AP's horse racing interests: Girls, girls, girls

Working the sports desk this week as a vacation fill-in, I used the opportunity last night to get horse racing on three pages of today's daily paper. In the process, I learned what it is that gets the Associated Press interested in horse racing.

Chicks!

I'm at least half-serious.

Rosemary Homeister Jr. -- who reportedly tried her luck at Delaware Park earlier this year and couldn't get any mounts -- headed for Colonial Downs, instead, and has come away a big winner. Homeister has what would appear to be an almost insurmountable lead in the standings for the jockey title at the New Kent, Va., track. At this writing, she has 45 wins during the meet, with Sheldon Russell 14 in arrears at 31 and only five cards left to race. Russell would have to average three wins per day and Homeister would have to get shut out for the title to go Russell's way.

No, I'm sure not trying to jinx her.

More historically important, Homeister with a pair of wins on Monday's card passed Patricia J. Cooksey to claim second place on the all-time list of wins by a female jockey, with 2,139. Now only Julie Krone has won more races than Homeister among female jockeys, though with Krone's mark standing at 3,704, Homeister herself, now 37 years of age, said she doesn't plan to ride long enough to pursue the record.

And that caused the AP to take notice, at least after Colonial sent out a press release to that effect.

Homeister collected the Cooksey-passing win aboard Gambles List in the third race Monday (pictured). She later won aboard Out of Our Mine.

Of course, Homeister has plenty of race-riding bona fides beyond the sheer number of victories in the irons. Among them: She became the first female to win the Eclipse Award for apprentice rider (1992); She is only the fifth woman, and the most recent, to ride in the Kentucky Derby (Supah Blitz, 2003); and at least until Hialeah Park reopens (if it reopens), she remains the only female rider ever to win a jockey title there (2001).

So clearly the AP was interested a horse racing story if it focuses on the accomplishments of female jockey. It isn't exactly man-bites-dog, but it isn't your everyday racing story, either. ... Though the wire still didn't move a new photo where you could see Rosemary's face; I had to dig one up from 2003. (And, as an AP photo, I can't repeat it here, unlike the Colonial promotional handout, which was shot by Coady Photography.)

To cap the girl-power angle, Rosemary's tie-breaking ride was aboard a filly, too. And, of course, the biggest horse racing story of the year is that of a filly, Rachel Alexandra.

As for what else from the horse racing world that I squeezed in the paper, I got Del Mar's opening day news in a rundown of briefs on Page 2. Unfortunately, that included not only the Oceanside Stakes win by Afleet Eagle, but the spill that proved fatal for 8-year-old gelding Mi Rey(ARG) and left jockey Rafael Bejarano with facial fractures. (Unfortunately, you gotta take the bad with the good.) And, I shoehorned the NTRA Thoroughbred Poll in the agate.

Anyway, I guess we know what will get horse racing back on the sports pages: More emphasis on the ladies.