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Passion Commitment
When it comes to Quarter Horse racing, you can count Eric Halstrom all-in.
by Diane Rice
Eric Halstrom
Even as a college student deciding his direction in life, Eric Halstrom had no idea he’d wind up as vice president
and general manager of Indiana Grand
Race Course, now Horseshoe Indianapolis,
in Shelbyville. “Getting to work for a great company like Caesars is hard to envision when you’re in your 20s, but if I was going to work, I just wanted to be around racing. If I knew I was going to spend a career in racing, I’d have been thrilled!” he says.
Yet he didn’t set out toward that goal initially. After spending his early
years at school in Minneapolis where he was born and raised, Eric went to Minnesota State University on a baseball scholarship, studying finance.
As a child, the lure of the racetrack had lit a spark inside him that grew with age. “My parents, Allan and Rosemary, loved to go to the racetrack; they
loved the gambling and the competitiveness. That’s where I got my first taste of the racetrack,” he says.
After four years at Minnesota State University, he wasn’t quite ready to graduate, and at that point, he says, racing was in his blood. The University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program (RTIP) seemed the right choice to him. “It was a really great choice. It pointed me in the right direction for my career,” he says.
BUILDING A CAREER
Before joining the Quarter Horse industry, Eric worked in Standardbred racing, then moved into Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses. He worked at Canterbury Park in his home state from 1997 through 2008, then took on a five-year stint as the vice president and general manager at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, Louisiana.
He returned to Canterbury Park from 2013 through 2016, then accepted a position as assistant director of racing at Iowa’s Prairie Meadows. A year later, he was back in the
“He’s in there early and stays lat – Joe Morris, Senior VP of
66 SPEEDHORSE November 2022
Meets
e and does what it takes to do the job.” Racing at Horseshoe Indianapolis