Jazz Napravnik, a licensed steeplechase and flat trainer, is an experienced horse person who has worked for some of the top trainers in the area including, Jack Fisher, Catherine Robinson, Ann Merryman and Bruce Miller of Pennsylvania. Her diverse background includes 13 years of Pony Club, graduating at the C-3 level. national placings on the show circuit as a child on a small pony, regional placings on the eventing circuit on her large pony as well as riding steeplechase horses in races on the flat and over timber. She comes from a family of horse people. her dad is a farrier in New Jersey. The other Marylanders in the family include her sister Anna Napravnik, leading jockey in Maryland and her mother, Cindy Faherty who runs the partner farm Sunrise Stable, re-schooling ex-racehorses and conditioning them as riding horses with a focus on Eventing.
Jazz grew up in Bedminster, New Jersey, riding before she was walking. She rode her first pony race at five years old on a ten hand Shetland pony. By the time she was 13, she knew racing was in her blood and would be a future career. While still in high school she trained and rode a string of race ponies along with her sister and the help of their mother. After graduating high school early, she moved to Pennsylvania to apprentice under Bruce Miller. A year and a half later a job opportunity with Jack Fisher lead her to Maryland, and gave her an chance to ride in some timber races. She soon learned that she did not have the makings of a great jockey and decided to try training instead. After two years at Jack Fisher‘s a change in scenery was in store and she headed north for the summer to experience Saratoga Race Course, galloping for Ken Mc Peak. Upon her return to Maryland in September, she continued taking classes at Towson University where she attained her bachelors degree in Psychology. While attending school full time she worked at Pimlico for Ann Merryman and Catherine Robinson and trained a steeplechase horse of her own. After working at Pimlico for three years, she struck out on her own, leasing a farm in Monkton, Maryland as a training facility, where she currently resides and trains.
Being of a new generation of trainers, she is open to different ways of training and focuses on training each horse as an individual with specific needs. Her strong belief that racehorses, although athletes, still have to be treated like horses, not machines, guides her training philosophies. She is not afraid to “think out side the box” and try “off the wall” ideas to get the most out of her horses on race day. Her abundant knowledge from other disciplines also factors into some of her training methods. Her hope is to offer her horses, along with their owners, a unique way of maximizing their performance in a natural and nearly drug free approach.