The Next Generation with Annise Montplaisir

Annise Montplaisir has come a long way from her childhood racetrack, North Dakota Horse Park. The 25-year-old is a Godolphin Flying Start graduate and is now pursuing her passion for educating newcomers in the industry. Montplaisir is the co-founder of Amplify Horse Racing, broadens her outreach through a Spanish racing talk show, and is the project manager for a new educational alliance called Together For Racing International. TRFI is an initiative which came out of the 2019 Godolphin Forum for Education, where attendees worked on developing strategies to grow and develop the Thoroughbred industry. The initiative launches later this week, when more details are expected to be revealed.

KR: How did you first get interested in horse racing?

AM: I guess I became interested in the industry when I was around 12 or 13 years old and I saw the movie Ruffian. I was really captured by the emotions of the story and just how incredible of a horse she was. I actually was fortunate to live very close to a tiny racetrack called the North Dakota Horse Park. All of my summers were spent going out and volunteering there and then eventually I got my first job in racing at the North Dakota Horse Park.

KR: What drew you to the sport?

AM: The thing that probably drew me the most to horse racing was the stories and the personalities behind the sport. I think there's something really inspiring and capturing in that. You know, the horse is at the center of all of this, but it's really the horse-human connection that keeps it going and there's the different backgrounds of all the people involved at the different levels.

KR: Could you take us through your career path in the industry?

AM: My pathway in the industry started with my first volunteer role as a racetrack ambassador at the North Dakota Horse Park. They had a retired racehorse named Barracuda Boy who was their track mascot. I would stand by the front gates as people would come into the track with his past performances and people would come up and pet him.

Then from there, I was able to do a little bit of everything. I'd say that's the value of tiny racetracks like that is I started working as a pony rider, and then I assisted the director of media relations, I learned to gallop, I was the official clocker one year and then worked my way up to becoming the director of communications one summer. Whatever I wanted to get me hands on, they threw me right in.

Then a big step along the way was interning for the Saratoga Special newspaper as a staff writer. During my time in Saratoga, I was introduced to everyone at Fasig-Tipton. When I moved down to Kentucky after graduating from North Dakota State University, I interned with Fasig-Tipton and then for Keeneland in the Communications department.

Another great experience I had was doing yearling sales as Mill Ridge Farm before I was accepted into the Godolphin Flying Start program which I spent the last two years doing and I graduated remotely this July.

KR: What was the most challenging part of being a newcomer in the industry?

AM: I would say the greatest struggle for most newcomers to the sport is finding information about the industry. It's pretty spread out. We have a lot of amazing educational and workforce training initiatives, but if you didn't grow up in the industry it can be difficult to figure out how to get started.

That was what spurred the start of Amplify Horse Racing, which I co-founded in 2019. It's meant to be an education platform for a newcomer that googles how to get into Thoroughbred racing, so they can find organized lists of resources and initiatives about careers that might not be what most people think of, but some that are more on the periphery like benevolence, marketing or media.

Last year we had a chance to do some pretty cool pilot projects- doing some enhanced educational tours, collaborating with a few different initiatives to enhance their programming and expand the promotion of it.

This year has been a bit different for everybody in terms of in-person engagement, so as everyone has we had to pivot. I've been hosting monthly virtual hangouts. Every month is focused on a different sector of the industry. We host a panel of industry professionals and they talk about their own educational pathways in the industry and what their current job entails.

KR: Could you tell us about your current position?

AM: Amplify has been a great launch point for my current role working as the Project Manager for Together For Racing International (TFRI). This is a global alliance to promote and progress education, community engagement and workforces that connect people to the Thoroughbred industry around the world. TFRI has been developed through a network of global steering committee members from Australia, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Japan and the US, who represent a multitude of educational and workforce organizations.

The launch of the TFRI website will be on Nov. 20, which we're very excited about.

It will be an amazing platform to showcase the stories and the positivity that is coming from these programs. It really speaks to a wide array of audiences. Industry members and stakeholders can come to this and learn about some of the programs that even they might not know about. Students, parents and educators can come and see how the Thoroughbred industry is assisting with educational attainment and how different regions are engaging with their communities to solve different issues.

KR: If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?

AM: If I could change one thing about the industry, and actually this is something that I feel like is already in progress of being changed, it would be improving the number of Spanish resources that we have within the US industry. We have a large population of immigrants working in the industry, specifically Hispanic immigrants, so I think we need to provide more for them to consume within the sport to learn about the industry.

One of the projects I've been involved with for the last few months is co-hosting a web show called La Trifecta with Claudia Spadaro and Darwin Vizcaya. We talk about horse racing in Spanish and English and it's really the feeling of three friends who are getting together to talk about racing. We've had viewers from all different countries across Central and South America and Mexico, so it's really fun.

KR: What's your all-time favorite racing moment?

AM: I think one of my favorite moments in racing was when I was on Flying Start in Australia, my externship was with Chris Waller, which was pretty cool. I had never really worked with a trainer before and so a moment that really stood out to me was when I had the opportunity to saddle a horse named Mister Sea Wolf (Ire) (Amadeus Wolf {GB}) before he went on to win a million-dollar race called The Gong at Kembla Grange. They threw me right in and let me get my hands on as many things as possible, so to saddle a horse for a million-dollar race was pretty cool.

The Next Generation is an ongoing video series featuring young people who were not born into the Thoroughbred business, but are now excelling within the industry.