Helen Polinger got her first stakes wins as an owner when 4-year-old jumper Jezabell's Man took the Tom Roby and Indian River handicaps at Delaware Park to establish himself as one of the nation's best steeplechasers.
Trained by farm manager Monti "Sonny" Sims, Jezabell's Man came into Polinger's possession as an unraced 3-year-old. The estranged wife of Maryland Racing Commission member Milton Polinger purchased him from her husband. "Milton sold him to me to make up for the bad advice he had given me on another horse," she said. Having the pick of four or five horses, she settled on the Virginia-bred son of *Prince Taj and *Jezabell III and added: "I don't know exactly why except that he was big, looked like he might make a jumper, and Milton priced him cheaper than most of the others."
The Polingers' vast operation included more than 200 horses over three farms in Montgomery and Howard counties, with 36 foals bred to race on the flat. But Helen noted: "I'm totally dedicated to steeplechasing."
Polinger expanded her stable a short time later. Her best runner, Grade 1-winning millionaire The Very One, was bought as a 2-year-old at the 1977 Timonium sale.
A four-person syndicate -- Allaire duPont, E.P. Taylor, Richard Stokes and Gordon Ramm -- brought Bold Ruler's stakes-winning son King Emperor back from Ireland to stand at duPont's Woodstock Farm in Chesapeake City, Md. The 9-year-old stallion, with two crops of racing age, was a huge attraction due to "a great racing record, plus an extraordinary bottom line."
King Emperor stood in Maryland for 11 years before his death in 1987. Sire of 20 stakes winners, six while in Ireland, he was a better broodmare sire, his daughters producing the likes of millionaires Simply Majestic and Zoman. A granddaughter, Majesty's Crown, was the dam of Eclipse Award-winning sprinter Smoke Glacken.
Larry MacPhail's 376-acre Glenangus Farm sold at public auction for $1.23 million to James T. Dresher. The once nearly 1,000-acre property near Bel Air, Md., was purchased by MacPhail in the early 1940s and became known as one of the most prolific stud farms in the state. When MacPhail retired as an owner and breeder in 1967, he declared: "During the past 22 years more than 100 stakes class horses, which were bred, raised, sold or syndicated by Glenangus, or raced by me, brought when sold, or won when raced, more than 40 million dollars."
A lawyer, baseball executive (a Baseball Hall of Fame inductee) and war veteran, MacPhail was a highly contentious figure in the Thoroughbred industry. He died four months after the sale of the farm at the age of 85. Dresher, recently named to the board of The Maryland Jockey Club, breeds and races under the Glenangus banner.
Timonium's 42-day race meet, from late July through early September, would offer its first stakes races. Four would be worth a combined $85,000 in added money. "We've had over 1,900 stall applications," said general manager Max Mosner, "including ones from Delp, Dutrow, Leatherbury, Tammaro and Forbes."
"Stuart S. Janney Jr. is a director and past president of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. Because of his close affiliation with the organization which publishes this magazine, it seems proper that editorial mention should be made of his great filly Ruffian," wrote Snowden Carter following the champion filly's death.
"The best that can be said is that Ruffian left her owners, Mr. and Mrs. Janney, with a chest full of memories. They will, in the years to come, raise and breed many horses. None will ever equal Ruffian. Unlucky, of course, to lose their champion, the Janneys are, nevertheless, among the world's luckiest persons ever to have had her in the first place."
