#72 - Catching Up with Jim: Israel, Thoroughbreds, and Racing News

Jim Seilsopour, the most consistent guest of the pod, and resident fox hunter, just got back from three weeks in Israel, so this one starts on the beach at Caesarea and wanders everywhere from there.. We use all of that as a runway into thoroughbreds, off-track aftercare, the new racing league picking a fight with the Triple Crown, and what we want to build with Horse People next year. **Five things we get into:** - The new team-based racing league, started by the former Liberty Media exec behind F1's resurgence, and why splitting the sport away from the Triple Crown could hurt everyone. - Jim's Israel riding: Arabians that stayed sound over rock and road, four-hour beach rides in and out of the Mediterranean, Druze horsemen who could flat-out ride, and a 12-year-old phenom who reminded Jim of himself at that age. - Off-track thoroughbreds getting second lives in the hunt field, and why we both think the thoroughbred is still the most capable horse alive even as modern eventing leans warmblood and dressage-heavy. - Keeping horses at home versus boarding them, and the connection Jim says he never appreciated until he was feeding twice a day and catching the small things before they became big ones. - Bloodlines, live and unscripted, as we pull up Subic Boy, a new thoroughbred of the Santa Fe hunt on Equibase and trace him back through Bernardini and Seattle Slew to Secretariat If you have ever wondered what happens to a racehorse after the track, whether a Silicon Valley playbook can be dropped onto a 150-year-old sport, or just what it feels like to gallop an Arabian along the coast where Herod built his city, this is the conversation. Two horse people talking the way horse people actually talk, following the thread wherever it goes, from a Maryland statehouse to a monastery on Mount Carmel to a cattle ranch where a horse that was running at Santa Anita three months ago is now chasing hounds. Follow the show: @horsepeoplepodcast Subscribe and follow Horse People for more cross-discipline content and stories.