As we anxiously await the first sanctioned racing of the season, let us meet a Legend who has invested much in to the sport - as a rider, breeder, owner and so much more.
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George Strawbridge Jr. – With his horses, and himself, he stays the course
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Augustin Stable's stamina-laden breeding program gives him an edge on the competition
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You can't argue with success: He's got a unique insider view of what it takes to breed a good racehorse ... because he's been there. George Strawbridge Jr. has looked between the ears of a dozen champions and felt the coiled energy of the stride that keeps extending when others around him are folding.
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The odds of owner-breeder George Strawbridge Jr. winning a major English Derby prep on the first post-COVID day since racing shut down in March at the exact same time as his Legends of Steeplechase interview weren’t much higher than that.
(©Milton C. Toby)
Bottom line: it’s not a surprise when a Strawbridge horse wins.
Breeder of
2019 Horse of the Year Bricks and Mortar, winner of two steeplechase Eclipse Awards and scores more accolades, as of press time, Strawbridge’s Augustin Stable had won more than $50,000,000 and nearly 1,000 races – double it counting European earnings.
At 82 some 60 years into the game himself, and the third-generation involved in horse racing, Strawbridge has more than $9 million in NSA earnings from 1966-2018, the sport's all-time leader.
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The well-known green-and-white halved silks have been notably absent over jumps the last two seasons, but his Augustin Stable has been busy building stats on the flat. That his main flat trainers –
Graham Motion and
Michael Dickinson in Maryland, and
Jonathan Thomas in Florida, as well as
Andrew Balding in England – earned their chops in steeplechasing is something that suits Strawbridge’s mien, favoring a stamina-centric breeding, raising and racing program. Fair Hill-based
Michael Matz has Augustin horses, too, and the discipline of his Olympic champion show jumping career aligns with Strawbridge’s famously precision focus just as much.
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Strawbridge and champion jockey Jerry Fishback in the paddock at the Fair Hill Races.
©Douglas Lees
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“Because of my steeplechase background, I’ve always loved the stamina races,” says Strawbridge from his winter home in Jupiter, Florida. He’s a tad distracted, with an eye on the live-stream from Kempton Park where homebred Berlin Tango just stamped himself early favorite for the July 4
Epsom Derby. He says he remembers “the old days of steeplechasing camaraderie,” plucking fresh memories “like it was yesterday” from decades as one of the nation’s top amateur riders.
“It was so exciting in those days,” Strawbridge says. “There was a big core group of amateur riders, and it was lots of fun. George Sloan, Mason Lampton, Ned Bonnie, Dixon Stroud. The list goes on.
“That was the strength and foundation of steeplechasing, the roots of the game, (and) the contributions of former amateur riders are extensive.”
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Strawbridge at Rolling Rock after winning the Laurel Ridge Amateur Cup on Odland. ©Douglas Lees
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Strawbridge laments the dwindling amateur circuit today, saying amateur riders built the game. He’s not sure where support will come from now.
“They established hunt meets all over the country,” he says. “Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia. Scores of places. The amateur rider was the backbone of steeplechasing. Look at just about every hunt meet today, and all the old ones gone the past 20 years. Somebody that rode as an amateur is at the (helm.)”
Strawbridge counts himself – he’s
Radnor co-chair. “The end of amateur racing, (is) what’s changed the game. Steeplechasing was pure sport and competition and enjoyment. There weren’t even purses a lot of places.”
“When they were required to offer minimum purses, that drove lots of hunt meets out of business. It hasn’t been made up by (jump racing at) the major tracks.”
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Strawbridge riding for the win on Scoluin, at Oxmoor in 1970.
©Jess Barker/NSA Archives
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The hillbilly
and the heir
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The year: April, 1968
The venue: A farm outside Lexington, Kentucky
The meet: The inaugural High Hope Steeplechase
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“That bloody Mason Lampton,” Strawbridge remembers like it was yesterday. “I was on (later 1970 timber horse of the year) For Bravery. If there was betting, he’d be the 1-3 favorite. And here this horse comes up my inside.”
Lampton remembers, too. “This old horse I was on, I think he had an old bow on his inside, and he didn’t turn so good. Coming up the stretch the first time, you had to take a pretty tight left turn.
“So we’re boot to boot, and my horse is bearing out.”
“He just kept going straight,” Strawbridge says. “And I’m cursing him as he carries us out into the parking lot.”
“I’d ridden just a couple races,” Lampton says. “Here this guy’s come down with this fancy horse from up north. I’m hauling on the left rein for all I’m worth, and he says ‘You hillbilly, turn that horse!’
“I’m trying, you know. I said ‘You think you can turn the son-of-a-b***h, you reach over here and pull him around.’
“We got all the way to the rhododendrons and the wire fence before we got stopped.
“That’s how we met.”
Strawbridge ribbed Lampton about the incident for decades. “We became quite good friends in the end, of course.”
“George Strawbridge has been a mainstay of steeplechasing for so many years,” Lampton says. “His (stable) was a juggernaut, and, yeah, sure he beat me – like a drum – most of the time, but those were the days it was a true amateur game, and so much fun.”
“You get addicted to it,” Strawbridge adds. “(It’s) extremely thrilling to gallop on a good horse to a big jump. But what I best remember is the camaraderie, the sporting nature of the game."
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Strawbridge and Mr. Waffles overtake Shy Donald in the stretch of the Laurel Ridge Amateur Cup in 1981 at the Rolling Rock races.
©Douglas Lees
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Strawbridge doesn’t have any jumpers now, but he doesn’t rule it out. Still, he’s happy to have thriving flat strings in the U.S. and in Europe – about 20 horses each, since purses at the racetrack are driven by wagering. Largely non-betting, steeplechase purses rely on spectators and sponsorships, both notably absent right now.
“It’s a shame about the shutdown,” he says of the corona-crisis. “Look at the enormous entries at
Middleburg Spring,” rescheduled from their normal April date to June 13 – 220 horses overflowed the
entry box, expanding the seven-race card to 11. “Talk about a hunger. This has been much worse on steeplechasing. And, my god, they’re trying to make it up with two meets. Imagine having a jump horse and nowhere to run. You’d feel like you’re beaten with a stick.”
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Born in Philadelphia, George Strawbridge Jr. was the son of Peggy Dorrance and George Strawbridge Sr.
Peggy was daughter of Dr. John Thompson Dorrance, owner of the
Campbell Soup Company. His cousin Charlotte Weber, daughter of Ethel Dorrance, owns the prominent
Live Oak Stud in Ocala, Florida.
George Sr. was a stockbroker and avid amateur jockey. George Sr. won the New Jersey Hunt Cup three times – as rider in 1919 with River Breeze, in 1937 with Coq Bruyere (R.P. Hamilton up) and in ’38 aboard Coq Bruyere himself.
Later a frequent race official, George Sr. was National Steeplechase president in the mid-’70s.
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Mr. and Mrs. Strawbridge Sr. in the paddock at Monmouth Park in 1964 with Reeve Schley.
©Turfotos
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George Strawbridge Jr.’s Augustin Stable is named after the
St. Augustine Church in Chesapeake City, Maryland, near his former farm in Cecil County.
The historical figure
St. Augustine was a significant Christian thinker and fourth century philosopher.
A Catholic theologian, he was also known for his agnostic contributions to Western philosophy.
Similar to Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” Augustine argued that existence was immutable – “(Even) If I am mistaken, I am.”
Strawbridge races under the name Augustin Stable in America, and under George Strawbridge Jr. in Europe.
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George Sr.'s father, John Strawbridge, had been a horseman so bold they called him “The Iron Duke,” a nickname he’d earned as an athlete at
Trinity College. “I loved my grandfather. He was a true sportsman and a real gentleman,” Strawbridge says. He inherited his distinctive green-and-white silks from John.
“He was one for giving advice, his whole life. When I was about 18, he was trying to put me up for membership in the
Philadelphia Club. I told him I had no use for that.
“He was insistent. ‘The point is, George, when you get older, you may not get asked to join.'
“I did not understand.
“He said ‘the older you get, the more enemies you might have, and they might not invite you then.'
“Did I join? Of course I joined. I don’t think you had any choice with The Iron Duke.
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“My grandfather was in the first world war and was getting a bit gaga later in life. He used to hallucinate about being in the trenches (in France.) I’d be talking to him, and he’d grab me and pull me under the table and yell, ‘incoming’! I never knew what triggered that.”
John was what his grandson calls “a huge man, a football player and a boxer. And he was Quaker cheap,” and he’d never spend much money on horses or trappings. But he was kind, and funny. George Sr. took after him. “What a wonderful man he was. He had a great sense of humor,” Strawbridge says.
Strawbridge’s mother died when he was a young teen. “Without a doubt that was the worst day of my life,” he recalls feeling small and powerless, made more acute by a second tragedy that very same day. “I was in Maine with her, and the day she passed away was the same day my best friend died.
“He was strong and accomplished and smart, a real renaissance guy already (at 14.) He’d gone out sailing with two girls in Frenchman’s Bay that day, more like a dinghy with a sail than a sailboat. The wind came up and turned them over.
“There wasn’t enough room for all three of them to hang on to the (hull,) so he said ‘I’ll swim and get help.'
“He drowned.” Almost 70 years later, you still pick up on the raw emotion. He threw himself into his studies.
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“I did a year at
King’s College in London,” he says. “I played lacrosse and had a hunter with the
Quorn. Oh my god, what an experience that is. Over 150 horses, take your own line, ditches, hedges, god only knows what else you’d jump. It was so exciting.”
Strawbridge took up racing in 1966. He was 29.
With the higher amateur weight tables, the 6-foot-tall Strawbridge was careful with his diet but didn’t have to struggle. “I was lucky to be born thin.”
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Strawbridge after riding in the Fair Hill Races.
©Douglas Lees
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He rode races 1966-1989, winning 80 of some 300 starts for a nearly 28 percent strike rate. He won the prestigious Iroquois – his all-time favorite race to ride – four times, in 1971 and ’72 with Mabrouk, and 1979 and ’80 with Owhata Chief – a New Zealand-bred he calls his favorite all-time horse to ride.
Strawbridge teamed with young trainer Jonathan Sheppard for decades, and their trajectory matches -- Augustin Stable won 23 NSA owner titles 1974-2005; Sheppard won 27, 1973-2013.
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Augustin Stable won the 2019
Eclipse Award as leading breeder, headed by Horse of the Year, five-time grade 1 winner Bricks and Mortar. The 6-year-old son of Giant’s Causeway was undefeated in six starts with earnings of $6,723,650.
He was sold as a yearling for $200,000 at 2015 Keeneland September.
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Bricks and Mortar is out of the Ocean Crest group- and graded-placed stakes winner
Beyond the Waves, whom Strawbridge co-bred with Ward Stiff. Beyond the Waves raced primarily in Europe, coming to the U.S. at 5.
She’s earned her oats in Strawbridge’s broodmare band – besides Bricks and Mortar, she produced grade 3 winner Emerald Beech (by Maria's Mon), multiple stakes winner Beyond Smart (Smart Strike), graded-placed winner Sir Ector (Dynaformer) and stakes-placed winner Water View (Petionville).
Other Augustin Eclipse Awards include
Forever Together (2008 turf female) and Informed Decision (2009 female sprinter), and three ’chase champs – Chilean-bred Pompeyo (2001) and Café Prince (1977-78).
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Strawbridge was NSA president 1979-1980, and he’s served as chairman and chairman emeritus and was a member of the board of directors of the
National Steeplechase Museum in Camden, South Carolina. He won the Ambrose Clark Award award in '79.
Since 1976, Strawbridge has been a member of the Jockey Club and along with Ogden Phipps is one of only two Americans to be members of the
Jockey Club of Canada.
The next generation
Youngest of Strawbridge’s three sons, Stewart, 45, carries the family tradition into a fourth generation. Stewart rode Irish-born Thari to win the 2005 New Jersey Hunt Cup, almost 100 years after the first of his grandfather’s three wins.
Stewart was first in the family to ride a Maryland Hunt Cup winner –
The Bruce in 2007. John Strawbridge’s Coq Bruyere won the 1941 running with R.P. Hamilton; Stewart’s Guts For Garters
won in 2014 with Jody Petty.
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Stewart Strawbridge and The Bruce at the 13th fence of the 2007 Maryland Hunt Cup. The Bruce was owned and ridden by Strawbridge, and trained by Sanna Neilson.
©Douglas Lees
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“I feel extremely fortunate. My dad was an incredible father,” Stewart says. “He was very supportive of our sports, and (he) never missed a hockey game when I was at Bowdoin. He was diehard.
“He’s got a great wit, hysterical sense of humor and loves to tease people. He laughs at his own jokes. His own father was like that, (they never took) themselves too seriously.
“He has a great passion for life, for horses, for sports, for adventure. After (retiring from) race riding, he replaced his passion for that excitement and freedom with flying.”
Father and son both keep up Type-rated pilots’ licenses.
Other than flying, today Strawbridge feels the freedom from the sidelines – he hasn’t ridden in about five years. He’s been joint-master of Pennsylvania’s
Andrew’s Bridge Foxhounds since 1970, and he does miss hunting as much as he misses the rush of galloping down to a big fence on a great jumper. “I loved it, just loved it,” he says.
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Strawbridge Hunting with Andrew's Bridge Foxhounds
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He’s replaced it with the intellectual pleasure of trying to breed fast horses with staying power. “One of the biggest thrills I’ve ever had was when (homebred) Lucarno won the
2007 English St Leger, the third jewel in their Triple Crown,” Strawbridge says of the 15-furlong classic. He’s bred to the top stallions in the world, but some of his favorites – all stamina-centric, he says, have been Dynaformer, Quality Road and Ghostzapper.
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Fair Hill Training Center connection
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Construction began in 1983, with showplace barns operated as a horse condominium facility, two tracks and space for 1,200 horses. Barns are privately owned, with trainers paying day-fees for track and grounds maintenance, facility staffing and property insurance.
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“George is a traditionalist,” says long-time friend and contemporary Dr. John Fisher. “He’s passionate about so many things, about horses, about bloodlines, about conservation, about his wife Julia.” Julia Strawbridge is the active competitor in the family these days – she’s a show jumper and eventer, currently training and competing on the Wellington circuit near their Jupiter home.
Even there, though, there’s a deeper family tie.
Julia is showing homebred Ascot Girl in the thoroughbred jumper division. “God, I remember her first race,” George Strawbridge says, maiden special at Gulfstream March 15, 2015 for trainer Michael Matz.
"She won going away and paid $99.
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George and Julia Strawbridge at the 2014 Radnor Hunt Races. ©
Tod Marks
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Strawbridge gave $2 million to create the Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation Translational Cancer Research Endowment at the
Lucille P. Markey Cancer Center in Lexington, Kentucky.
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“She’s always been a little loopy. But I get a kick out of watching her come along and progress in her second career. I love the process, everything about it. The racing and the breeding, and deciding what to do with them after their racing career.
“Some of the 2-year-olds go to my (Cochranville, Pennsylvania) farm, the ones that need time to develop” after initial training under saddle with Jonathan Thomas at Bridlewood Farm in Florida. “They’re out in our 100-acre field, running and playing.
“When they go back to Jonathan, he says it saves him a month of training because they’re fit from ‘being horses’ turned out in a big field with hills. I’m convinced that develops their stamina better than anything. They get the opportunity to grow up.
“The reason I’m in it is because of this noble animal. The progression, the sport. I just love it.”
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WHOA back
Strawbridge is an outspoken proponent of the “hay, oats, water” theory of horse racing without race-day medications, with Stone Farm’s Arthur and Stacy Hancock and Roy and Gretchen Jackson helping found WHOA –
Water, Hay, Oats Alliance.
“The thoroughbred game also is an industry,” Strawbridge acknowledges. “The horses are, to a greater or lesser extent, commodities to the people who breed, own and train them. We agreed there are way too many drugs in American racing, masking pain and other conditions and causing a high fatality rate. Some of the drugs are also (slight) performance enhancers, so you’re screwed if you aren’t using (Lasix), even if your horse isn’t a known bleeder.
“We all thought it would be best to use the international model – no race-day drugs at all.
WHOA tried to influence the market to agree to drug-free racing, but it didn’t work. It’s a drug culture.
“Emulating the success model of the rest of the world would be a big start toward respecting the star of the show – the horses. The public and our fans (need to know) that we care and are a clean and legitimate sport.”
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Nearly
1,000 acres in southeast Pennsylvania will remain open space in perpetuity, thanks to a gift to the Conservation Fund, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Mt. Cuba Center and Chester County.
Featuring rolling farmlands, open grasslands, wooded terrain and stream corridor, a 978-acre Strawbridge property adds to a contiguous block of open recreation space of nearly 8,000 acres – one of the largest in the region. The acquisition came 11 years after the protection of an adjacent 735-acre Strawbridge property. The Big Elk Creek section of the White Clay Creek Preserve contains two miles of the Mason-Dixon line along the Pennsylvania-Maryland state border, joining the 5,300-acre Fair Hill Natural Resource Management Area in Maryland. Together, the three areas make up one of the largest conserved spaces in the Mid-Atlantic.
“Large tracts of open space like this are extremely rare and valuable, especially in such a highly developed and populated area,” said Blaine Phillips, Conservation Fund’s Mid-Atlantic director, in a release. “As pressure from development, climate change, and other threats pose unprecedented risks for biodiversity, one of the most important things we can do to support flora and fauna is to conserve open space and the habitats it comprises. The Strawbridge property extends an important wildlife corridor and provides refuge for a wide array of rare and threatened species.”
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The property Strawbridge donated in Pennsylvania. ©Jerry Monkman
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Good sport
Strawbridge was co-owner then majority owner of the
Tampa Bay Rowdies indoor soccer franchise of the old North American Soccer League from the team's
founding in July 1974 until he and later partners Lamar Hunt and Bill McNutt sold it after the 1983 season to investors Stella Thayer (also an owner-breeder that owned Tampa Bay Downs with George Steinbrenner), Bob Blanchard (who briefly hosted a hunt meet in Tampa) and Dick and Cornelia Corbett. The Rowdies won the NASL championship in 1974.
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Foxy
George Strawbridge has been joint-master of the Andrew’s Bridge Foxhounds since 1970.
“It’s a pack of wonderful, very accomplished hounds,” he says. “Marvelous sport.
“There was a day – I remember it like it was yesterday, maybe 50 years ago. The Kirkwood fox gave us a five-mile point, if you can imagine that. This fox would just tease the hounds, watch them struggle to follow his line. It was such an interesting thing to see him enjoy the chase.
“By the time we called it, it was late afternoon, getting dark and we were, literally, five miles from the vans.”
Strawbridge hasn’t ridden for five years, and says he misses it, hunting especially. “Those are some of my most specific memories. Very fond times.”
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Cafe Prince (b. 1970) – Champion ’chaser 1977, 1978. Inducted in Racing and Hall of Fame in 1985
(Douglas Lees photo from the 1977 Essex Race Meeting. Jerry Fishback rode Cafe Prince to the win)
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Double Reefed (b. 1976) – Champion ’chaser 1981
(Douglas Lees photo from the 1980 Rolling Rock Races, with John Cushman up)
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Wustenchef (b. 1965) – Multiple stakes-winner on the turf and over hurdles, including both one memorable month, July, 1971
(Douglas Lees photo of Wustenchef on June 11, 1971 winning the Indian River Hurdle Handicap at Delaware Park. Michael O'Brien rode him for Augustin Stables.)
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Other standout stakes winners – Tall Award, Mabrouk, Gateshead, Summer Colony, Jamaica Bay, Irish Approach,
Praise The Prince
(
Tod Marks
photo of Praise the Prince jumping the last fence in the 2001 A.P. Smithwick Memorial, with Gus Brown up. Praise the Prince won multiple Grade 1 hurdle races in the early 2000's, including the Hard Scuffle hurdle stakes, the Meadow Brook hurdle stakes, and the Turf Writers Cup. Later in his career Praise the Prince switched to timber.)
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Waya (b. 1974) – 1979 Eclipse as champion older female
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Treizieme (b. 1981) – In France, won the group 1 Grand Critérium
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Silver Fling (b. 1985) – won group 1 Prix de l'Abbaye
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Turgeon (b. 1986) – named for Buffalo Sabres player Pierre Turgeon, won group 1 races in France and Ireland
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Tikkanen (b. 1991) – named for NHL hockey player, Esa Tikkanen, won 1994 Turf Classic and Breeders' Cup Turf
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Lucarno (b. 2004) – Won the 2007 St. Leger Stakes
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Rainbow View (b. 2006) – 2008 European champion 2-year-old filly
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Selkirk (b. 1988) – Pennsylania-bred, raced in England and France; champion miler of Europe in 1991 and 1992, champion 3-year-old colt and older male in England, champion older male in France. Leading British sire.
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Collier Hill (b. 1998) – Won major races in Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Canada and Hong Kong
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With Anticipation (b. 1995) – Won the 2002 United Nations Stakes and back-to-back runnings of the Man o' War in 2001-2002. Namesake of the With Anticipation Stakes.
(
Tod Marks
photo of Strawbridge leading With Anticipation and jockey Pat Day to the winners circle after the 2001 Sword Dancer)
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Rochester (b. 1996) – Career earnings topped $1.2 million. Raced 51 times, from 1998 through 2006 as a multiple graded stakes winner. One of the oldest horses in the U.S. to win a graded stakes – at 9. Returned as a steeplechaser in 2008 and won twice.
(
Tod Marks
photo of Rochester driving to the win at the Winterthur Races in 2008, with Jody Petty in the irons)
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Forever Together (b. 2004) – Won the 2008 Breeders' Cup Filly Turf
(
Tod Marks
photo of Forever Together and Julien Leparoux after a third place finish in the Diana Stakes in Saratoga in 2010)
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Informed Decision (b. 2005) – Won the 2009 Breeders' Cup Filly Sprint
(
Tod Marks
photo of Informed Decision in 2010 in Saratoga)
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Bricks and Mortar (b. 2014) – 2019 Eclipse Horse of the Year (breeder)
(
Tod Marks
photo of Bricks and Mortar winning the 2017 National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame Stakes (Gr. 2) with jockey Joel Rosario)
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A 1979 drawing of Strawbridge from artist Peb. (NSA Archives)
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