Grad in reality show horse race

Aaron Coen

4:20 p.m., Jan. 14, 2005--American Dream Derby, a TV reality show based on horse racing, is off and running, and among the 12 contestants is a January UD grad, Aaron Coen. The competition, on cable’s Game Show Network (GSN), centers on activities involving a stable of 15 Thoroughbred horses, and the winner will receive $250,000 and a stable of eight Thoroughbreds.

Horses have been the focus of Coen’s life since he was 6 years old, when he used to hang out on the fence watching the action at a barn near his home in Hockessin where a local rider boarded her horses.

“Bev Driver noticed me and asked me if I wanted to learn how to ride,” he said, “and that’s when my involvement with horses began. I did everything—mucked stalls, lugged buckets of water, took care of the tack and also learned to ride.”

To say that he loves horses is an understatement. “I’d be a basket case without them,” Coen said.

As he grew older, Coen became a dressage rider. “Dressage is the equivalent of an equine ballet,” Coen said. The rider gives almost imperceptible commands to a trained horse, which responds with precision movements. Probably the best-known dressage horses are the famed Lipizzaner stallions of Austria.

When not at Santa Anita Park in California filming the American Dream Derby, Coen is on the horse show circuit in Florida riding Chapelle, an internationally known dressage horse, for owner Margaret Duprey. “This is my first year riding in the upper levels,” he said.

At UD, Coen majored in animal science and also took several liberal arts courses. His last semester he did an independent study project under David Marshall, assistant professor of animal and food sciences, studying the science of the horse, learning about its muscular system. “It was a great opportunity,” Coen said.

His mother is Shirley Coen, manager, IT-Network and Systems Services. Three out of the four Coen children are UD graduates.

Coen lucked out on the first two back-to-back episodes of American Dream Derby. He was selected as one of three guests by the week’s winner, who became the temporary owner of the mansion.

“We hung out in the mansion, and best of all I had a bed,” he said. “The other contestants did not fare as well—they slept in the barn and had to muck out the stables with their bare hands.”

Coen is having too much fun doing what he enjoys to worry about the future. “I’ll settle down when I’m 30,” he said.

American Dream Derby is broadcast at 9 p.m., Mondays, on the Games Channel (channel 42 on Comcast Cablevision locally). It will culminate in a live race event with eight of the 12 contestants on Feb. 21.

Article by Sue Moncure

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