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Donna Barton Brothers
Donna began riding in 1987. From a family of riders, being in the saddle came as second nature to Donna. Her mother was a professional jockey and her father was a rough-stock rider on the rodeo circuit. Her brother and sister are both former jockeys.
Donna was the leading stakes winning rider at the Churchill Downs’ 1995 spring/summer meet and rode Hennessey to a second place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile that year.
She retired from race riding in 1998, as the second leading female jockey in the country by money earned. That same year she married former thoroughbred horse trainer Frank Brothers.
She began dabbling in on-air horse racing coverage with TVG, ESPN, and the Fairgrounds Race Course in the fall of 1998 and worked for Churchill Downs as an on-air racing analyst from 1999 through 2003. In 2000 she began working for NBC Sports as their on-track reporter and racing analyst.
In 2011 she published a book titled, Inside Track: Insider’s Guide to Horse Racing.
