From the Del Mar Media Workforce:
Martin Wygod, Very Prosperous Businessman, Breeder, owner, DMTC Board Member Passes at 84
Martin J. Wygod
Martin J. Wygod, an remarkable businessman whose love of horses led him to a second prosperous career as an award-winning owner and breeder, died peacefully in his sleep Thursday night time at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, around his house in Rancho Santa Fe. He was 84.
Wygod’s eager company instincts led him to get in on the ground flooring of the burgeoning “online” globe and its ties to the wellness treatment market the place his tallied his major accomplishments.
Immediately after graduating from New York College in 1961, the native New Yorker started out as a Wall Avenue stockbroker, but then quickly shift to the administration facet where he proved particularly adept. The youthful financier formed and bought many corporations and was a multi-millionaire before the age of 30.
Amid his early acquisitions was Glasrock Healthcare Expert services in the 1970s that he sold for a major earnings immediately after 5 several years of stable expansion. In 1983 he proven Medco Containment Products and services and crafted it into the largest mail get pharmacy in the United States. In 1993 he marketed that corporation to the wellbeing giant Merck & Co. for more than $6 billion. He subsequently was the chairman of WebMD Wellbeing Corp., the nation’s main service provider of health details solutions, which he offered in 2017.
In the course of his teenage yrs, Wygod observed pleasure and a diverse schooling in “walking hots” on the backstretches of New York’s Belmont Park and Aqueduct racetracks. In the course of that time period, he fulfilled and befriended one more younger New Yorker named Bobby Frankel, who would go on to turn out to be a world-class horse trainer and a member of racing’s Corridor of Fame.
Wygod’s introduction into horse ownership happened on his 25th birthday when he obtained a reward of two racehorses from his California mate and enterprise spouse Fletcher Jones. Subsequently, he and his wife Pam gave up the east coastline for California and Rancho Santa Fe in 1994 even though creating a valuable breeding/farm procedure at River Edge in Buellton, CA.
Among the lots of highlights of his breeding and racing successes have been 2004 Breeders’ Cup and Eclipse winner Sweet Catomine, the 2-12 months-previous filly winner Existence Is Sweet, the winner of the 2009 BC Girls Basic major stakes winners Tranquility Lake, Immediately after Marketplace and Brave Cat Kentucky’s 2009 Broodmare of the Year Sweet Lifetime, as effectively as remaining saluted as California’s major breeder in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
He worked with notable conditioners above the years including the late V.J. (Lefty) Nickerson, Monthly bill Mott, John Shirreffs, Jimmy Jerkens, Ron Ellis, John Sadler and Cliff Sise, Jr.
Wygod was a trustee of the Thoroughbred House owners and Breeders Association and a member of The Jockey Club because 1996. He joined the board of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in 1999.
“Marty’s inclusion on our board proved to be a blessing about and around once again,” explained DMTC’s longtime CEO Joe Harper. “His insights and come to feel for the two the world of business enterprise and our racing activity aided us continuously make the variety of excellent selections that have viewed us rise to the leading of the nationwide racing group. We will dearly skip him.”
The Wygods have two youngsters, Emily and Max. In a feasible magical extension to Marty’s racing career, he had “gifted” his homebred 3-calendar year-previous colt Resilience to Emily and his longtime bloodstock guide Ric Waldman. Past Saturday, the horse won the Wood Memorial in New York and will be between the favorites for this year’s 150th functioning of the Kentucky Derby.
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