Neighbors: Joyce Tappan

When Joyce Tappan isn’t on Longboat Key, you’ll find her at the tracks, in Kentucky, watching her seven thoroughbred horses train. She used to go religiously at 6:30 a.m. every weekday, but now, she doesn’t make it out as much. Not many horse owners take the time to do this, but Tappan enjoys investing in the whole process: buying, training, racing and winning. She’s been in the thoroughbred racing business for 30 years.

At age 5, she would accompany her father, Joseph Dillion, to the tracks. He owned trotters and pacers. Now she is an owner.

“I remember being put on the horse box and being told what number to yell for,” she says.

In 1972, Tappan and her husband, Chip, moved to Kentucky, the horse capital of the world.

“I figured, why not own some thoroughbreds?” Tappan says.

She started by buying claimers — where one enters a horse for a price but could potentially lose the horse after the race to another owner. She them moved on to partnerships. Since then, she has moved from one partner with one horse to five partners with 12 horses.

She currently has five horses and seven 2-year-olds in training at Churchill Downs in Kentucky. Tappan says she dreams of sending a colt to the Kentucky Derby.

“We thought we’ve had prospects, but, so far, it hasn’t happened,” she says.

A horse must be 3 years old to compete in the Kentucky Derby. Out of the average 20,000 horses bred each year, only 20 make it to the Kentucky Derby. But Tappan attends many other stakes races and has 48 winning pictures (considered a win). And she’s been to the Kentucky Derby plenty of times.

“I’ve got hats in every color,” says Tappan.

She certainly has her race-watching routine down: She holds the binoculars in her left hand and never puts them around her neck. For most of the race they are glued to her face. People know not to stand near her right side because when she gets excited, she rapidly waves her right-hand fist in a circular motion as if she’s winding up a Jack-in-the-box. All the while, she is screaming, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“It’s just fireworks inside. You just explode,” she says about the feeling she gets when the horses are let out of the gate.

Even if her new horses don’t make it to the Kentucky Derby, she said her experience has been a winning one.

“I’ve had a whole lifetime of (winning pictures),” she says. “Every one of them is a joyful event.”