Salvador Hernandez

A chance meeting connected La Tia’s owner and breeder, Chicago restaurateur Salvador Hernandez, the owner and breeder of La Tia, with the filly’s original trainer, Brian Williamson before Williamson’s assistant, Armando Delacerda opened his own stable. Williamson fancies tacos and De la Cerda told him about Hernandez’s Mexican restaurant in 2012. Williamson checked out the restaurant, went back many times and became friends with Hernandez, who has owned Thoroughbreds for 25 years. Before the start of the Arlington meet that year, Hernandez gave Williamson four horses to train including his homebred, Illinois-bred La Tia.

Hernandez also raced stakes winners Voy Por Uno Mas and Diablos First Lady in partnership with trainer Moises Yanez and Del Sol Farm.    

Larry & Marianne Williams

For relative newcomers to Thoroughbred racing, Larry and Marianne Williams have done remarkably well from their Tree Top Ranches near Boise, Idaho, in just 13 years. “They started from scratch,” said Dan Kiser, a former trainer at Les Bois Park who became Tree Top’s Equine Manager. “Mr. Williams is a real upbeat, nice person. He treats people nicely and good things seem to happen for him.”

Both Larry and Marianne are from the tiny town of Midvale, Idaho. They married there and moved their young family from Midvale to Boise in 1966. They have three children: Cris, Cory, and Cari. Larry became founder and president of the Idaho Timber Company, and its success allowed the Williams to dive into Thoroughbred racing.

“My family owned Quarter Horses, but they were mostly ranch stock, horses you worked cattle with,” Larry told Debra Ginsburg in her November, 2004, story in California Thoroughbred. “I don’t think I went to more than two races in my entire life before we became Thoroughbred owners ourselves.”

Initially, they contemplated investing in Quarter Horses. A trip to Kentucky convinced them to go with Thoroughbreds instead. They were smart enough to solicit advice from people who have known success in the business, including bloodstock agent Tim McMurry of Fleetwood Bloodstock, trainers Jerry Dutton and Cliff Sise Jr., and Idaho breeders Donnie and Judy McFadden. “They have all been instrumental in leading us down the right path,” Larry told Ginsburg.

McMurry selected the Williams’ first purchase, a yearling filly by Dehere at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale in 2000. The Williams paid $35,000 for her, named her Tamarack Bay, and watched with delight as she earned $210,000. She then produced four winners, including Tamarando, from her first four starters.

Three years before they bought Tamarack Bay, the Williams purchased 700 acres in Parma, Idaho, and built Tree Top Ranch. They keep about 20 mares at Tree Top and send eight mares to Kentucky. The Kentucky foals are pointed to the sales. The Idaho mares are bred to California stallions and race as homebreds hoping to cash in on the rich California breeding program. About a month before the Idaho mares are to foal, they are sent to California to have their babies and then be bred back.

Longtime supporters of Boise State University, the Williams have contributed generously to the college’s academic and athletic initiatives including the expansion of the Boise University Broncos Football Stadium. In 2005, the Williams donated a 72-acre park to the City of Boise, which was named Marianne Williams Park. Many times, the Williams donate to good causes anonymously.

They were pretty anonymous in Thoroughbred racing, but that seems to be changing every day. Tamarando’s half-length win in the Del Mar Futurity has really put their names out there.

Mark DeDomenico; Allen Aldrich; Lisa Hernandez; Stuart Downey

Dr. Mark DeDomenico, who campaigned champion Blind Luck, may not need another superstar, but he certainly deserves one for the contributions he continues to make to human and equine health. DeDomenico is a cardiovascular surgeon and researcher who played a vital role in the development of coronary bypass surgery; the Guided Flow Aortic Heart Valve; and the Bionit Arterial Grafts, which are used to replace damaged or artherosclerotic arteries. He is a founding member of the Hope Heart Institute in Seattle, Washington, and owns and operates the 45,000-member PRO Sports Health Club, where he continues to research metabolic disorders – including high cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes – and obesity.

His love of horses may be genetic. His father raced multiple stakes winners on the West Coast, and now the younger DeDomenico is helping horses more than his father could have envisioned. Working at his Pegasus Training and Rehabilitation Center in Richmond, Washington, with Dr. Wayne McIlwraith of Colorado State University, DeDomenico, who is Chairman of the Thoroughbred Owners of California Medication and Integrity Committee, is researching new treatments for equine middle and lower knee injuries, and he is also researching the use of platelet rich plasma and stem cell therapy.

As if he weren’t busy enough, he and Canadian owner Glen Todd began the Pegasus Two-Year-Old in Training Sale in Redmond two years ago. “Our whole mission here is to get some new owners into the business,” he told the Thoroughbred Daily News in an interview. “If we don’t keep getting new people into this sport to attend these sales, we’re going to end up in a tough spot.”

Bernie Schiappa

Bernie Schiappa is a 68-year-old native of Plainview, New Jersey, who got involved in harness racing before switching to Thoroughbreds. He retired as general manager of Fletcher Jones Imports, a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Las Vegas, in 2010, which gave him more time to concentrate on Thoroughbreds. He owns 25 and manages another 150 for Mercedes Stable. Schiappa’s horses race in the orange and blue silks of his favorite basketball team, the New York Knicks.

Schiappa was a partner with the late Terry Lanni, a lifelong friend who was Chairman of the Board and CEO of MGM Mirage, in 1999 Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Silic, who was also owned by Ken Poslosky, and with Game On Dude.

Game On Dude’s victory in the 2011 Santa Anita Handicap is cherished by Schiappa. The gelding won by a nose under Chantal Sutherland, then had to sweat out an inquiry that seemed to last forever. “That was a 15-minute inquiry,” Schiappa said. “I was fairly comfortable that the results would stay the same.” And when it did? “It was a relief,” Schiappa said. “It was special for Terry, because he was getting sick then.” Lanni passed away a little more than four months later.

When Game On Dude won this year’s Pacific Classic, Schiappa and baseball legend Joe Torre walked Game On Dude into the Del Mar winner’s circle. Torre got involved in Thoroughbred racing when he was managing the New York Yankees, and one of his coaches, Don Zimmer, took him to the track. Torre subsequently owned several horses with late Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel.

Patricia Generazio

The Generazios – Frank is 84, Pat is 78, and they’ve been married for 47 years and counting – have come a long way since they began racing horses at Suffolk Downs and Rockingham Park in New England.

They enjoyed great success with Presious Passion, who won 14 of 52 career starts, earning just under $2.7 million. “We were never fond of grass horses until Passion,” Pat said. The ten-year-old is now enjoying a sedate life. “He’s very happy in retirement,” Pat said. “He lives on the farm where he was born in Ocala.”

Discreet Marq, who is trained by Christophe Clement, has given the Generazios another reason to love turf racing. Before their homebred ventured to California to run in the $300,000 Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks, she had already won the Grade 2 Sands Point at Belmont Park. The owners wanted to be in California for the Oaks, but doctors had told Pat not to fly following cataract surgery. So she and Frank, who used to train their horses, stayed at their summer home in Cape Cod and watched on TV. And they liked what they saw.

“When she won that race, I couldn’t believe it,” Pat said. “It was phenomenal. It’s a great feeling, especially when we raced and bred her dam (To Marquet) and her grandmother (Pretty Momma). We raced them all. They’re like part of our family. It’s a great family.”

Dr George Todaro & Jerry Hollendorfer

Born in Seattle, Washington, on July 1, 1937, Dr. George Todaro is a professor at the University of Washington who has worked with the National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Health. His research has led to innovations in the treatment of cancer and cystic fibrosis. He is also the founder of several biotechnological companies, including Targeted Growth, a Seattle-based company focused on improving the quality of agricultural products, such as biodiesel fuels.

Todaro’s involvement with Thoroughbreds was literally a gift. For Christmas in 1991, his wife gave him a ten percent interest in a Washington-bred yearling named It May Freeze. Todaro was smitten, so much that became was an investor in Emerald Downs, which opened in Auburn, Washington, in 1996. One of his most successful horses was multiple stakes winner Trickey Trevor, who earned more than $700,000.

Todaro is partners with Hall of Fame trainer Jerry Hollendorfer on Lady of Fifty, who overcame a six-wide trip under Corey Nakatani to win the Grade 1 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes by a length and a half. Most of Todaro’s 70 horses in training are owned in partnership with Hollendorfer. Todaro also has horses with three other trainers and owns several broodmares in California and Kentucky.

Hollendorfer, a 72-year-old Hall of Fame trainer, used to bet on races with his teenage buddies at Acton Park, a now-defunct track not far from Hollendorfer’s hometown of Akron, Ohio. When he went to visit friends in San Francisco in his early 20s, he talked his way onto the backstretch at Bay Meadows and convinced trainer Jerry Dutton to give him a job. Later, Hollendorfer worked for Jerry Fanning. “I got to work for a couple of good guys,” Hollendorfer said. “Most of what I do today, I learned from them.” While he was working with Fanning at Hollywood Park, he met his future wife Janet, who was working for trainer Mel Stute.

In his first six years as a trainer, Hollendorfer won 59 races. Now he is the third leading trainer in racing history. By the time you read this, he’ll have won his 6,500th race.

Besilu Stables

Benjamin Leon Jr., who races under the name of Besilu Stables, immigrated to the United States from Cuba when he was 16 years old in 1961. He had two passions, which he shared in an interview with Ocala.com in 2011: “Since I was young, I’ve been fascinated by horses. I’d get in trouble for drawing pictures of horses in my history class.  As long as I can remember, I’ve been passionate about horses and playing baseball.”

He pursued both. He was a world-class softball player, winning four national and world titles and was inducted into the National Softball Hall of Fame in 1988.

Leon, who owned and bred Paso Fino horses for nearly 30 years, waited another 19 years before buying his first Thoroughbred. By then, he and his family had established Leon Medical Centers, sold them, purchased them back, and re-sold them for hundreds of millions of dollars. Benjamin Leon III currently acts as CEO of Leon Medical Centers. The family, led by Benjamin Leon Sr., also founded clinics to help Cuban exiles.

Leon returned to his love of horses in a major way, buying the sales topper at three different sales in 2010 and 2011. Two were yearlings; the other was Royal Delta, whom he purchased for $8.5 million at the 2011 Keeneland November Sale.

“Everybody wants to be on the top of the mountain,” Says Leon. “Most people forget the fun is in the climb. I’m climbing right now and I’m having a lot of fun.”

B. J. Wright & Robert LaPenta

B.J. Wright, a 75-year-old native of Shelbyville, Kentucky, is the Chairman of the Board of LifeSource Water Systems, a water filtration company in Pasadena, California, which he bought as a full partner in 1985 shortly after the company was founded. His company is now run by his son Jay, his daughter Cherie and her husband Mark Harris, who is president of LifeSource. Wright gives filtered water to all his horses and backs up his belief of the importance of good water in people and horses’ health by donating a portion of his winnings to Nancy Santullo’s House of the Children, which provides clean water and sanitation to the people of the Southeastern Peruvian Amazon. He is now on the House of Children Board.

When he was in his 20s, he dabbled with Thoroughbreds. He and a couple partners bought a horse for $1,000 and went on to win a couple races with him. A second Thoroughbred didn’t do as well, and Wright left the game for some three decades, returning in the ’90s.

LaPenta, a 68-year-old native of Yonkers, New York, was the vice president of Lockheed Martin Corporation, founding general partner of Aston Capital LLC, and Chairman of the Board of L-1 Identity Solutions, which deals in the protection of personal identities and assets. He sold the latter company in July, 2011.

LaPenta was introduced to horses by his mother and made his first Thoroughbred purchase in 1988 as a partner with basketball coach Rick Pitino, whose University of Louisville team won last season’s national championship. LaPenta started his own stable in 2001, purchasing eight yearlings for $895,000 and racing in the name of Whitehorse Stables. His best horses include 2007 champion two-year-old colt War Pass and the outstanding sprinter Jackson Bend, and he won a Belmont Stakes with Da’ Tara.

Also a philanthropist, LaPenta donated $7 million to the LaPenta Student Union Building at his alma mater, Iona College in Westchester County, New York. LaPenta’s silks are Iona’s colors: maroon and gold. He lives in Deer Valley, Utah, and winters in Naples, Florida, and enjoys golfing and skiing.