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Out of Left Field |
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Grandfather's a racing legend
and she's world class, too
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
When I first started covering sports some 50 years
ago one of my favorite athletes was jockey Ted Atkinson. He was
the best and brightest of his time, regarded as second only to
Eddie Arcaro among the jockeys at the Big Apple tracks. And he
was one of the most articulate of athletes in any sport.
Still treasured among the cognoscenti is his comment when asked
why he had had been whipping a horse so vigorously in a race.
He said, “I wasn’t whipping him to punish him, but
to remind him of the urgency of the situation.”
Atkinson’s career spanned the early 1940s to the end of
1959. He rode 1940 winners from almost 24,000 mounts. When he
retired he was fourth in all time winners behind only Johnny
Longden, English rider Gordon Richards and Arcaro. He went on
to become a steward at several tracks. I met him again the day
that Dr. Fager set a world record for the mile at the Arlington
track in Chicago when Atkinson was a steward there.
We switch now to the present. I become aware of an attractive
television reporter on racing telecasts. Her name is Caton Bredar.
I see her on some of CBS telecasts and am impressed that she
is knowledgeable about racing, has a nice manner and does a good
job of interviewing people. I have had 10 years as a TV sports
critic behind me and am proud to have recognized early on the
talents of Bob Costas, Mary Carillo, Al Trautwig and Keith Olbermann.
I see Bredar almost immediately as a comer.
And then I learn that Caton Bredar is a granddaughter of none
other than Ted Atkinson.
Hence this piece.
The unusual name, Caton, comes from her maternal grandfather,
Frank Caton. He was a harness horseman who trained and drove
2,000 winners in Europe. She was born in the Chicago area, was
graduated from Knox College in Illinois where she was an English
major. She is petite, has gray eyes, dirty blonde hair, satiny
skin and doesn’t look her 36 years. She is married to race
tracker Doug Bredar, an assistant racing secretary at Hollywood
Park.
She got a good grounding at race tracks, working behind the scenes
at New York, Chicago, New Jersey and Florida tracks. She did
research for ABC races, and worked on Frank Wright’s racing
show in Chicago. She got her first TV gig, doing the Caesars
International race in 1992. She worked ESPN, ESPN II and Fox
Network races.
Along with CBS now is a regular spot on TVG, a racing network
that takes bets on races from around the county and shows the
races. Bredar hosts a mid-afternoon segment two to three hours
a day five days a week. She and the other hosts, all handy people
with a Racing Form, talk the talk of hard-nosed handicappers.
TVG is one of the best things going for the racing gentry these
days.
TVG came into Belmont Park for the Breeders Cup jamboree in Ocober.
It hasn’t the franchise to televise the glamorous Breeders
Cup races, but it could act as a satellite to the enterprise
with reports on the morning workouts and analysis of the various
components of the races to help set up the big day of racing
by NBC.
Bredar presided over these reports, and I caught up with her
at Belmont one morning. She acknowledged immediately her tie
to her grandparents, Ted and Martha Atkinson. She said, “When
I was little I visited him when he worked at Arlington and at
Thistledowns [outside of Cleveland]. They bought a satellite
dish so they could watch me now.”
Before seeing Bredar, I had called Atkinson. He is 85, retired
to Beaver Falls, Virginia. He said, “We are just so proud
of her. We hardly miss anything she does. We recognize the quality
of her work and we don’t think we are being prejudiced in
saying she is as good as the other women who do similar work.”
Atkinson said he didn’t think she learned much from him.
“She worked hard in a lot of places and she paid her dues.
I think she is more knowledgeable about the game than I ever
was. She calls on occasion but she doesn’t have to consult
for information.”
When I remarked to Bredar about the Atkinson whip quote that
is among the sport’s classics, she said, “I talked
to him about it. He got the reputation of being a heavy whip
rider because of the way it looked, that he was so active when
whipping. He told me about his style, when and where to whip
and how to avoid injury to the horse. So he didn’t use the
whip as much as people would have thought.”
She was proud to note that her grandfather was the first jockey
to win a million dollars in purses and the first to be the leading
jockey for the year both before and after the film patrol went
in. “After the film patrol,” she said, “some of
those jockeys who were rough riders couldn’t’ ride
that way anymore. My grandfather could keep winnng without having
to change his style.”
When CBS did the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga in August, veteran
TV voice Dave Johnson, a big booster of Bredar, advised the production
people that Ted Atkinson had won the Whitney 50 years earlier
aboard One Hitter. Without telling Bredar, they set the scene
for the race by mining the family theme, showing a still picture
of her grandfather winning the Whitney aboard One Hitter. It
was memorable TV.
Veteran racetracker Richard Eng says of Bredar, “She’s
young, lovely, knowledgeable and she has the pedigree.”
She’ll work the three races CBS is slated to telecast next
year. And for cable viewers who have TVG she is a daily presence.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
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can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an email
to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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