HIS& HERS
Ramón Dominguez: Racing’s Gentleman with a Gentle Touch
HERS: What do you remember about your first horse or pony?
HIS: She was a kind, older mare that I enjoyed riding and take
care of very much.
HERS: What do you like best in a horse? What do you like best in
a person?
HIS: Honesty, an ability to listen, and a willingness to give their
best.
HERS: What book would you like to find time to read?
HIS: Daniels’ Running Formula, by Jack Daniels.
HERS: How old were you when you got your first paying job and
what was it?
HIS: I was 15. It was galloping racehorses at a training center.
HERS: What’s your favorite quote?
HIS: Booker T. Washington: “Success is to be measured not so
much by the position that one has reached in life as by the
obstacles which he has overcome.”
HERS: A year from now, we’re celebrating what a great 12
months it’s been, so what do you hope you achieved?
HIS: The 360 GT riding crop has had a global reach,
helping so many horses, people and equestrian industries
in the process.
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EQUINE Lifestyle
amón Dominguez is a rock star in
Thoroughbred racing. In 2001 and
2003 he was America’s winningest
jockey and in 2004 won the Isaac Murphy
Award for the highest winning percentage
among American-based jockeys. He was the
regular rider of two-time Eclipse Award-winning
turf champ, Gio Ponti, rode Better Talk
Now to the 2004 Breeders’ Cup Turf, and is
only the second jockey in Saratoga history
to win six races on a single card (having won
five in one day at Aqueduct several times).
In 2012 he shattered Jerry Bailey’s record
for single-season earnings when his mounts
brought home more than $25 million, the
same year his peers gave him the George
Woolf Memorial Jockey Award for excellent
conduct, joining three (2010, 2011, 2012)
Eclipse Awards for Outstanding Jockey. He’s
a really nice guy who really knows how to
ride, and since his retirement in 2013 and induction into the National
Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2016, he’s used that innate
sensitivity to reframe how we see and use riding crops, creating the
360 GentleTouch used by each of this year’s Triple Crown race-winning
jockeys, plus every jockey in the Kentucky Derby and Oaks and,
if this former Venezuelan show jumper has his way, they’ll be in the
hands of FEI discipline riders soon, too.
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HERS: If you had to work outside the horse
world what would you be doing?
HIS: As a kid, prior to pursuing a career as a
jockey, I wanted to be a paleontologist or a
veterinarian.
HERS:Tell me something you feel is true that
almost nobody agrees with.
HIS: In the pursuit of any goal, facts are secondary
to mindset.
HERS: How would you describe yourself in one
word?
HIS: Driven.
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