Owner-breeder Peter Callahan dead at 82

Peter Callahan, a publishing executive who for four decades owned and bred horses, including the filly Swiss Skydiver, the winner of the 2020 Preakness Stakes, died on May 9, according to family members and friends. Callahan, who died after suffering a brain tumor and battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for 10 years, was 82.

Callahan, who was an investor in Alpine Capital when the company purchased Daily Racing Form in 1998, first entered the racing business in the 1980s and quickly forged a partnership with Runnymede Farm in Central Kentucky. Although the partnership yielded several Grade 1 winners and champions – including Agnes Digital, Japan’s 2001 champion older horse – it was Swiss Skydiver’s Preakness win that capped his racing accomplishments.

“At this stage of life, there aren’t many things that reach the level of true enjoyment, but this is one of them,” Callahan told The Blood-Horse magazine after Swiss Skydiver became the sixth filly to win the Preakness. “I wish something like this could happen to everyone.”

Kenny McPeek, who trained Swiss Skydiver and other horses for Callahan for two decades, said on Thursday that Callahan was “not only a friend and client, he was like a father figure to me.”

“The Swiss Skydiver roll we went on was epic, one for the ages,” he said. “Even then he was having a lot of health problems, and to see what that did for him, it was something special. He loved Thoroughbred racing and everything about it, and he is on my angel’s list now.”

Swiss Skydiver entered the Preakness after finishing second as the second choice in the 2020 Kentucky Oaks, which was run on Sept. 4 of that year due to the pandemic. She won the Preakness by a neck over that year’s Derby winner, Authentic, at odds of nearly 12-1. She later added the Grade 1 Beholder Stakes to her resume, before being retired near the end of her 2021 season and selling for $4.7 million to Katsumi Yoshida as a broodmare prospect.

Peter Callahan was born in Astoria, Queens, and spent the vast majority of his life in his native New York. He graduated from St. Francis College in New York before going on to the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

After college, he took a position at Peat Marwick, the accounting firm. During that time, he would often go to Yonkers and Roosevelt Raceway with colleagues, according to a profile in the St. Francis alumni magazine.

Later, Callahan began working in the publishing industry at Mcfadden Holdings. He eventually became chairman, acquiring trade publications for the company, including a partnership interest in the National Enquirer. His stake in Daily Racing Form was sold in 2004 when the company was bought by The Wicks Group.

Carolyn Callahan, a daughter, said that her father took immense joy out of breeding his mares, and that he was frequently told by other horsemen that “he knew more about the bloodlines than they did.”

“There were great years, and there were okay years, and there were down years, but he always told us that you have to expect that,” Callahan said. “With breeding, you have to be in for the long haul. You might have a great horse one day, and it might take 10 years before you have another.”

Although Callahan was diligent in his work ethic and his research into bloodlines, he was also happiest at the track and delighted in seeing his homebreds run, Carolyn Callahan said.

“There were a lot of times when people would have no idea that we had lost,” Carolyn Callahan said. “And he loved racing fillies. If you had fun with them on the racetrack, then you could retire them and do all the work for looking forward to their babies.”

In addition to Carolyn, Callahan is survived by two other daughters, Christine and Tricia, and their mother, Lee, along with seven grandchildren.

The Callahans still have “30 or 40” mares at Runnymede, Carolyn Callahan said, and they intend to continue the breeding tradition started by their father.

“That was his wish,” Carolyn said. “He brought us into the fold over the last few years, because he wanted us to keep it going, and we want to keep making him proud. He always told us that doing right on the breeding side means you get to have fun on the racing side. That’s the way you make the money to keep it all going.”

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