TurfPublicists: NYRA PADDOCK ANALYST MAGGIE WOLFENDALE JOINS TWITTER

Friday, February 3, 2012

Contact: Ashley Herriman

NYRA PADDOCK ANALYST MAGGIE WOLFENDALE JOINS TWITTER

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Maggie Wolfendale, paddock analyst for The New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA), has joined Twitter and will share her paddock observations using the handle: @MaggieWolfndale and the hashtags #belmont, #saratoga, and #aqueduct depending on the track to which the tweet pertains.

Wolfendale joined the NYRA broadcast team in October 2010, and has become a fixture in the paddocks at Aqueduct Racetrack, Belmont Park, and Saratoga Race Course, where she assesses horses on race day for NYRA TV.

A native of Columbia, Md., Wolfendale, 25, spent much of her childhood on the backstretch at Laurel Park in the barn of her father, trainer Howard Wolfendale. A competitive dressage rider, Wolfendale maintained strong ties to the racetrack, taking out her exercise rider’s license at 16 and galloping for her father in the morning, as well as ponying racehorses on the frontside in the afternoon.

In 2008, Wolfendale took out her assistant trainer’s license, and served as Miss Preakness for Pimlico’s signature Triple Crown event, which led to an internship in the communications department at the Maryland Jockey Club the following spring. Upon her graduation from Towson University in 2009, Wolfendale began to realize some of her broadcast aspirations, co-hosting Maryland Horse Radio, a weekly ESPN radio show on the state’s racing industry, and serving part-time as a television analyst at Colonial Downs, where she was also training a string of horses for her father. She worked at Pimlico and Colonial again in the spring and summer of 2010 before joining NYRA’s communications department for the 2010 Saratoga meet.

@MaggieWolfndale joins @AndySerling and @NYRANews on NYRA’s official Twitter roster. Serling, who co-hosts much of NYRA’s television programming, has been active on Twitter since July, 2009, and uses the service daily to give out selections and provide analysis for NYRA’s races. His Twitter account was named the best in the game by the Thoroughbred Times in their “Best of 2011” year-end awards, which are decided entirely by readers through an online survey on the publication’s website.

-30-