The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, Daily Racing Form, and the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters today announced the winners of the 2019 Media Eclipse Awards.
Feature/Commentary Writing – Joe Nevills
This is the first Eclipse Award for Joe Nevills, of Georgetown, Kentucky, who has been the bloodstock editor of the Paulick Report since 2018, and prior to that was a reporter for Daily Racing Form and the Thoroughbred Times. Nevills’ wife, Natalie Voss, won an Eclipse Award for News/Enterprise writing in 2016.
“It’s just one of those things you dream of doing, like hitting a Grand Slam to win Game 7 of the World Series,” Nevills said about winning an Eclipse Award. “This is something I’ve always wanted to accomplish and never expected, but this one was very personal for me. I had been working on this story for five years, since the track closed."
In “Biting The Dust: A Long Goodbye to Mount Pleasant Meadows,” Nevills tells the story of the demise of a small mixed-breed track in central Michigan through the eyes of trainer Nate Funnell, jockey Lee Gates, track announcer and marketing director Scott Csernyik, and through his own personal recollections of a place where he learned and enjoyed horse racing beginning with his family at age four. He had revisited the closed grounds several times since it was shuttered, and he was able to finally complete his story this year.
“I wanted to write a John Mellencamp song about horse racing, without the music: Give a spotlight to blue-collar horse people on the small circuit that made me,” Nevills said. “I like to write things that I'd have liked to read when I was young, looking through magazines for whatever I could find about my home circuit. The entire Michigan racing community has had my back since I started writing about the sport. They've been instrumental in teaching me about the industry, even today.”
Opened in 1985, Mount Pleasant Meadows in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, experienced just a few good years of racing, damaged by an ever-growing list of internal and political obstacles, before closing in 2013. And yet, in describing the run-down conditions of the track he revisited several times, Nevills revealed the strength and joy of those who worked there.
“Even at its loudest, Mount Pleasant was a good place for people who liked to hear what was going on: the sound of jockeys smooching and barking to urge their mounts, then explaining themselves to the trainers afterward; the gate crew pleading with the starter to keep his thumb off the button; and the occasional trash talk between people on horseback.
This was especially true around the paddock, where horsemen and revelers shot the breeze between races over a flimsy chain-link fence. The sternly-worded sign warning folks with racing licenses against chatter with the outside world, hung by the state's racing commission, might as well have been written in Cantonese.”
Nevills is a native of Edmore, Michigan, attended Montabella High School, and graduated from Central Michigan University.
The winning feature/commentary article can be accessed here: https://www.paulickreport.com/news/ray-s-paddock/biting-the-dust-a-long-goodbye-to-mount-pleasant-meadows/
Judges in the Feature Commentary category were Tom LaMarra, Director of Communications for the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and Managing Editor of THAracing.com; Myra Lewyn, turf writer, editor, and publicist with four decades devoted to the coverage of Thoroughbred racing and Dan Liebman, former editor of The Blood-Horse as well The State-Journal in Frankfort, Kentucky.