Photo:
courtesy Ticknor Society
Jessica Chapel, a former Daily Racing Form and Breeders’ Cup employee and freelance blogger, won the George and Anna Eliot Ticknor Collecting Prize for her collection of more than 500 items focused on American Thoroughbred racing from 1900-2023.
The Ticknor Society is an organization of book collectors, booksellers, librarians, historians, archivists, conservators, printers, publishers, writers and all lovers and readers of books dedicated to the enjoyment, promotion and support of books and book culture. Its motto is “to each his own.”
Chapel is currently the chief of digital and online services at the Boston Public Library. She was heavily involved in the coverage of Thoroughbred racing in the 2000s and its burgeoning blogging scene through her Railbird website, founding Raceday360, editing for HelloRaceFans and contributing to the New York Times’ racing blog in addition to her stints with DRF and Breeders’ Cup.
“When I began going to the racetrack, I found another world, with its own language, and literature, and lore,” Chapel said in a LinkedIn post announcing the award. “It had horses and highs and heartbreak. It had characters-human and equine. I didn’t know (that) the first time I spent an afternoon at Suffolk Downs what that world would come to mean to me. There are many ways to hold something close to yourself, and for me, one of those ways is to document, to gather what might otherwise be forgotten or lost.
“That impulse has shaped twenty years of collecting work.”
Chapel says her collection was done with the thought of preserving racing’s “hidden voices.” Indeed, there is an additional focus on New England racing, particularly Suffolk Downs in her native Massachusetts.
“What makes this recognition especially meaningful is that it acknowledges not only my work as a collector, but the dedication and creativity of all the people represented in the collection: the racetrackers and poets and bettors who recorded this world and what they found there, in ways both humble and extraordinary.”
As part of the award, Chapel receives $1,000, an annual Ticknor Society membership and gets to present her collection at the organization’s annual meeting.
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