Matt Carothers

Matt Carothers came to racing in boyhood. His father, Gibson Carothers, a former horse owner and current board member of Minnesota’s Canterbury Park Race Course, took his young son to all the tracks in Southern California, an experience that planted the seeds of Matt’s future career.

Matt went to college in New Orleans (Tulane University) where, he says, he majored in political science and “minored in Fair Grounds,” referring to the local track. He was merely marking time as a student of political science; he did not expect to make it his life’s work.

Matt earned a certificate from a Minneapolis broadcasting school after college, then interned at KARE-TV in the Twin Cities. From here it was on to Hastings, Minn., and sports play-by-play. When Canterbury reopened in 1994 as a simulcast facility, Matt saw a chance to match his talent with his first love and took a job announcing race results from around the country. With the return of live racing to Canterbury the next year, he became the on-track handicapper and TV host. After three years in this role he moved on to Monmouth Park and the Meadowlands in New Jersey. Nearby New York beckoned, however, and Matt went to work for New York City OTB, partnering with legendary track announcer Dave Johnson from a studio at Aqueduct Race Course. In 1999 he joined TVG and was part of the on-air crew for the network’s first presentation of its signature show, Trackside Live.

Matt looks for speed when handicapping a race. The horse that’s 10-1 and likely to be on the lead is a better bet, he says, than a horse that’s 4-1 but likely to run well off the lead until the closing stretch.

When not studying the charts, Matt follows his other love, the Minnesota Twins.