For a woman who doesn’t like the city, Maryland’s Annie Finney has made quite a name for herself on the New York circuit.

A native of the greater Baltimore area, Finney has worked since 2011 as an exercise rider for Todd Pletcher; based at first in Saratoga and now at his Belmont barn, she works in New York for the spring, summer, and fall, returning home to the mid-Atlantic for the winter.

“I like to go home and hang out,” she said last weekend, sitting outside Pletcher’s barn. “I like playing in the snow and visiting with my family.”

Now, though, Finney is in neither New York nor Maryland: she’s in California with the two horses that she’s been getting on this fall, two of the stars of the Pletcher barn: Princess of Sylmar and Palace Malice, a duo that may well be the winners of this year’s Distaff/Classic Breeders’ Cup double.

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