Making strides
With new leadership in place, Sagamore Racing stockpiling big wins
The history is thick in the Phipps family barn at Saratoga Race Course. So many brilliant thoroughbreds ran for the Phippses, from 1957 Horse of the Year Bold Ruler to 2013 Kentucky Derby winner Orb.
As Hunter Rankin soaked in the past glories one day this summer, it hit him — the horses he was stabling at the New York track for Kevin Plank’s Sagamore Farm were winners in their own right. They deserved to be there.
“I was really proud of that,” Rankin says. “It was so great for our brand. That’s really what Sagamore Farm should be.”
When Plank, the Under Armour founder and CEO, started Sagamore Racing 10 years ago, he hoped to steer Maryland-raised horses to victories on the most hallowed tracks in American racing. With a revamped operation chugging along under Sagamore’s young president, Rankin, and its even younger chief trainer, Horacio De Paz, that vision now seems possible.
Sagamore Racing blew past its singleyear record for winners in August. De Paz took a string of horses to Saratoga this summer and won several races against the fierce competition there. Sagamore followed that up with two stakes victories on Sept. 9 and sought another on Saturday at Laurel Park with promising 2-year-old Barry Lee, who wound up running third.
De Paz’s work has caught the eye of some of the top trainers in the sport.
“I’m very impressed, and the proof is in the results,” says Graham Motion, who’s based at Fair Hill and has handled several horses for Plank over the years. “He has shown that it’s very possible to achieve good results from a private facility, which I think certain people within the industry might have questioned. They have become a force in Maryland and warrant respect whenever and wherever they enter.”
Sagamore will never be just another farm. Plank holds executive meetings in the clocker’s tower overlooking the training track. Ray Lewis hosts groups of Baltimore schoolchildren on the fullsized football field beside the farmhouse. Staffers are always dreaming up new