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“That’s the thing about horse racing: It’s a communal venture. It’s people getting together and working hard; it’s a magic mixture of people doing what they do best and having it all come together to make something positive happen for a lot of people.”
HIS MANY IDENTITIES
Eugene isn’t just unique as a New Yorker- turned-cowboy; over his lifetime, his endeavors and accomplishments have spanned a wide range of interests.
“It’s so funny, people think of Eugene Joyce as this cowboy from Evanston, Wyoming, and
I still think of my brother who spent a year in Ireland and played rugby at University of Cork, and studied acting at Juilliard,” Mike says. “Every endeavor he pursued, he pursued it to the utmost. There are so many different layers to his personality.”
As evidence, in addition to the administrative end of racing, Eugene has
been getting more involved in running horses himself. He bought a couple of broodmares from Kentucky a couple years ago to start in the Wyoming-Bred program and is waiting for their babies to grow up and head to the starting gate.
He and Karen also have a couple riding horses. “My wife’s favorite horse is a 22-year- old Appaloosa mare she calls Philly after Philadelphia cream cheese,” he says. “It looks like someone took a big swath of cream cheese and slapped it on that horse’s butt.”
In his down time, Eugene likes to get out into nature, be that back country skiing in winter with Karen and their dogs or hiking with their lunch in a backpack. “The one thing I truly enjoy, but don’t
get to do when I’m live racing, is go to a racetrack and sit in a box seat with the Daily Racing Form trying to figure out the puzzle that is the next race, then put a wager on that and see if I can cash a winning ticket. I also like going over horses’ past performances and handicapping races.”
Eugene says that in addition to his front-of- housework duties as General Manager of Energy Downs & Sweetwater Downs he enjoys trading his suits with his boots. “I try to focus on the safety aspects of the business,” he says. “I work very closely with my track superintendents. One thing my father said early on in my career is that everything can be right at the racetrack, yet if the racing surface is wrong, then everything’s wrong, but if the racing surface is right, then you can serve warm beer and cold hot dogs and everyone’s happy. I have the same million-dollar insurance policy as Churchill Downs’s for my jockeys. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life, because I was cheap, doing bake sales for these jockeys if they get injured — and they will. I strive on a daily basis to reduce the risk as much as possible. That starts with the best equipment, and we’ve improved our equipment every year.
“One complaint I’ve gotten over the years in Wyoming is from the Quarter Horse owners who say the surface is too deep and they’re not getting fast enough times,” he says. “I could care less about times. To me, you’ve got to have
Eugene is the President of Wyoming Horse Racing, LLC and the General Manager of Energy Downs & Sweetwater Downs
92 SPEEDHORSE April 2020