Jockey Beverly Burress
Born: 04/26/1985, Shreveport, Louisiana
Resides: Hot Springs, Arkansas
Family: Unmarried
Beverly, 24, is unmarried and speaks with the best of racing on her tongue. Always charming, always perceptive, her enthusiasm for racing is unbridled.
“I love to do exciting things. Give me a fast horse and I can fulfill my dreams,” she avowed.
A popular young woman, Burress turned up at the 2006 Oaklawn regular “live” meeting as an unknown bug rider. She ended that Spa season with 30 winners to establish a single meeting record for female apprentices.
Unfortunately, the injury bug-a-boo seems to have Beverly in its clutches.
“I am coming off an injury as I start this 2010 Oaklawn meeting,” she recounted.
During the mixed meeting at Tulsa last autumn, she rode both thoroughbreds and quarter horses.
“I was on a quarter-horse, who tried to prop leaving the gate. In doing so, he threw up his head and caught me in the face. The blow broke my nose and an eye-socket bone.”
The young lady has gained a reputation as an outstanding exercise rider in the mornings. It isn’t out of the ordinary for her to get on 10, or more, horses in one morning.
“Sometimes I won’t even get to return to the barn with a horse. I pull up the horse, go to the gap and turn him over to the groom. There often is another trainer there with another horse and he, or she, would give me a leg up on that one. Off again, I would go,” Beverly reflected.
The young jockey is a third generation horse person. Her father is trainer Bobby Burress, Her mother Becky is an owner as is grandfather Billy “Chief” Burress.
Interestingly, Beverly made a positive impression in her first race ever.
“That was my first race at a pari-mutuel track. It came on a horse named Making The Grade. That was at Blue Ribbon Downs. Since then, I have ridden at Lone Star, Sam Houston, Louisiana Downs, Fair Meadows and my regular circuit.”
Burress didn’t start out with aspirations to be a jockey. At one time she was a student at Rose State College, Midwest City, Oklahoma, pursuing Certified Nursing Aide accreditation.
“At home, I had been getting on horses for my father. He was now racing at Blue Ribbon Downs and in need of a stable rider. So I went there to help him out. Next thing you know, I started winning races. Now I was hooked.”
Beverly says the all time favorite of horses that she has ridden remains a gelding named Little John John.
“My father bought Little John John, then a four-year-old that had never started, for $460,” recalled Burress. “He got him out of a horse sale for bottom of the line stock. In fact, some of those consigned, we’re think were being sold for slaughter. Dad saw something in this gelding that no one else saw. Little John John responded to our TLC and earned around $50,000 for us. It was a sad day for our barn, a couple of years ago, when we lost Little John John at Oaklawn in a $6,500 claimer.”
Picking up the story, Bobby Burress told, “one day, the horse turned up in a $5,000 claimer at Prairie Meadows, so I reached in and took him. When I ran him back, he won, but was claimed from us. Then we lost track of Little John John. It was sad turn of events.”
Both father and daughter suggest horse people risk heart break by becoming overly attached to claiming horses.
“Lynn Chleborad had a horse she was really fond of a couple of years ago,” Beverly recalled. “One day the horse got claimed and Lynn was heart broken. Since then, Chleborad insists, the only horse in her barn that she will permit herself to really get attached to is the stable pony.”
Despite her injuries Beverly is having good years.
“After one year, I bought a new truck. The year before I purchased a home in Hot Springs, I had been living in Jones, Oklahoma. But, I suppose now, I’m an Arkie. One day not long ago, the Razorbacks had just won a close game and I said ‘yeah, pig, sooie!’ Some jock in the room asked me what I had just said. So I repeated yeah pig, sooie, then added, ‘us Arkies stick together.”