Breeding Thoroughbreds might be the ultimate reality show, and Michael Slezak would know.

Slezak made his name writing about American Idol, amassing more than 30,000 followers on X while writing for Entertainment Weekly and TVLine.

He’s appeared on National Public Radio and various network morning shows, and in 2010, he wrote a guest essay for the New York Times about his unabashed love for the show.

“… For all its bloated, synthetic, product-shilling, money-making trappings,” he wrote in the Times, “‘Idol’ provides a once-a-year chance for the average American to combat the evils of today’s music business.”

It’s David vs. Goliath, the little guy vs. The Man, the underdog dreaming of success, of somehow breaking through despite the enormous odds against him. Slezak gets it.

Now a resident of Jersey City, where he moved after a decade in New York City, Slezak grew up in Amsterdam, and he says that one of his earliest memories is of being hoisted on his father’s shoulders at Saratoga Race Course to look at the horses.

“I picked a winner, and I was hooked for life,” he said. “My heart belongs to Saratoga. It was my childhood dream to have some involvement in the horse business, and 52-year-old me feels like 10-year-old me living out that dream.”

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