In its continuing mission to advance equine education, the California Thoroughbred Foundation awarded scholarships to Kimberley Sannajust and Nicholas Edelman. The two well-qualifed candidates study at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
Kimberley Sannajust’s interest in Thoroughbred racing and racetrack medicine began when she was in high school and got a job working as a groom and hotwalker for trainer Jef Bonde at Pleasanton.
“I developed a passion for their incredible athleticism and immediately knew I wanted to become an advocate for ensuring the health of these animals,” she wrote in her scholarship application. Her work on a PET (positron emission tomography) equine distal limb project introduced her “to the value of this novel imaging modality for early detection of subtle injuries.”
Scheduled to receive her DVM degree in June 2021, Kimberly earned a BS neurobiology, physiology, and behavior degree from Davis. Her plans after graduation include an internship at an equine hospital and application for an equine-specific imaging fellowship/residency or work as part of a racetrack practice. She is president of the Equine Medicine Club, UC Davis chapter.
Nicholas Edelman has extensive hands-on experience with racehorses. He worked for trainer John Sadler throughout college and during a gap year before veterinary school, hotwalking and grooming, doing administrative tasks, assisting the stable’s vets and farriers, checking on horses rehabbing at the farm, communicating with owners, and even running the barn for a Del Mar fall meet. Nicholas worked with veterinarians Vince Baker, Sam Bradley, Keith Latson, and Ryan Carpenter. He has been a volunteer technician with the Southern California Equine Foundation in Arcadia and Del Mar and a volunteer vet assistant for Carpenter.
As co-president and large animal coordinator with the Global Veterinary Alliance from June 2018 to the present, Nicholas has organized and run rural veterinary clinics in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. After internship, his goal is to return to the track to work as an associate vet in a private practice and eventually transition into practice ownership. He received an ecology and evolutionary biology BS from U C Santa Cruz and will earn his DVM next year.