HRWA honors Lindsay Schanzer, first woman to produce Kentucky Derby telecast

The Horse Racing Women’s Association put Lindsay Schanzer at the center of its latest recognition because she has done more than win awards. She has helped decide how the Kentucky Derby, horse racing’s biggest day, is presented to the mainstream audience that turns on NBC every May and sees the sport through one of its most important windows.

Schanzer was promoted by NBC Sports in April 2022 to senior producer of horse racing and college football studio, a post that put her over all of the network’s racing coverage, including the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, Belmont Stakes, Breeders’ Cup and Royal Ascot. That same year she became the first woman to produce the Derby telecast in the race’s 148-year history, a milestone NBC said came during her 10th Derby with the network.

Her resume has long stretched beyond the racetrack. NBC Sports has described Schanzer as a seven-time Sports Emmy winner who joined the company in 2011 and has worked on Sunday Night Football, Football Night in America, Notre Dame Football, Wimbledon, Roland Garros and Premier League coverage. She also has been part of production teams for eight Olympic Games and one Super Bowl, experience that reflects the scale and polish NBC expects when it packages the Derby for a national audience.

That profile mattered again in 2024, when NBC Sports won the Media Eclipse Award for Live Television Programming for its coverage of the 150th Kentucky Derby. The National Thoroughbred Racing Association, Daily Racing Form and National Turf Writers and Broadcasters named Schanzer senior producer on that award-winning telecast, underscoring how central she has become to the network’s racing presentation.

NBC Sports’ 2026 Derby preview materials said Schanzer was leading the production for the fifth time and working her 14th Kentucky Derby with the network. For HRWA, which works to recognize and advance women in horse racing, Schanzer’s rise is bigger than one broadcast credit. It is proof that the people shaping the telecast are shaping the sport’s reach, its image and the way new fans are brought into racing every spring.