the four because my family and I have been through a lot in the past year. We had four hurricanes in Florida in 2004, so that was tough, but I also had the joy of the birth of my granddaughter, Ashton. Those types of things made it a year of ups and downs. "The one thing I do love about Arabian racing is that starting up in this sport is very affordable," she added. "You can go to a horse sale, eyeball a horse that you like, buy him for a relatively cheap price, and make something out of him. "These Arabs, they are just smart horses. They are people horses. They need people and they respond to human attention. That's for real, that's not just me. For the great Sheikhs, one of their prized possessions was the Arabian mare, so from early on these horses have been acclimated to being around people. Nowadays, you just have to tell them what you want and these horses will do it. Then it becomes a matter of either a horse is fast or they are not." |