In the latest "Stud Managers Seminar," a series of lectures presented in early 1974 by the Extension Service of the University of Maryland and the Maryland Horse Breeders Association and printed in serialized form, Joe Thomas, vice president and general manager of Windfields Farm, discussed selection and matings.

"We are all in this business to (1) raise the big horse and (2) make a buck, and there is no doubt about it if you raise the big horse you can make a big buck," started Thomas. "Jack Price [breeder/owner of Carry Back] even made a profession out of a big horse. Since breeding Thoroughbreds is a game of probabilities the aim is to shift the odds in your favor and this can be done even with a small budget."

Thomas hooked his audience with his next point: "To begin -- (1) Black type is an expensive guide to racing ability. (2)Pedigree reveals more fiction than fact. (3)Conformation as form relates to type is irrelevant, but as form relates to function is vital."

Thomas was one of the world's most successful Thoroughbred breeding authorities. When he died of cancer at 59 in May 1984, editor Snowden Carter wrote: "He left his newspaper job in Lexington in 1956 to work for Mr. [E.P.]Taylor and together they created an empire. . . Windfields wouldn't have been Windfields without Joe Thomas."

Virginia Guest 4-year-old filly Life's Illusion won the Lovely Night Handicap and New York Turf Writers Cup steeplechases in back-to-back starts at Saratoga. The Maryland-bred daughter of Virginia stallion *Mystic II, trained by Paul Fout, defeated a stellar field in the Turf Writers including American champion jumpers -- runner-up Soothsayer and fourth-place finisher *Gran Kan.

Life's Illusion earned the first of her three Maryland-bred champion steeplechaser titles that year. She was the Eclipse Award winner in 1975.
n Johns Hopkins University graduate Leo S. Nechamkin II, 25, trained a one-horse stable (Croisiadore, a recent two-time winner at Timonium). He also worked in the admissions department at all Maryland racetracks. "I can't think of anything that could ever equal training horses," he said. He blamed his father for being bitten by the horse bug. "He's had horses for nearly 25 years, and so has my uncle, Joe Nechamkin."

Nechamkin stopped training after a couple of years, then returned in the 1990s. His best runner, Gators N Bears, purchased from the estate of breeder Bob Camac, won multiple graded stakes, earned $804,393, and stood at stud in the region.