Owner, breeder Marty Wygod dies at 84

Prominent owner and breeder Marty Wygod, breeder of this year’s Kentucky Derby candidate Resilience, died in his sleep Thursday night at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., near his home in Rancho Santa Fe. He was 84.

Wygod, a native New Yorker, went to high school with eventual Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel, and was first introduced to racing as a hotwalker at Belmont Park. He would build the means to get into the sport at a high level with his success in the business world. The graduate of New York University started out as a Wall Street stockbroker, eventually becoming the youngest managing partner of a New York Stock Exchange brokerage in the 1960s. He then entered the home medical services industry, and grew Medco Containment Services into the nation’s largest mail-order prescription drug company, selling it in the 1990s for $6.5 billion. Wygod later served as chairman of the board of directors of WebMD.

Wygod and his wife, Pamela – they have two children, Emily and Max – bred and raced Thoroughbreds for more than 50 years. They owned River Edge Farm in Buellton, Calif., and later shifted their major breeding operations to Kentucky, with their mares and young stock boarded at Lane’s End Farm.

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The Wygods, alone or in partnership, bred more than 100 stakes winners. Their top runners included 2004 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies winner and divisional Eclipse Award champion Sweet Catomine; and Life Is Sweet, whose multiple Grade 1 wins included the 2009 Breeders' Cup Distaff (at the time called the Ladies' Classic). Both were homebreds produced by the Wygods' graded stakes-placed homebred Sweet Life, who was honored as Broodmare of the Year for her success.

Another top runner for the Wygods was Grade 1 winner Tranquility Lake, purchased as a yearling. She went on to produce Grade 1 winners After Market and Courageous Cat.

Tranquility Lake's daughter Meadowsweet is the dam of Resilience. Marty Wygod gifted the young horse to his daughter, Emily Bushnell, and to his longtime bloodstock consultant Ric Waldman. Last week, the colt won the Grade 2 Wood Memorial to stamp his ticket to the Kentucky Derby.

“I feel so lucky to part of this incredible horse,” Bushnell told Daily Racing Form after the win. “He has brought my family’s breeding program full circle. My father’s dedication and love for the Thoroughbred industry has spanned multiple years and Resilience is the product of a broodmare line he has nurtured and it is so exciting to see him succeed at this level.”

Wygod, honored multiple times as a leading owner and breeder in California, was a trustee of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association, a member of The Jockey Club, and a member of the board of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.

“Marty’s inclusion on our board proved to be a blessing over and over again,” DMTC’s CEO Joe Harper said in a release. “His insights and feel for both the world of business and our racing game helped us repeatedly make the kind of good decisions that have seen us rise to the top of the national racing community. We will dearly miss him.”

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