Alice Clapham doesn’t care for the spotlight. At all. But to anyone even remotely familiar with Herringswell, Alice is easily recognizable as our chief travelling assistant. She accompanied Eclipse Champion Main Sequence to Dubai. She did the same with Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, who won the Dubai World Cup in 2013. She then spent three months with him in England preparing for Royal Ascot. So while Alice might prefer to maintain a low profile, she keeps pretty exclusive equine company.

She came to Herringswell ten years ago with a varied and impressive resume. Born in England to a family prominent in three-day eventing, she spent time working for Olympic champion Mark Todd in New Zealand and also worked for David and Karen O’Connor, members of the U.S. Team. She’s worked for steeplechase trainers and also had a brief stint at WinStar Farm in Lexington, Kentucky.

While her home base is officially listed as Fair Hill, she’s rarely there long enough to do a decent load of laundry. She spent this past winter with our string at Santa Anita in California before heading back east to Keeneland for the spring meet. From there it was on to Belmont, and now Alice is running our barn in Saratoga. The meet has started off well for us, with three winners during the first week.

Grade 1 winner Miss Temple City was one of our first entries at the Spa, running a bang-up race in last weekend’s Grade 1 Diana Handicap to finish fourth by less than a length.

Respected by her peers for her horsemanship as well as her leadership, Alice has a great rapport with her co-workers and is an ideal ambassador for the Herringswell operation. Be it a first level allowance or a graded stakes race, she approaches every situation with total professionalism. To Alice, every race is a “big race.”

“Alice serves as my eyes and ears,” Graham said. “She’s been tremendous.”