Trainer Sally Lundy dies at age 63

Sarah “Sally” Lundy, one of the most respected trainers by her peers and an integral part of the success of the late Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel, died Saturday, the day she turned 63, after a lengthy battle with liver cancer.

Lundy, who lived in Pasadena, Calif., most recently was the barn secretary for Carla Gaines in Southern California, but she had an extensive training career, both on her own and as an assistant. Lundy operated a public stable in New York, where in 1984 she became the first female trainer to run a horse in the Belmont Stakes, and also worked as an assistant to Frankel and her former husband Richard Lundy.

A native of Pennsylvania hunt country, Lundy first worked for steeplechase trainers W. Burling Cocks and Bruce Miller, and even rode in some steeplechase races before working for David Whiteley, for whom she galloped Instrument Landing.

She came west with Whiteley and then worked for Willard Proctor before marrying Richard Lundy, who trained privately for Virginia Kraft Payson and then Allen Paulson. She was part of a Lundy operation whose top horses included Blushing John, Carr de Naskra, and Jade Hunter.

Lundy trained on her own in New York and Florida after her marriage broke up and later worked as a top assistant for Frankel in New York and California until his death in 2009.

“She loved being at the track and with the horses,” Gaines said Monday. “She was a fighter.”

Gaines and another close friend, Laura Stone, said Lundy knew how grave her medical prognosis was and thus made a bucket list of items she checked off, including traveling to Iceland with her mother and visiting a number of America’s national parks.

“She went to Alaska, Yellowstone, so many places, filling up a passport book of America’s national parks,” Stone said Monday.

Lundy is survived by two brothers, Steve and John Caldwell. Stone said a celebration of life will be planned for early in the Santa Anita fall meeting, either in late September or early October.