Jockey Katie Davis Returning to Laurel Park Sunday
At 1h45, on April 7, 2024 • By LAUREL PARK
While Adelphia Racing Club and Cutair Racing’s Grade 3-placed stakes winner Funny How will be racing for the first time outside of her native New York in Sunday’s feature at Laurel Park, she’ll be accompanied by a familiar face.
Jockey Katie Davis, a Mid-Atlantic fixture for five years where she enjoyed some of her most successful seasons, will be on Ray Handal-trained Funny How for the sixth straight time in Race 8, a third-level optional claiming allowance for fillies and mares 3 and up sprinting 5 ½ furlongs.
It will be the first time riding in Maryland for the 36-year-old Davis since winning aboard Fairy Wish May 9, 2021 at historic Pimlico Race Course. Represented by agent Joe Migliore, a son of retired jockey Rich Migliore, Davis ran fourth on Rockstar Girl April 11, 2021, her last race at Laurel.
“I am so excited to come back,” Davis said. “I have such great memories there. People still reach out here and there, which is awesome. I was just telling Joey, ‘Don’t book me too many in the morning. I want to get down there for the first race and see everybody.’”
One of six children of ex-jockey Robbie Davis, a winner of 3,382 races from 1981-2002, Katie Davis is based in New York where she and her husband, four-time Maryland champion Trevor McCarthy, both ride. Married in December 2020, they have a daughter, Riley, born a year later.
“[Trevor] told me last night, ‘If you don’t want to go tomorrow, I’ll go for you.’ I said, ‘No I’m good,’” Davis laughed. “I might make it a day or two trip and spend the night. I want to make it a nice trip because I don’t get down there very often. I really want to enjoy it.”
Davis was a Maryland regular from 2016 until mid-2021, when she stepped away from riding for 16 months on maternity leave before returning in September 2022. She set personal bests with 73 wins and 545 mounts in 2017, the same year she won her first career stakes in Laurel’s Conniver on Next Best Thing.
Last year, Davis surpassed seven figures in purse earnings for the fourth time with a career-best $2,372,616. She has won 289 races and $9.87 million in purses from 2,619 lifetime mounts.
