Thursday Thoughts with Jason Beem June 18, 2026

A good Thursday morning to you all! Ohio Derby day is coming up this weekend and we were fortunate to have Thistledown track announcer Matt Hook on the show to talk about Saturday’s $500,000 feature. I got to know Matt when working in Ohio back in 2006-2008 and along with being such a good representative of Ohio racing, he loves it. 

When we both worked in Ohio, the simulcast signals for River Downs and Thistledown used to be combined into one and it was called the Ohio 7/7. The premise was that each track would run seven races and we’d alternate races and basically form one big card between two tracks. So one day the first race would be at River and we’d do the odd races and Thistledown the even-numbered races. It would be vice versa the next day. The advantage was you had a 14-race card and the races would go off every 20 minutes. So once a race went official at River Downs, the simulcast signal would switch over to Thistledown and there’d usually be about 13 or 14 minutes to post. It was an interesting concept and one that stuck around for a fairly long time. 

When I got the announcing job at River Downs in 2006, I honestly knew very little about Ohio racing. I knew where Ohio was and I’d heard of River Downs and Thistledown, but I didn’t know any of the trainers or jockeys. They just weren’t tracks on my radar living out west. Beulah Park was the wintertime track in Ohio and I’d seen their races a little more, as the famed Beulah Twins became popular in racing circles at that time. 

One of the cool things about going to work at tracks far from where I came from, is that you realize there’s great horse people and horse players and long held members of the racing community at all these spots. Ohio had so many regulars who had been there for decades and were still fighting it out, often for purses in the $6,000 to $7,000 range. Jockeys like Greg Schaefer, Jeff Johnston, Jose Calo, and Shelley Moran were regulars who don’t ride competitively any longer. Riders like Rodney Prescott and Edgar Paucar were there and are still racing in the Midwest area 20 years later, both winning more than 3,500 races and enjoying nice careers in the saddle.

Perry Ouzts of course is one of the great stories in Ohio racing and continues to add to an incredible legacy. He’s ridden more races in North America than any other rider and is fifth all-time in career wins with 7,534 trips to the winner’s circle. And he's done it quietly in terms of national prominence, never winning a graded stakes race, although he has hit the board in several. Ouzts never cracked $2 million in mount earnings for a year. But he’s become a legend in the Buckeye State for his decades of success, carrying himself as a total pro and fan favorite. 

When you work or race at a track or circuit, you end up befriending a lot of people you really hadn’t heard of before. People in the race office, placing judges, stewards, all kinds of folks. It’s always strange when you go somewhere new only to find that everyone has already been living their lives there and you knew nothing about them, and now you see them every day. I worked with some amazing people in Ohio who sadly aren’t with us anymore. Jeff Reidel, John McDulin, Humie Johnson, all great guys and total racetrack characters. They are remembered and missed by many and were part of the fabric of Ohio racing for a long time. 

Ohio is a great place for racing and I know it was there were some hard times before casino gaming was added in the middle of the last decade. River Downs has been renamed Belterra and has a pretty lengthy seasons. So does Thistledown, and both tracks are joined in the winter by Mahoning Valley Race Course, which replaced Beulah on the calendar and is somewhat in proximity to the old Columbus area track. Ohio is obviously special to me and I think it is to a lot of people, so I’m excited to celebrate it a bit this weekend with the big Ohio Derby card. 

Have a great weekend everyone!