TDN Weekend

Malarkey will be kept busy at this year's Breeders' Cup at Del Mar as his duties will include taking over as the head chef in the Turf Club, something he probably never thought would be part of his future when he was, as he puts it, "growing up on the backside of Portland Meadows." Malarkey, who will turn 45 shortly before the Breeders' Cup, grew up in Oregon where his moth- er, Lesley Day, trained both Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses at Portland Meadows. Day would eventually get out of the training business but stayed connected with horses as she got involved with the show world and also handled layups on the family's farm. Malarkey would exercise the layup horses and he also used his riding skills to win a state championship with his high school's rodeo team. But the culinary world started to win out over the equine business and he was cooking at a restaurant in Los Angeles in 1995 when he got a call from his uncle Reed Palmer, who was the track photographer at several racetracks at the time. "My uncle called me up and said that they were going to re-open Can- terbury Park and he needed someone to work for him there as the track photographer," Malarkey said. "He said, 'Why don't you take the summer off and come to Minneapolis? You'll make more money than you ever have.' I said, 'I don't even know how to take pictures, uncle." Still, he said yes. He received a two-week crash course at Remington Park under Palmer's tutelage prior to opening day at Canterbury and then set up his own shop. "I was 23 years old and I was the track photographer at Canterbury Park with my own secretary," Malar- key said. "I would cook during the week and shoot photos on the week- ends. I was living pretty large." At the time, Palmer was also the track photographer at Churchill Downs and he brought his nephew to several runnings of the GI Kentucky Derby to help him out during a hec- THE NEPHEW OF PHOTOGRAPHER REED PALMER, MALARKEY GREW UP AT THE TRACK

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