William T. Young, 85; Horses Won Derby, 4 Breeders’ Cup Races
William T. Young, whose business successes started with peanut butter and ended with horses, one of whom was Grindstone, winner of the Kentucky Derby in 1996, died Monday at his home in Gulf Stream, Fla. He was 85. The cause of death was not announced.
Young owned Overbrook Farm, a 2,400-acre thoroughbred breeding operation in his hometown of Lexington, Ky. He bought the first 110 acres in 1972 and began racing horses a few years later.
Besides the Derby, Young also won the other Triple Crown races, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, with Tabasco Cat, a colt he co-owned, in 1994. In addition, Young was a partner in Timber Country, who won the 1995 Preakness, the year before Young’s Editor’s Note won the Belmont.
The biggest of Young’s four Breeders’ Cup victories was posted by Cat Thief, who scored an upset in the 1999 Classic. Young’s other Breeders’ Cup winners were Timber Country, Flanders and Boston Harbor.
Young won Eclipse awards, racing’s highest honors, with Timber Country, Flanders, Boston Harbor, Golden Attraction and Surfside. Young himself was honored with an Eclipse as outstanding breeder in 1994.
Wayne Lukas trained Grindstone, Cat Thief and all of Young’s Eclipse winners.
“Bill Young’s death is a major loss to racing,” the Santa Anita-based Lukas told Blood-Horse magazine. “No one had a bigger influence on my life than Bill. He had a master plan to develop Overbrook Farm, and he stuck with it.”
The 1996 Derby finish, between Grindstone and Cavonnier, was the closest in 27 years, so close that Young, Lukas and the jockeys -- Jerry Bailey aboard Grindstone and Chris McCarron on Cavonnier -- couldn’t tell which horse had won. There was a two-minute wait before the placing judges posted Grindstone’s number on the tote board.
In a post-race news conference, Young said, “You can attach any adjectives you want to this victory, and I’ll go along with it.”
Storm Cat, a horse Young bred, became his first stakes winner, then, eventually, one of his most profitable horses, even though the colt’s career was cut short in 1986 after only eight races and purses totaling $570,000. Storm Cat sired Tabasco Cat and Cat Thief and became the world’s most expensive stallion when his stud fee reached the $500,000 mark a couple of years ago.
Storm Cat was North America’s leading sire in 1999 and 2000, when his progeny earned more than $19 million. Last year his offspring earned more than $5 million, and overall his progeny have won more than 1,500 races and earned nearly $80 million.
Asked once why he’d gone into racing, Young said, “As a lifelong resident of Lexington, I had long been exposed to the industry. My involvement increased dramatically when I began developing Overbrook.”
Born in Lexington, Young graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939. After Army service, he married a college classmate, Lucy Maddox, in 1945 and, with the help of her father, who grew peanuts in Georgia, Young started manufacturing peanut butter in Lexington in 1946. In 1955, Young sold the company to Procter & Gamble and his Big Top label became the Jif brand. Young was chairman of Royal Crown Cola Co. for 19 years and at one time was the largest shareholder in Humana, the Louisville-based health-care company.
Young was chairman of the cabinet for John Y. Brown, Kentucky’s governor, from 1979 to 1983. Known for his civic work, Young helped start a teachers’ endowment at Transylvania University with a $2-million contribution. A $58-million library, named after Young, was dedicated at the University of Kentucky in 1998.
“I always looked at [horseracing] like you would any other business,” Young once said. “Do the things that would make common sense to bring a return, and be patient. There’s been no particular magic I’ve had. A lot of the success is due to lady luck.”
Young’s wife died in 2002. His survivors include a son, William T. Young Jr., and a daughter, Lucy Boutin Hamilton.