Paul Cornman, who held a variety of positions in the Thoroughbred racing industry but was best known as an outstanding handicapper, advocate for horseplayers and part owner of the first New York-bred to earn $1 million, died Saturday in a Las Vegas hospital due to cancer. He was 73. Nicknamed “The Source,” Cornman worked as a clocker and chart-caller for Daily Racing Form and Racing Times. He hosted handicapping seminars at Saratoga and became one of the hosts of Raceday Belmont, broadcast on the New York City OTB channel, in the mid-1990s. Frustrated by racetrack management’s lack of concern for horseplayers, Cornman resigned that position in May 1996. Cornman had approached then-NYRA president and CEO Kenny Noe with a list of horseplayer’s concerns, mostly regarding the releasing of accurate and timely information, that went ignored. “[Noe] told me that no employee of his was going to question what he does,” Corman said in a New York Daily News article detailing his resignation. “I said fine. It’s time for me to move on.” In the 1980s, Cornman developed a reputation as a highly respected trip handicapper. After a run of good fortune at the windows, Cornman bought a one-third interest in the New York-bred gelding Win, trained by Sally Bailie. Win would become a two-time winner of the Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga and would come within a neck of defeating the legendary John Henry in the Grade 1 Turf Classic at Belmont Park in 1984. Win became the first New York-bred to clear the $1 million mark in earnings, retiring with $1.4 million in career earnings. Cornman, with partners, also had success with horses such as three-time stakes winner Exclusive Partner, as well as claimers-turned-allowance horses Trubulare and Lucky Mathieu. Andy Beyer, the longtime racing journalist and creator of the Beyer Speed Figures, met Cornman in the early 1980s and knew he had stumbled upon a unique individual. “Before the modern era of horse betting, when gamblers can watch races from home and wager through computer, racetracks had a gregarious social life," Beyer wrote in an e-mail. "When I went to New York in the 1980s, I would see a familiar group of horseplayers who might be rivals or collaborators and who often had clashing egos.  But there was one player in this environment who commanded almost everyone’s respect.  That was Paul Cornman. “When Paul expressed an opinion, he wasn’t combative, but he was authoritative.  He was the source of such sound observations and opinions that, in a subculture which loves creative nicknames, he earned a special one: The Source.” Self-deprecating at times, Cornman, in a 1988 Sports Illustrated article about Saratoga that included some of Cornman’s gambling stories, said of himself “I was basically a degenerate horseplayer. I would go on TV once a week and talk like I knew what was going on, then pull out of the parking lot in a 1968 Impala.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.