Longtime owner-breeder Frank Generazio Jr. dies at 91

Frank Generazio Jr., a former stakes-winning trainer who along with his wife, Patricia, became a prominent owner and breeder, died Saturday in Florida after battling a number of health issues, according to trainer Christophe Clement. He was 91.

According to Equibase statistics, Generazio won 370 races in a 16-year training career that spanned 1991-2006. He campaigned several stakes winners, including graded winners Unreal Turn, Concorde’s Gold and Play It Again Stan.

Among Generazio’s bevy of listed stakes winners was the mare Pure Disco, who won six stakes – many for trainer Tony Wilson – and who produced Pure Sensation, an 11-time stakes winner and earner of $2 million for the Generazios as owner-breeder. Pure Sensation and Disco Partner made up a tag-team of stakes-winning New York-bred turf sprinters that the Generazios campaigned with Clement. In the Grade 3 Jaipur in 2016 at Belmont Park, Pure Sensation beat Disco Partner by a neck.

The Generazios also bred and campaigned for most of her career the Grade 1-winning New York-bred mare Discreet Marq, who earned more than $1 million.

The Generazios most accomplished runner was Presious Passion, a three-time Grade 1 winner who finished second in the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Turf. Presious Passion, a speedball trained by Mary Hartmann, won 14 of 52 starts and earned more than $2.6 million.

In a 2016 interview with Andy Serling of the New York Racing Association, Generazio said he first got involved in racing when, at a birthday party for his father, he was one of eight people who put up $10,000 to claim horses to race primarily at Suffolk Downs, near where the Generazios lived.

“After three or four years, I was the only guy standing, so I inherited what was left,” Generzio told Serling. “From there on, my wife and I got very interested in horses and we knew nothing about horses.”

In 1982, the Generazios purchased a yearling for $27,000 who eventually became Concorde Bound. The gray son of Super Concorde won 11 of 26 starts and was a graded stakes winner and started what would become a prosperous breeding operation for the Generazios.

Though the horses they raced ran in the name of Patricia Generazio, Frank’s wife of more than 50 years, the two were equally involved, according to Clement.

“Everything was run by the two of them, every decision was made by the two of them,” said Clement, one of a handful of trainers the Generazios employed. “They formed an amazing team. They were so successful as owners-breeders without spending a crazy amount of money.”

Funeral arrangements were unavailable as of Monday.