George Rowand was well on his way to being an attorney when something exciting happened: he saw a horse run a race. And his life was never the same afterwards.

The horse in questions was a thoroughbred named Secretariat, and he was making an incredible winning move to win the 1973 Preakness Stakes, and after that race was over, Rowand turned to a friend and said, “I'd like to have a horse like that some day.”

After becoming an attorney two years later, Rowand still carried the idea about owning a great thoroughbred, and in 1980, he convinced some family members and friends to put up the money to get into thoroughbred racing. While the initial results were dismal – the partnership won one race in six years – the group persevered, and eventually they were rewarded when they bred four graded-stakes winners, including two grade one winners. They won 17 stakes races across America and had a great time doing it.

Oddly enough, breeding and managing a successful racing stable led Rowand into journalism. He started by writing a racing column for a local Virginia paper and eventually was hired as a reporter, first covering local schools and their issues and then as the business editor where he wrote about 1,000 articles about local businesses. While doing that, he also wrote and had published his story about his time in the thoroughbred business: “Diary of a Dream: My Journey in Thoroughbred Racing.”

Rowand has been married to his wife, Rita, for almost 25 years, and their son, Michael, is now 19 and is a sophomore at Virginia Tech. Rita works for George Mason University, and has been to the UAE six times for her job. Now with a new job there in hand, she is leading the family into a foreign land. The Rowands will be living in the UAE at least for 2009, and perhaps longer. Michael will finish the spring semester at Virginia Tech and then will spend the fall semester of 2009 in the UAE with his parents. It promises to be interesting.