Johnson, Delaney

[attr="class","GGboxtemp1"] DEL

[attr="class","GGboxtemp1"] SEPTEMBER 5, 1992

[attr="class","GGboxtemp1"] TRAINER

[attr="class","GGboxtemp1"] SINGLE

[attr="class","GGboxtemp1"] STRAIGHT

[attr="class","GGboxtemp1"] FEMALE

[attr="class","GGboxtemp1"] CARDINAL HILL

[attr="class","GGcontenttemp1"]











CHARACTER DESCRIPTION: Delaney isn't your typical kind of girl. Standing at six foot one inches, she's hardly the size of a jockey. Her brown hair is thick, waist length and hard to manage, so she says. No matter what type of product she uses, she can never manage to tame her mane. Much like the broodmares at the barn, her hair is always in knots and there may just be permanent hay stuck in there. Recently, she decided to shave a little portion on one side of her head for fun. Delaney's eyes have been known to change colours with her mood and the sun. Described as a dark chocolate in the winter and when she gets angry, and a vibrant brown in the summer and when she's happy.







Multiple scars cover her body from working around the farm, but two scars will forever leave tragedy in her mind. In the fall two years ago, Del had a major riding accident which caused her to have surgery on her back and knee. Most of her back was cut open to access the nerves in her spine, and her kneecap shattered and had to be replaced. She has one thick scar on the inside of her leg, and one long one on her back, starting from the base of her neck down to her tailbone.







Del has multiple piercings, including her nose and eyebrow, but tends to keep the eyebrow piercing out due to her helmet. Some people would describe Delaney’s smile as contagious. She did have braces when she was younger – to her dismay – but in the end the payout was generous. She loves to smile, and is often found smiling all the time. Del rarely wears makeup at home, and if she does go out, she can be found wearing a thin band of eyeliner and some mascara. She loves nail art, but can never really paint her nails because of all of the laborious work she does. Her hair is almost always in a braid or ponytail and you can often find her wearing her Blundstones and jeans with an old t-shirt.



[break][break]







PERSONALITY: Delaney can be quite authoritative around the farm. Being used to bossing around mean stallions and grumpy mares, her attitude may be a bit intimidating for some people to handle. When dealing with people on the other hand, Delaney is a fairly quiet woman. She is very reserved and proper, never once stepping out of place when it is the most important. Absolutely hating people is what makes her so quiet in public. At the track, you can find her in her own little corner being antisocial as she watches her horses run. When things get a little heated, Delaney tends to shoot out words at a rapid fire pace, which usually ends up being a string of profanities and words mushed together. Besides being reserved, her demeanor shifts to match those around her. She’s usually relatively cool, calm and collected, but if you catch her on a bad day she can be pretty volatile. Del is known for her talent with horses and the way she communicates with them, although some people might say she is a bit stuck up and a bit know-it-all (despite her protests). She absolutely hates being called a smart-ass mainly because she’s not trying to be. The way she explains her theories and methods makes her seem like she is queen bee, and that it must be done her way and done right. She uses her hands to explain things a lot, and it’s a habit she’s been trying to break for the longest time.

This tall girl is not a morning person and never will be. Absolutely hating mornings, she plans her workouts so that they happen no earlier than 11am so she has time to fully wake up in the morning. She’s definitely a night owl as she spends most of her long days staying up late devising workout plans and race plans for the string of horses in her training program. You can always find her with a coffee in her hands in the morning along with her trusty notebook and pen, which she uses to write down specific workout times, comments and things to work on before the horses’ next race. You could call her a perfectionist when it comes to planning. Something like OCD, she has to make sure everything is done in a specific order or else her plans will go to shit. Due to this, Del rarely has time for lunch on heavy work days. After her work is done, she’s always hiding in the trainers’ office at Cardinal Hill in her own little bubble. Sometimes she even skips dinner, but that’s really rare. Del loves her food and often has a few snacks with her, but always eats them before lunch. Sleep is rare for Delaney, and the maximum hour she gets is 6. Other than working with the Thoroughbreds, Delaney loves to event her horse in her minimal spare time. Her passion for eventing started after she had become a trainer and rescued an OTTB from the local racetrack, turning it into one of her best eventers.

[break][break]







HISTORY: Born on a typical September morning in Alberta, Delaney was raised on a Quarter Horse farm. Her parents, Joseph and Margaret Johnson, were the leading active QH breeders and trainers in her small town of Irricana, Alberta. By the time she could walk, she was already helping around the farm, mucking stalls, cleaning tack and grooming horses. Their little stable was under the name Johnson Quarter Horses Inc. and they owned the top-earning Quarter Horse stallion Buckeye K. Despite her parent’s protests of her being homeschooled, she wanted to go to a real school and started learning at Beiseker Community School in Beiseker, since Irricana didn’t have its own school. School didn’t come easy to her at first, and it was when she was in grade 5 her parents broke the news they would be moving to the United States to further progress in the Thoroughbred industry. Leaving all of her things behind, even the prized Buckeye K, the Johnson family packed up and moved to sunny Ocala, Florida.

It was there that Delaney finished school with straight A’s in all of her subjects except math and made honor roll in all four years of high school. She met her first boyfriend of 2 years in high school, and his name was Adam Keery. They had met at Ocala Downs when her parents had a few of their horses racing. Adam’s parents owned Blackhawk Racing, whose horses were tough rivals against Delaney’s own Rockwood Stables. Despite that rivalry, nothing stopped the two from hooking up. It was probably the best two years of Del’s life, despite the news of her late grandma back in Calgary. Adam had flown back to Calgary with her, comforted her and consoled her the whole way, never leaving her side. She thought he really was the one, until tragedy struck and Adam was killed in a freak riding accident with her. Del doesn’t remember much about what happened, but it was a fatal accident that sent her to the hospital for knee and back surgery and sent him to his grave. Delaney took a break from horses for a few years after, sold her horse, and shut herself out from the world because she was rehabilitating and grieving. Slowly, her parent’s business was depleting and so was their heath. When she was 18, her mother had developed a rare cancer and didn’t make it through chemotherapy and passed away shortly after. At this point, Delaney had started working around the farm again because her dad was getting old and couldn’t do much. Being an only child, it wasn’t too difficult for her to handle the stable work since she had been doing it since she was little. With her father’s racing stock depleting, there were empty stalls on empty stalls. They had run into some financial problems which forced them to sell everything they had, even Delaney’s favourite filly, Socialite, who was just at the peak of her racing form.

All of her fears came true when her father died, and she was alone. She hadn’t made it to university because of her financial problems, so she could barely get a job anywhere. It was when she went to visit Ocala Downs for the first time since the accident that she realized she missed the track and everything about it.

[break][break]