Top Thoroughbred Race Horse Owners - Keeping the Sport Alive

Where there’s a champion thoroughbred, there’s the story of the owner of that horse, which often are full of the kinds of heartwarming tales and twists no screenwriter could get a Hollywood studio to buy. Here is a small sampling of the Top Owners in Thoroughbred Horse Racing today.

Frank Stronach - You might not be aware that this man is behind some fantastic champion race horses of recent times. Consider that there are many Grade I stakes winners and Eclipse Award winners among Stronach’s impressive stable. Primal Force, Touch Gold, Red Bullet, Macho Uno, Glorious Song, Perfect Sting, Golden Missile, Ginger Punch, the frightfully fast Ghostzapper, and last but certainly not least, the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Awesome Again. Along with the aforementioned 1998 Breeders’ Cup Classic victory in 1998, Stronach’s horses have scored wins in the prestigious Canadian stakes race called the Queen’s Plate, as well as wins in the Preakness and the Belmont. Now in his early eighties, Stronach and his stable are looking to capture the one major victory that has eluded him all these years: The Kentucky Derby.

Mike Pegram - A childhood spent in southern Indiana gave Mike Pegram the chance to see the horses run at Ellis Park well as that as bastion of racing and the center of the horse racing world every first Saturday in May, Churchill Downs, just across the Indiana border in Louisville, Kentucky. First working in the business with his father as a quarter horse owner, Pegram had modest success. Then he happened to meet Bob Baffert, the Hall-of-Fame trainer, and soon thereafter switched and became a thoroughbred owner. Baffert and Pegram have teamed up to produce some notable champions in the 1990’s and 2000’s among them two-time Breeders’ Cup Sprint champio
Midnight Lute, Queen of Money, Miss Gibson County and Silverbulletday just to name a few. Pegram’s most successful champion was no doubt Real Quiet, who secured Pegram a win in The 1998 Kentucky Derby. Real Quiet went on to win the Preakness and lost the Belmont, and therefore the first Triple Crown since 1978, by a heartbreaking nose.

Michael Tabor - Thoroughbred horse racing is just as big if not even bigger in Europe, and Michael Tabor is an owner that has made a big splash both in the United States and across the pond in Europe. His successes in European racing include fielding winners in the prestigious United Kingdom Group I race (same as Grade I in the United States) the Epsom Derby, the 2000 Guineas, and many other European powerhouse races. Galileo and the fantastic High Chaparral and legendary Giants Causeway. Arguably his greatest American racing success (if you had to make me choose) would be in 1995 with the smashing success of Thunder Gulch, who scored Tabor wins in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. Thunder Gulch also won the 1995 Eclispe Award for Horse of the Year Award. With his dual success in Amercan and European racing, Tabor is one of just four men in the world to have owned a winner in the Epsom Derby and the Kentucky Derby

These are just three of the Top Owners in Horse Racing today, and there will be more to come in the future. In the meantime, you can ride many of the impeccably bred and owned horses mentioned in our top-notch horse racing game today!