George Rowand was well on his way to being an attorney when something exciting happened: he saw a horse run a race. And his life was never the same afterwards.
The horse in questions was a thoroughbred named Secretariat, and he was making an incredible winning move to win the 1973 Preakness Stakes, and after that race was over, Rowand turned to a friend and said, “I'd like to have a horse like that some day.”
After becoming an attorney two years later, Rowand still carried the idea about owning a great thoroughbred, and in 1980, he convinced some family members and friends to put up the money to get into thoroughbred racing. While the initial results were dismal – the partnership won one race in six years – the group persevered, and eventually they were rewarded when they bred four graded-stakes winners, including the grade one winners Miss Josh and Royal Mountain Inn. They won 17 stakes races across America and had a great time doing it.
Oddly enough, breeding and managing a successful racing stable led Rowand into journalism. He started by writing a newsletter for his investors, and that led to him writing a racing column for a local Virginia paper, where he eventually was hired as a reporter. He initially covered local schools and their issues and then was promoted to the position as business editor where he wrote about 1,000 articles about local businesses. While doing that, he also wrote and had published his story about his time in the thoroughbred business: “Diary of a Dream: My Journey in Thoroughbred Racing.”
Rowand has been married to his wife, Rita, for 25 years, and their son, Michael, is now 20 and is a junior at Virginia Tech. The Rowands lived in the UAE for three months in 2009 for Rita's job, and Michael currently is attending the University of Helsinki for the 2010 spring semester.
